Thousands could potentially benefit, including former President Lula, after the Brazilian Supreme Court ends mandatory imprisonment rule.
Brazil’s Supreme Court last month overturned a law requiring convicted criminals to go to jail after losing their first appeal, a politically-charged ruling that has led to the release of former left-wing President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva.
According to Al Jazeera report, the reinterpretation of Brazil’s penal code, allowing convicts to exhaust their appeal options before being locked up, could benefit dozens of other high-profile prisoners jailed last year for corruption.
The 74-year-old left-wing leader, who was president between 2003 and 2010, had been favoured to win the 2018 election but his imprisonment barred him from running.
President Lula was jailed in 2018 for eight years and 10 months after he was found guilty of taking bribes from engineering firms in return for government contracts.
President like many others, walked free out of jail.
The judgement of the Brazilian Supreme Court should provoke thoughts and debate among those who fight injustices everywhere.
The rationality behind the judgement is not deniable. Unless the final results in the last appeal upholding conviction, suffering imprisonment mean suffering as an innocent person. If he is found not guilty and innocent by the final court of appeal how the span of his life wasted in jail could be compensated?
There is no way to make good the time of life lost in jail or suffering of his family members.
It should be seen as just and fair if an under trial prisoner remains in the judicial custody of bail for proper behaviour and with the assurance that he will be available to suffer punishment if found guilty by the final court of appeal.
There is no justification that the accused to be punished before his guilt is finally established by the appellate court. But yet all the difficulties are raised so that police arrest is accepted as final to put him in jail. He cannot be free on bail and he is treated as guilty for all the adverse consequences. His livelihood has gone. He is condemned before the entire society. Nobody in high positions worries about those ill fated ones, because they think they are born to be above the law.
In law and justice it is accepted that an accused is innocent before he is found guilty by a court of law. His guilt is not finally proved till he is found guilty by the last appellate court.
The finality comes after the final appeal is over. So before a person is found guilty finally why his liberty is to be denied? This question needs to be answered thoughtfully.
Brazilian judgment is a landmark judgement calling for justice to be just and humane. Punishing for punishment sake is a police state mentality.
Let anyone argue convincingly why a person should rot in jail deprived of all his rights and forcing to live away from family love and care unless and until his conviction is upheld by the final appellate court. If it is to be accepted as right then before appeal the accused must not be locked up in jail. We have then also to accept that it is meaningless to have appeal and treat appeal as the continuous process of the trial.
Like justice of ancient days modern justice system has remained vengeful. Punishing others is show of power and pleasure.
More innocent people suffer under the current system of justice than the desperate criminals. Many people are finished after the years’ punishment in jail he/she is found not guilty of the offence charged. His reputation is in tatters, his youth ended and his family life broken. To be found not guilty after years in jail means very little.
The judges of the Brazilian Supreme Court showed courage in breaking with the traditional concept of justice which is vengeful. That is why many jurists and judges have been emphasising humanity in the present legal justice system.
In our country we are still following bail law of British colonial days, certainly with more strictness to make an arrested person endure imprisonment for the show of police power. This police power is politically so abused that politics is being conducted by police cases relying on refusal of bail by courts. Refusing or cancelling existing bail has become an easy way of showing power by the lower judiciary. So the people have to rush to the Supreme Court, who can afford the expense, to have any chance of getting bail.
Our judicial process is making it easy for innocent people to be victims of abuse of police power to suffer without bail from the day he is arrested and even before charge sheet is filed. So the police are having all the power and the people are all the more helpless.
The fundamental rights guaranteed by the Constitution carries little or no weight. We are in the worst colonial days so far as right to bail is concerned.
To anybody with any state power thinks the people have lost their courage to fight because they see no leaders who can be trusted. They have lost the basic voting right. The people like us can feel sorry for them and us.
It is my conviction that before allegation is found true finally an arrested person must enjoy as of right to be free under conditions of bail imposed by a court of law.
It is my conviction that before allegation is found true finally an arrested person must enjoy as of right to be free under conditions of bail imposed by a court of law.
It is time for the lawyers and judges of our country to start thinking like warriors of justice than power hungry opportunists like politicians.
