Pimenta Neves, almost a decade of impunity
The murderer of his ex-girlfriend, journalist Pimenta Neves, a confessed defendant, tried and convicted in the first and second instances, remains free. How is this possible?
By Laura Diniz:
Journalist Antonio Pimenta Neves is lucky to be Brazilian. If he were a citizen of the United States, Italy, France, Spain, Portugal, Argentina, Colombia, or Costa Rica, and had committed the crime he committed here in one of those countries, the probability of him being out of jail would be practically nil.
In August 2000, the journalist, then director of the newspaper O Estado de S. Paulo, shot and killed his ex-girlfriend and also journalist Sandra Gomide, 32 years old.
The crime completed nine years last month, and Pimenta Neves – a confessed defendant, tried and convicted in the first and second instances – remains as free as a bird.
Worse than that: the chances that he will never go to jail – or that, at the end of it all, he will only spend a year and eleven months there – are scandalously real. At 72 years old, Sandra Gomide's murderer leads a quiet and discreet life. Without responsibilities or obligations (thanks to two pensions, he has enough income not to work, and he doesn't work), he spends his days reading and browsing the internet.
He talks to friends and his twin daughters, who live in the United States, via computer, and usually only watches TV when his team, São Paulo, is playing. A dachshund dog, whom he named Channel, keeps him company in his 930-square-meter house in Chácara Santo Antônio, a wealthy neighborhood in São Paulo.
It's the same one he lived in before the crime.
On the few occasions he leaves, he uses one of his two cars: a 1998 Clio and a 1995 Peugeot. Sometimes he ventures out for coffee at the bakery or a draft beer with friends (at the end of last year, he was seen with a group of them enjoying a late spring afternoon at a neighborhood restaurant).
Other times, he hosts guests at home for lunch – as he did on June 11, a Corpus Christi holiday (an occasion for which he prepared by going to the supermarket the day before to choose two bottles of wine). The journalist is in good health: he has dispensed with the antidepressants he started using shortly before killing his ex-girlfriend and only takes medication to control his blood pressure.
Last year, as he has a law degree, he tried to register with the Brazilian Bar Association. He was barred for "lack of moral suitability." Apart from this setback, he goes through his days with the serenity of an innocent – even though he is a murderer.
In July 2000, after Sandra ended their relationship, Pimenta Neves fired her from the newspaper he managed, citing professional reasons. To friends, he said she had betrayed him, including professionally.
On August 20, he put a .38 revolver in his pocket and drove to Haras Setti, in Ibiúna, in the interior of São Paulo, where he knew he would find Sandra – who, like him, was passionate about horses. After they argued, Pimenta pulled out the revolver and shot the young woman in the back. When she fell to the ground, he approached and fired a second shot, this time, into his ex-girlfriend's head.
In 2006, he was convicted of the crime by a popular jury. In the same year, the sentence was confirmed by the Court of Justice (TJ) of São Paulo and, two years later, by the Superior Court of Justice (STJ).
How to explain the fact that he remains free? The answer lies, above all, in an ideological shift that began to take shape in the Supreme Federal Court (STF) in the early 2000s.
Until the 1990s, the STF was composed of a majority of so-called conservative ministers – a term that, in criminal law, indicates those who have a rigorous interpretation of the law, as opposed, for example, to "guarantists," who are more concerned with ensuring the defendant's fundamental rights.
Broadly speaking, conservatives would be those who order imprisonment, and guarantists, or liberals, those who order release. Starting in 2003, the eleven-member collegium of the STF underwent seven substitutions.
The fact that almost all of the new ministers are liberal led to a thesis prevailing in the court's decisions: the principle of the presumption of innocence, according to which no one will be considered guilty until all of the defense's appeals have been judged.
In the era of conservative supremacy in the STF, it was understood that a conviction in the second instance was sufficient for the defendant to be arrested. Now, with the guarantor hegemony, as long as he has the money to pay good lawyers and file successive appeals in court, he can remain free until the STF's final decision, even if this takes almost a decade – as in Pimenta Neves' case.
The principle of the presumption of innocence has already saved the journalist from jail on three occasions. In 2001, it was the main argument used by STF minister Celso de Mello to grant him the habeas corpus that ended his brief stay in jail (seven months).
In 2006, when he was sentenced by the Ibiúna Jury Court to nineteen years in prison, the judge allowed him to appeal in freedom, citing STF jurisprudence based on the presumption of innocence. Finally, in the same year, when his conviction was confirmed by the TJ of São Paulo and the appellate judges ordered his arrest, his lawyers obtained a habeas corpus for him in the STJ – again, based on the presumption of innocence.
At this moment, Pimenta's defense is trying to annul the 2006 jury again. If the appeal is accepted, in practice, he will be free forever. If it is denied, the journalist still has the right to appeal to the STF – and more than once. Only when (and if) the request is definitively denied will Pimenta have to serve his sentence. Deducting, however, the seven months he spent in prison, only one year and eleven months of jail will remain for him to go to a semi-open regime.
The principle that supports Pimenta Neves' freedom guides the most modern constitutions in the world – it exists to ensure that the defendant does not serve an unjust punishment. In countries like the United States, however, it is not absolute – which means it does not apply, for example, to confessed defendants. "There, the presumption of innocence exists to the maximum degree only when there are no indications that the accused committed the crime. Those who confess give up this principle," says prosecutor Marcelo Cunha de Araújo.
"In most democratic countries, the accused would already be in jail," states criminal lawyer Ricardo Alves Bento. In fact, with regard to the journalist, what innocence is there to presume, given that he himself admitted to killing Sandra? "In this case, the guarantees of the law are being used as a purely delaying tactic," says prosecutor Luiza Nagib Eluf.
And it is at this point that conservatives and liberals, lawyers and prosecutors agree: if defendants could not file dozens of appeals to disrupt the proceedings and if justice were more swift, aberrations like Pimenta Neves' would not exist. Legal appeals serve to prevent the accused from being a victim of arbitrariness. But, in Brazil, they are often used for a far less noble purpose: to perpetuate impunity.
The state has the monopoly of the legitimate use of force to prevent society from wallowing in barbarism, from dueling with pistols again, or from allowing its members to vent vendettas by shooting at their neighbor's head.
When, through negligence, ineptitude, or structural failure of the justice system, the state fails to exercise this power, it creates a civilizational vacuum – which is precisely where murderers like Pimenta Neves take refuge.
If all rights stem from the right to live, taking someone's life is the crime par excellence: the greatest and most definitive of them all. Pimenta Neves committed it, and cowardlyly. His freedom, like that of other unpunished murderers in the country, debases society and diminishes us all.
