Brazil judge known for jailing corrupt officials, killed

News

Brazil judge known for jailing corrupt officials, killed

August 14, 2011 12:54:17 pm

[JURIST] Brazilian Judge Patricia Acioli, known for taking a hard-line against corrupt officials and militia death squads, was shot and killed on Thursday outside of her home by two masked men on motorbikes. Investigators revealed that at least twelve people are suspected [O Globo report, in Portuguese] of being involved in the attack, where at least sixteen bullets were fired into the judge’s car. After receiving numerous death threats, Acioli had requested but failed to receive police protection [O Globo report, in Portuguese]. Chief Justice Cezar Peluso [official profile] of the country’s high court condemned the execution [press release, in Portuguese] and asked for urgent intervention by the Federal Police:

On behalf of the Supreme Court, the National Council of Justice and the Judiciary, [I] repudiate the brutal murder of Judge Patricia Lourival Acioli. Cowardly crimes against. . . magistrates are attacks on judicial independence, rule of law and democracy in Brazil. The preservation of the rule of law in our country requires the rapid determination of the facts and strict punishment of those responsible for this act of barbarism. Judge [Patricia Lourival Acioli] leaves a lesson in professionalism, technical competence and dedication to the [true cause]. This… [should] be of comfort to [her] family, whom do I forward my sympathy and sincere condolences.

Judge Acioli is one of three judges executed [O Globo report, in Portuguese] in Brazil in the past eight years for their investigations into organized crime.

Judges have also been victims of violent attacks in other countries. In June of 2010, three judges were killed in a Chinese courthouse [JURIST report] by a man allegedly upset over the division of marital assets. In April of 2010, a Moscow City Court judge known for presiding over cases involving neo-Nazi groups was killed while leaving his apartment [JURIST report]. The murder of Judge Eduard Chuvashov was suspected to be a contract killing in light of the death threats he faced after presiding over the trials of members of neo-Nazi gangs. In November of 2009, a Somali judge known for jailing suspected pirates, human traffickers, and Islamist insurgents was shot dead while leaving a mosque [JURIST report] in the Puntland city of Bossaso. Judge Mohamed Abdi Aware of the Puntland high court and the Puntland Supreme Judicial Council, had recently jailed four members of the al-Shabaab Islamist group and had sentenced 12 suspected pirates to terms ranging from three to eight years.

Martin Luther King Jr. wrote his Letter from Birmingham Jail

On April 16, 1963, an incarcerated Martin Luther King, Jr. (arrested for demonstrating in defiance of a court order) wrote his Letter from Birmingham Jail in response to a published statement by eight fellow clergymen from Alabama.

Part of the letter read: We have waited for more than 340 years for our constitutional and God-given rights. The nations of Asia and Africa are moving with jetlike speed toward gaining political independence, but we stiff creep at horse-and-buggy pace toward gaining a cup of coffee at a lunch counter. Perhaps it is easy for those who have never felt the stinging dark of segregation to say, "Wait." But when you have seen vicious mobs lynch your mothers and fathers at will and drown your sisters and brothers at whim; when you have seen hate-filled policemen curse, kick and even kill your black brothers and sisters; when you see the vast majority of your twenty million Negro brothers smothering in an airtight cage of poverty in the midst of an affluent society; when you suddenly find your tongue twisted and your speech stammering as you seek to explain to your six-year-old daughter why she can't go to the public amusement park that has just been advertised on television, and see tears welling up in her eyes when she is told that Funtown is closed to colored children, and see ominous clouds of inferiority beginning to form in her little mental sky, and see her beginning to distort her personality by developing an unconscious bitterness toward white people; when you have to concoct an answer for a five-year-old son who is asking: "Daddy, why do white people treat colored people so mean?"; when you take a cross-county drive and find it necessary to sleep night after night in the uncomfortable corners of your automobile because no motel will accept you; when you are humiliated day in and day out by nagging signs reading "white" and "colored"; when your first name becomes "nigger," your middle name becomes "boy" (however old you are) and your last name becomes "John," and your wife and mother are never given the respected title "Mrs."; when you are harried by day and haunted by night by the fact that you are a Negro, living constantly at tiptoe stance, never quite knowing what to expect next, and are plagued with inner fears and outer resentments; when you are forever fighting a degenerating sense of "nobodiness" then you will understand why we find it difficult to wait. There comes a time when the cup of endurance runs over, and men are no longer willing to be plunged into the abyss of despair. I hope, sirs, you can understand our legitimate and unavoidable impatience. Read the full text of the Letter.