President of the STJ continues the process of sentencing Robinho

The President of the Superior Court of Justice (STJ), Maria Thereza de Assis Moura, continued the request for recognition of the sentence in Brazil of the player Robson de Souza, known as Robinho, sentenced to nine years in prison for rape by the Italian judiciary. .

With the action, the summoned player can serve the sentence in Brazilian territory. Robinho was convicted of the crime of rape against an Albanian woman that took place in a nightclub in Milan, Italy, in 2013. The final sentence came out nine years later, in January 2022.

Maria Thereza also determined that the Attorney General’s Office (PGR) provide the address for Robinho to be summoned. The action was filed by the Republic of Italy through an extradition treaty between the countries.

In this Thursday’s decision (13), the president of the STJ states that the requirements for the foreign conviction to be ratified in Brazil “seem to have been met, insofar as the decision was handed down by the Judiciary of Italy, the country in that the crime for which the defendant was convicted would have been committed; the homologated decision indicates that the defendant constituted a lawyer in the file and regularly defended himself; and the conviction was final and unappealable”.

Maria Thereza recalls that the Special Court of the STJ has not yet ruled on the possibility of recognizing a foreign criminal sentence with the aim of transferring the convict from the place of imprisonment in cases involving Brazilians.

However, she highlights a 2021 decision by Minister Humberto Martins, former president of the STJ, which is a precedent for recognizing Robinho’s sentence. The case was a request from Portugal for the fulfillment of the sentence in Brazil of Fernando de Almeida Oliveira, convicted of theft, kidnapping and violation of computer fraud.

“In this way, the request must have regular continuation”, said Maria Thereza.