Last Thursday, the Rio Grande do Sul court acquitted a 58-year-old man accused of qualified homicide for trying to kill his own son.
The case happened in July 2017 when the man, who was under the influence of drugs, hit his son with a machete during a fight.
The stabbed boy survived. The father was imprisoned for seven months, between August 2017 and March 2018.
According to the State Public Defender’s Office, the man suffered a stroke during the process, his body movements were compromised and he began using a wheelchair. He also began to receive the care of his mother, an elderly woman of around 80 years old.
The public defender in the case, Tatiana Boeira, told Paula Valdez, on Tarde Bandnews, the details of the story:
“The defense has these nuances. We often know the people we are going to defend on the day of the trial. In this case, I arrived at the Forum and came across a lady who was close to 80 years old, pushing a wheelchair. She was the defendant’s mother and told me the story of her life.
She left a city in the interior of the state with two young children, alone, because her husband had abandoned her, and came to Porto Alegre to work. Illiterate, she doesn’t know how to read or write to this day, this woman worked as a day laborer, supported these children and couldn’t understand why one ended up in this situation of being addicted to crack. She carried guilt with a mix of frustration”, reports the Defender.
In a rare case in Brazilian justice, and in an example of forgiveness, the son, who was a victim of his father, was summoned by the Court, did not attend the trial and expressed to the Public Prosecutor’s Office the desire that his father not be convicted, opening space for the request for clemency
“It was this son who took care of his father in the hospital when he suffered a stroke. Then I heard that story, I was very moved, but I still had no idea what I was going to do.
When, on the day of the trial, I saw the mother take the defendant out in the wheelchair alone, take him to the bathroom for the disabled and change his diapers, I realized that maybe I had a space to work there and I supported the request for leniency, not for the defendant, but for the defendant’s mother. In honor of that lady”, recalls Tatiana.
The acquittal, based on the request for leniency presented by the Public Defender’s Office, was accepted by the jurors by four votes to two.
“The family had already restored family ties. The son’s wounds had already healed, and there was no interest in punishing that person in that situation, because that would cause even greater harm to that lady. It was based on this argument that I managed to sensitize the jurors”, concludes the Public Defender.
