{"id":1633543,"date":"2024-04-26T19:22:35","date_gmt":"2024-04-26T19:22:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cpj.org\/?p=382882"},"modified":"2024-04-26T19:22:35","modified_gmt":"2024-04-26T19:22:35","slug":"brazilian-court-upholds-conviction-of-killers-of-journalist-valerio-luiz-de-oliveira","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/2024\/04\/26\/brazilian-court-upholds-conviction-of-killers-of-journalist-valerio-luiz-de-oliveira\/","title":{"rendered":"Brazilian court upholds conviction of killers of journalist Val\u00e9rio Luiz de Oliveira"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

S\u00e3o Paulo, April 26, 2024\u2014The Committee to Protect Journalists welcomed a Brazilian court\u2019s decision on Tuesday to uphold the conviction<\/a> of four men for the 2012 murder of journalist Val\u00e9rio Luiz de Oliveira.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Oliveira was shot dead<\/a> by an unidentified gunman on a motorcycle while leaving his offices at R\u00e1dio Jornal 820 AM, where he hosted a sports program in Goi\u00e2nia, the capital of the central Brazilian state of Goi\u00e1s. Five men<\/a> were charged with Oliveira\u2019s murder in 2013 but it took almost a decade for the case to reach trial.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In 2022, the state court jury found the fifth not guilty. Maur\u00edcio Borges Sampaio, the former president of football club Atl\u00e9tico Goianiense, was sentenced to 16 years in prison for masterminding the killing. Sampaio was accused of ordering the killing in retaliation for Oliveira\u2019s critical reporting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Adem\u00e1 Figuer\u00eado Aguiar Filho was given a 16-year sentence and Marcus Vinicius Pereira Xavier and Urbano de Carvalho Malta received 14-year sentences for participating in planning and carrying out the crime.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The four men were not jailed because their attorneys appealed<\/a> their convictions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On February 29, 2024, Daniela Teixeira of the Superior Court of Justice (STJ) annulled the convictions<\/a> on the grounds that Xavier\u2019s 2015 hearing took place without the other defendants or their attorneys being present.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On April 12, Teixeira reversed<\/a> her decision, following an appeal by the prosecution, which argued that Xavier’s hearing was not used as evidence by the jury.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On April 23, the Goi\u00e1s state court unanimously confirmed<\/a> the 2022 convictions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sampaio, Aguiar Filho, Xavier, and Malta will remain free as their lawyers plan to appeal, according to news<\/a> reports<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“The decision by the state court of Goi\u00e1s to uphold the conviction of four men for the murder of sports reporter Val\u00e9rio Luiz de Oliveira is a victory not only for his family but for everyone working to end impunity for the killing of journalists in Brazil and worldwide,” CPJ Latin America Program Coordinator Cristina Zahar said on Friday.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“To ensure genuine justice, the next step must be the courts to ensure that Oliveira\u2019s killers serve their full prison sentences so that Oliveira\u2019s family can finally put this painful case behind them.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ricardo Naves, the attorney for Sampaio, Malta, and Aguiar Filho, told CPJ via messaging app that he would appeal to the state court requesting a review of aspects of the decision. If that did not succeed, he would file a special appeal to the STJ and an extraordinary appeal to Brazil\u2019s Superior Federal Court, he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Val\u00e9rio Luiz Filho<\/a>, Oliveira’s son and a lawyer who was an assistant to the prosecution in his father\u2019s case,  told CPJ that the prosecution planned to ask the court to imprison Sampaio and Aguiar Filho immediately as Article 492<\/a> of the criminal procedure code<\/a> says anyone sentenced by a jury to serve 15 years or more must be sent to prison immediately.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Historic day<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The court\u2019s April 23 ruling marked a \u201dhistoric day\u201d<\/a> in the fight to end impunity for crimes against journalists, said Val\u00e9rio Luiz Filho.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWhen this happens with someone who has power and fortune, which is not common in Goi\u00e1s, nor in Brazil, it is considered an important achievement,” he told CPJ in a reference to Sampaio.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Val\u00e9rio Luiz Filho, who was a law student at the time of the murder, previously told CPJ<\/a> that he decided to help prosecute the case after seeing his father\u2019s body at the crime scene.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“I realized that I had to do it myself, that I had to make an extra effort for the case to go forward,” he said, adding that his grandfather, Manoel de Oliveira, who was also a sports journalist, kept Oliveira\u2019s case in the news by being a tireless spokesman for the case until his death in 2020.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Keeping the trial in the open forced the authorities to do their job,” Val\u00e9rio Luiz Filho said. Brazil was 10th on CPJ\u2019s 2023 Global Impunity Index<\/a>, which ranks countries where journalists are regularly murdered in retaliation for their work and their killers go free.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

CPJ\u2019s text message to Xavier\u2019s attorney, Rog\u00e9rio Rodrigues de Paula, requesting comment did not receive any reply.<\/p>\n\n


\r\nThis content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists<\/a> and was authored by Arlene Getz\/CPJ Editorial Director.
<\/p>\n

This post was originally published on Radio Free<\/a>. <\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

S\u00e3o Paulo, April 26, 2024\u2014The Committee to Protect Journalists welcomed a Brazilian court\u2019s decision on Tuesday to uphold the conviction of four men for the 2012 murder of journalist Val\u00e9rio Luiz de Oliveira. Oliveira was shot dead by an unidentified gunman on a motorcycle while leaving his offices at R\u00e1dio Jornal 820 AM, where he…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13365,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33345,60319,7904,22127,60749,4759,79044,1216,1253,523,3854,43671,2283,25077,75696,75697,42642,27150,61513,75698,75694,79025],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1633543"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/13365"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1633543"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1633543\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1633544,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1633543\/revisions\/1633544"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1633543"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1633543"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1633543"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}