Brazil prosecutor urges Supreme Federal Court to reject Bolsonaro’s bid to reopen attempted-coup conviction

Brazil’s prosecutor-general has asked the Supreme Federal Court to reject former President Jair Bolsonaro’s latest bid to reopen his conviction in the attempted-coup case, a procedural step that could move the matter closer to review by the court’s full bench.

In an opinion filed Thursday, Prosecutor-General Paulo Gonet opposed a criminal-revision petition Bolsonaro’s lawyers submitted on Sept. 25. The petition seeks to overturn Bolsonaro’s conviction in STF case AP 2668, tied to the alleged attempt to block the lawful transfer of power after Brazil’s 2022 election. Bolsonaro was sentenced to 27 years and 3 months in prison, and the conviction became final after the court recognized trânsito em julgado, or exhaustion of appeals, on Nov. 25, 2025.

According to reporting on the filing and STF procedural records, Bolsonaro’s defense argued there were procedural nullities in the case, including lack of full access to investigative material, alleged flaws in the traceability and chain of custody of digital evidence, and the alleged absence of opinions from the prosecutor-general’s office at some earlier stages. Gonet said those claims do not show innocence and do not provide grounds to reduce or overturn the sentence. In the filing, as reported by Agência Brasil, the prosecutor-general’s office said: “As dúvidas que a petição inicial, apoiada no parecer técnico, suscita sobre a rastreabilidade de procedimentos técnicos não são capazes de, por si, evidenciar a inocência ou revelar uma causa especial de diminuição de pena.”

The case is now with Justice Kassio Nunes Marques, who was assigned the revision petition. Under STF rules, because Bolsonaro’s original conviction was handed down by the court’s First Panel, the revision was assigned to a justice from the other panel. If the petition is admitted, it would be judged by the full court rather than by the original panel. No new ruling on the merits has been issued; Gonet’s filing is the position of the prosecutor-general’s office, not a fresh judgment by the STF.

Nunes Marques, as the reporting justice, is expected to decide the next procedural step and may release the case for judgment by the court’s plenary. Bolsonaro’s underlying conviction stemmed from the STF case over the alleged attempted coup and related crimes connected to the post-election plot.

A criminal revision in Brazil is an extraordinary remedy available after a conviction is final, intended for cases involving manifest judicial error or new evidence of innocence, rather than a new attempt to relitigate arguments the courts have already rejected. This is also not Bolsonaro’s first such effort: Gonet had already opposed an earlier revision petition in June 2026.