—Gabriel Sampaio, Director of Litigation and Advocacy, Conectas Human Rights; Bianca Villas Bôas, Attorney, Conectas Human Rights; Carla Osmo, Coordinator of the Human Rights Clinic, Federal University of São Paulo; Isabelle Gaiatto, Isadora Carvalho, and Sophia de Camargo, Undergraduate Law Students, Federal University of São Paulo[1]
Brazil’s new conviction by the Inter-American Court of Human Rights (IACHR) in Leite, Peres Crispim, and Others v. Brazil once again exposes that the country has lived with an incomplete democratic transition for decades. One of its most persistent features is the justice system’s inability to hold state agents accountable for crimes committed during the military dictatorship.
Before this decision, Brazil had already been convicted for the lack of adequate criminal responses to serious human rights violations committed during the dictatorship in Gomes Lund (Araguaia Guerrilla) in 2010 and Herzog and Others in 2018. Leite, Peres Crispim and Others v. Brazil concerns the absence of investigation and punishment for crimes suffered in 1970 by Denise Crispim—tortured for ten days while six months pregnant and detained in a clandestine hospital until her daughter Eduarda was born—and for the crimes suffered by her partner and the child’s father, Eduardo Collen Leite, known as Bacuri, who was tortured for 109 days until his death.
The investigation into these crimes was first dismissed in 2012 due to the statute of limitations and later dismissed again on the grounds that the identified agents had died, were of advanced age, or could not be located. However, because these acts constitute serious human rights violations and crimes against humanity, the Court concluded that statutes of limitation, like the Amnesty Law, cannot serve as obstacles to criminal proceedings.
A recent report on criminal accountability proceedings against agents of the military dictatorship by the Federal University of São Paulo Human Rights Clinic in partnership with Conectas Human Rights[2] shows how the understanding adopted by the Brazilian Federal Supreme Court (STF) in 2010 in ADPF 153 —a landmark case that upheld the 1979 Amnesty Law as compatible with the Constitution— continues to produce concrete effects of impunity.
The mapping reveals that between 2012 and 2022 the Federal Prosecution Service filed 53 criminal charges against 72 agents of repression for homicide, torture, and enforced disappearances, classified under Brazilian criminal law as homicide with concealment of a corpse or as kidnapping. None resulted in a final conviction. Only two reached first-instance convictions, which were later overturned. In addition, in at least 32 cases, charges were dismissed directly on the basis of the Amnesty Law, almost always accompanied by references to the STF’s judgment in ADPF 153.
This scenario highlights the significant structural issue of the lack of effective transitional justice in Brazil. Amnesty remains the primary legal basis for blocking criminal accountability, a mechanism that is compounded by the passage of time and serves as an indirect means of extinguishing responsibility. Of the 139 agents identified as involved in the violations, at least 96 died without any merit-based judgment. In several other cases—such as those of Eduardo Collen Leite and Denise Crispim—the agents’ deaths likely justified the closing of investigations before charges were filed.
This situation produces legal, political, and symbolic consequences. Repeated impunity prevents victims and their families from completing mourning processes, weakens trust in the justice system, and signals that serious human rights violations may go unanswered by the state. More than that, it undermines the very idea of democratic rule of law, fostering institutional conditions permissive of new democratic ruptures.
Today, STF holds both the opportunity and the responsibility to confront this deadlock. The courts recognized the General Repercussion of the constitutional issues raised in four appeals (Themes) concerning dictatorship-era crimes, a status that ensures the Court’s final ruling will serve as a binding precedent for all similar cases nationwide. Under this framework, Theme 1,369, rapporteurship of Justice Flávio Dino, addresses whether the Amnesty Law can apply to continuing crimes such as enforced disappearance. Similarly, Themes 1,374, 1,375, and 1,376, under the rapporteurship of Justice Alexandre de Moraes, possess a broader scope and will determine whether amnesty can be applied to any serious human rights violations committed during the dictatorship.
While these cases await judgment, at least ten other extraordinary appeals are pending before the STF, alongside sixteen additional appeals in lower courts linked to these General Repercussion themes, all awaiting the STF’s decision. Each delay reinforces a familiar pattern: time serving as an ally of impunity.
Nevertheless, Brazil continues to fail to comply with these determinations. The result is a recurring cycle of international condemnations, delayed reparations, and the absence of structural reforms. The persistence of this model exacts a high price through the normalization of state violence, the weakening of oversight mechanisms, and the echoing message that certain crimes remain beyond the reach of the law.
This pattern of impunity is not confined to the past. It shapes expectations, institutional practices, and political discourse in the present. It is no coincidence that, in the wake of the attempted democratic rupture of January 8, 2023, when government headquarters in Brasília were attacked in an effort to subvert the electoral outcome, and after the unprecedented accountability of coup plotters before the STF, explicit proposals have emerged to grant amnesty to those responsible for another attempt to attack the democratic rule of law. The legislature recently passed a law reducing the sentences of those involved in the attempted coup, including former President Jair Bolsonaro. The normalization of amnesty as a political solution—constructed and reiterated since the dictatorship—reappears as an available repertoire whenever democracy is placed at risk.
The absence of accountability for crimes of the military regime contributed to the consolidation of an institutional culture in which violence and attacks on the constitutional order do not produce proportional consequences. When the state fails to state unequivocally that certain acts are inadmissible and punishable, it weakens its own mechanisms of democratic self-protection.
The scenario shows that the current model has failed to deliver justice, ensure full truth, and protect the constitutional order itself. In deciding the pending general repercussion cases, the STF will not merely be looking to the past. It will be determining whether Brazilian law is capable of affirming, clearly and definitively, that there is no room for amnesties when what is at stake are human rights—yesterday, today, or tomorrow. The passage of time has an impact on these cases, demonstrating that if this is not done now, it will soon be impossible.
Suggested citation: Gabriel Sampaio, Bianca Villas Bôas, Carla Osmo, Isabelle Gaiatto, Isadora Carvalho, and Sophia de Camargo, The Federal Supreme Court’s Last Chance to Align Brazil with Its International Obligations on Dictatorship Crimes, Int’l J. Const. L. Blog, Jan. 16, 2026, at: http://www.iconnectblog.com/the-federal-supreme-courts-last-chance-to-align-brazil-with-its-international-obligations-on-dictatorship-crimes/
[1] Originally published in Portuguese on Jota: https://www.jota.info/opiniao-e-analise/artigos/tres-condenacoes-da-corte-idh-e-a-ultima-chance-do-stf-diante-de-crimes-da-ditadura
[2] https://clinicadireitoshumanos.unifesp.br/atividades/direitos-humanos-e-viol%C3%AAncia-policial/ditadura-e-a-lei-de-anistia