Renata Giraldi       Reporter Agência Brasil

Brasília – Justice Marco Aurelio Mello at the Brazilian Supreme Court (“STF”) has issued an injunction ordering the released of the farmer/landowner, Regivaldo Pereira Galvão, from jail. Mello’s ruling is in keeping with a tenet of Brazilian jurisprudence, known as “garantismo,” that strongly supports the rights of the accused to remain out of jail until all appeals are exhausted (the idea is that the state has more than an obligation to respect the individual’s rights; it should actively protect those rights going beyond mere observance of due process (“devido processo legal”)).

In his decision, justice Mello cited what he called Supreme Court fundamentals wherein ‘…keeping someone in preventive prison (“prisão preventiva”) must be based on objective and concrete reasons capable of corresponding to the hypotheses that authorized them”. 

Regivaldo Pereira Galvão, aka Maniac (“Taradão”), is accused of being the person who ordered the murder of the American missionary, Dorothy Stang, on February 12, 2005. Stang was 73 at the time and had been an activist in the interior of the state of Pará in promoting the rights of farm workers (most of them landless) and the need for ecologically-friendly agriculture. She was shot six times in Anapu, an area where a sustainable development project (“PDS”) was located. The project, which she actively supported, was opposed by local landowners who saw PDS as a threat to their property and livelihood.

Investigations of the crime eventually found that Rayfran das Neves Sales was the person who pulled the trigger, assisted by Clodoaldo Carlos Batista. The two gunmen acted under orders of Amair Feijoli da Cunha, Vitalmiro Bastos de Moura and Regivaldo Pereira Galvão who paid R$50,000 for the killing.

After years of legal wrangling and maneuvering, all five of the men involved in the murder of Dorothy Stang were tried and found guilty. After more wrangling and maneuvering all went to jail. The appeal process can go on for a very long time in Brazil.

Regivaldo Pereira Galvão, sentenced to 30 years, finally went to jail in November 2011, only after another Supreme Court injunction kept him out of jail (“suspendeu a prisão preventiva”) for a five-year period (2006 to 2011). Now he is free again - to file more appeals.

Allen Bennett – translator/editor The News in English

Link - Supremo concede habeas corpus a envolvido na morte da missionária Dorothy Stang