The Tragedy Reaches the Supreme Court

Sooner or later, the arbitrary application of the law will end up leading to casualties. The aftermath of an illegal decision will often be more catastrophic than the original, setting off an escalation of subsequent radical decisions made by the Supreme Court. In the absence of any significant opposition and with the backing of the armed forces, they act as if their power is limitless. The inevitable result is that they lose control over the consequences of their actions. To sustain an illegal act, another – even worse – violation of the law is always demanded until… someone dies. This is what just happened to Cleriston Pereira da Cunha, one of the citizens apprehended in the disturbances of January 8 in Brasília. Since then, the Supreme Court had systematically been depriving him of all his rights. Now, it took away his right to live.

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Cleriston died in the yard of the Papuda Penitentiary in Brasília due to lack of adequate medical care – just before completing 11 months in pretrial detention. His death was not an “accident” that simply could happen to anyone. With diabetes, circulatory problems, and high blood pressure, he should not – according to Brazilian laws – be in jail. He should have been committed to a hospital, receiving the prescribed medications at the right doses and times. This scenario has not been made up by someone who “dislikes the Supreme Court” or “democracy,” as justice Luís Roberto Barroso claims. According to an official medical report signed and presented by Dr. Tania Maria Antunes de Oliveira on February 27, Cleriston faced “risk of death due to immunosuppression and infections.” The doctor requested urgent treatment for his case, especially because he had missed a scheduled appointment on January 30 due to being imprisoned. He had already been hospitalized for 33 days last year for the same illness and had to take at least four medications every day.

For eight and a half months, justice Alexandre de Moraes, the rapporteur of the case, just ignored this information, as well as the requests for the defendant’s release for emergency medical treatment, based on Dr. Oliveira’s report, made by his lawyers during this period. Meanwhile, Cleriston experienced fainting spells and vomiting episodes and had to be taken to the prison’s E.R.; his condition became increasingly critical. The situation reached a point where the Public Prosecutor’s Office, responsible for his case, requested that Alexandre de Moraes released him on September 1. As with the medical report, the justice completely dismissed the request. Now, after 285 days of imprisonment without any conviction, Cleriston passed away. This is where it ended, finally, due to the chain of one illegality after another increasingly problematic: he should not have been arrested in the first place; hence, the Supreme Court inquiry should not have been conducted and his imprisonment should not have been extended. Well, the consequences have not taken anyone by surprise.

• “Um morto assombra o Supremo”

Cleriston ultimately became the first casualty of the illegal repression of the “attempts at a coup” being commanded since January by the country’s highest court – the greatest aberration in the history of Brazil’s Judiciary Branch. The victim did not die because he tried to “stage” a medical emergency – as the ministers, the entire national left, and most of the media claim – but because the Supreme Court left him without medical assistance for 11 consecutive months in which he was under its custody and responsibility. Was there an intent to kill the prisoner? Obviously not. It is also clear that the court made a series of decisions whose inevitable result was the death of the citizen whom, according to the law, they had the obligation to keep alive – as far as medical treatment is available, of course. They were warned by a report from judiciary authorities, that the accused was at risk of death. For months in a row, they did nothing. As they consistently ignored the Public Prosecutor’s Office, who, then, is legally responsible for such tragic outcome? The very public authority that kept him imprisoned and was the only one who could have authorized or denied his hospitalization, which they simply decided not to do, period.

Naturally, the Supreme Court does not care about Cleriston’s death or any of the over a thousand citizens who are being sentenced to up to 17 years in prison for vandalism – a misdemeanor. Why would they care? To almost none of the justices does it occur that their decisions impact human beings made of flesh, bones, and souls – and, therefore, natural recipients of feelings such as compassion or mercy. The only way justice Alexandre de Moraes and most of his colleagues see these people is as “pro-Bolsonaro” (former president of Brazil), that is, people who “disregard democracy”, hence, shouldn’t have their constitutional or any other rights protected. If they did, according to the Supreme Court’s understanding, they would “use” their rights to end the “democratic rule of law”. Moreover, the justices are convinced that they – and no one else – are entitled to define what reality is. If they decide that a fact is not so, and Globo TV news shows don’t report it, then they fully rest assured it didn’t happen at all – “Cleriston who? Not our business.”

• “Morte anunciada”

It is an extraordinary coincidence that the first casualty of January 8 has appeared exactly now, as the Ministry of Human Rights has just published in the Official Gazette the decision of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights from 2018, condemning the Brazilian state for the death of journalist Vladimir Herzog, 48 years ago. Herzog was imprisoned in a police station, in the city of São Paulo, dedicated to serve political interests during the military regime, due to which government opponents were regularly tortured; he was found dead in his cell, and the legal authorities of the time claimed that he had “committed suicide,” without ever providing evidence. The case was never tried in a Brazilian court. But the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, nearly half a century later, found the jailers guilty of Herzog’s death. Who else could have been responsible for it after all? The Supreme Court can refuse to compare the cases – especially since the journalist’s death was a homicide. But the undeniable truth is that both died when the government, which had arrested them, was also their sole custodian.

The military regime may not have intended to kill Herzog; its agents wanted to “only” torture Herzog, but ended up killing the prisoner. How could anyone accept that as an excuse or some kind of mitigation? Alexandre de Moraes and his colleagues also did not deliberately kill Cleriston. Fully backed by Lula, most of the media, and the elite, they believe they are punishing attempts at a “coup d’état” – although none of the accused was carrying so much as a slingshot. They also did not injure anyone; not a single person needed even a band-aid throughout the disturbance. Well, it is true that the Supreme Court prisoner was not tortured; actually, he was “just” kept in prison despite a medical report warning that he was at risk of death if he was not taken to the hospital. Therefore, the Supreme Court decisions in Cleriston’s case – among which, the most appalling was arbitrarily denying him essential medical treatment – have, without a shadow of a doubt, concurred for his death.

“You are the most hated people in Brazil,” said lawyer Sebastião Coelho while representing one of the defendants at the session that opened the trial of the events of January 8. The justices, at the time, appeared outraged; their most excited sycophants even demanded “punishment” for Coelho. However, the truth is that the Supreme Court’s continued misconducts that result in tragedies such as Cleriston’s death is creating a perception of cruelty among the citizens, which, at least so far, had not been reflective of the Brazilian justice system. The justices do not seem to consider this a problem. With no one holding them accountable, they can rely on the backing of both the police and armed forces as well as on the cowardice of Congress leaders to act without fear of retribution. The Brazilian Supreme Court upper hand has turned Globo TV and the entire press into a platform for political propaganda, operating in perfect symmetry with Lula government’s actions. They live in a capsule shielded from Brazil’s population and the rest of the world, protected by armored cars, security personnel carrying heavy weaponry, and physical isolation that allows them to live practically without any contact with the average Brazilian citizen. Their sentences represent the first, second, and third instances simultaneously; any decision they make will automatically become a “res judicata” and a “perfect legal act.”

In return, the Supreme Court becomes increasingly dependent on the Lula government and the forces that support it. It is a symbiotic relationship, since the president, the Workers’ Party (PT), and its far-left satellite parties also depend on the Supreme Court today. As a result, the court is operating by a questionable legal and moral code, that is, one that makes it act and react based on the interests of the government and its supporters. What sort of code is this that allows justices to annul material evidence of corruption – such as the voluntary confessions of the guilty defendants and the return of billions of stolen funds? At the same time, this very twisted code allows justices to decide that no evidence is needed to condemn the accused of January 8 to excessive prison sentences. The Supreme Court has no longer a moral compass to guide its decisions according to the path of the law, jurisprudence, or responsibility for the impacts its rulings will have on the social, economic, and political order of the country. Without it, the court’s decisions also lack logic – reasoning goes out, force comes in.

• “Passivos e omissos”

The president of the Supreme Court, Luís Roberto Barroso, argues that “people” criticize the court merely because they “do not like” its decisions, like fans do not like the decisions of a soccer referee. In the face of what Barroso said and the tragedy that took place, a question remains: how can anyone possibly “like” the array of ill-made decisions that led to the death of Cleriston Pereira da Cunha due to lack of medical attention in the prison where he had been for almost 11 months without ever being convicted of any crime? There will never be an official explanation. Over the last five years, the Supreme Court has operated as if authorized to respond to no one.