Defeats in the Supreme Court show that the institutional path is closed for Lula.

247 - Leading in the polls for the presidential election, former president Lula is seeking a court decision to release him from prison and guarantee his political rights to run for president again, but the Supreme Court has given clear indications that it intends to block him. On one hand, Cármen Lúcia has not scheduled his appeal for August – which means two more months in prison. On the other hand, Gilmar Mendes denied a preliminary injunction in a case that calls for an end to imprisonment after a second instance conviction. In other words, the only way out for Lula, who could even win the elections in the first round, is popular mobilization. Below, a report by Ricardo Brito, from Reuters:

BRASILIA (Reuters) - The defense of former president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva suffered a series of defeats at the end of the semester in the Supreme Federal Court (STF) in its attempt to free the Workers' Party leader from the prison where he has been since April, but the case involving him is far from reaching a judicial conclusion.

Leading in the polls for the presidential election, Lula is seeking a court decision to release him from prison and guarantee his political rights to run for president again. However, he faces a serious risk of remaining in custody and being barred from running based on the Clean Record Law.

To date, three main legal avenues have been opened by the former president's lawyers and also by parties sympathetic to him to try to overturn the conviction or, at least, the effects of the sentence for corruption and money laundering in the Guarujá (SP) triplex apartment case.

The first setback for the former president's defenders occurred last week when Supreme Court Justice Edson Fachin decided to refer the judgment of a request for the former president's release to the full Supreme Court—and not to the court's Second Chamber.

Lula's lawyers again challenged his decision and unsuccessfully attempted to have the case reviewed by the Second Panel on Tuesday. For the second time, Fachin rejected the request.

His defenders believed that in a trial by this smaller panel—composed of five of the 11 ministers—there would be a chance of victory for the Workers' Party member. On Tuesday, the panel—with the votes of ministers Gilmar Mendes, Ricardo Lewandowski, and Dias Toffoli, and against Fachin's position—revoked the arrest of former Workers' Party minister José Dirceu and imposed other defeats against investigations of Operation Lava Jato.

A source with access to ministers of the panel told Reuters that Lula, if judged by the 2nd Panel, would have a good chance of having his prison sentence relaxed. In the plenary session, the source said, the chances of overturning the former president's detention are lower.

Following Fachin's second rejection of taking the appeal to the full panel, the former president's defense filed a new action to challenge the minister's decision, a so-called complaint. In this action, the lawyers also sought to prevent the provisional execution of the Workers' Party member's sentence.

This complaint was assigned to Justice Alexandre de Moraes, who is from the First Panel. The lawyers complained again, saying that it could only be reviewed by one of the four justices of the Second Panel—excluding Fachin—who had already rejected this request from the defense twice.

In a decision made late Friday afternoon, Moraes rejected all requests from the former president's defense and agreed with Fachin's position in the case. According to him, the minister did not violate due process or the principle of the natural judge.

"In light of the foregoing, based on Article 21, § 1, of the Internal Regulations of the Supreme Federal Court, I deny the request for a new distribution only among the Ministers of the 2nd Panel, excluding the respondent authority, since the distribution was duly carried out, pursuant to Article 67, § 8, of the RISTF, and I rule this claim inadmissible," Moraes decided.

NO DATE

The plenary session to judge the case reported by Fachin has no date set, since the president of the Supreme Court, Cármen Lúcia, did not include it on the agenda until September—the last month of her term. There are no signs that the next president of the court, Dias Toffoli, will schedule the case.

Fachin, incidentally, gave the former president's defense team five days to clarify whether they want to discuss his ineligibility in this case, which has been referred to the full court.

On another front, and parallel to this discussion, also this week, the PT and PCdoB parties filed lawsuits alleging Cármen Lúcia's omission in not including on the plenary agenda actions questioning the early execution of sentences after the exhaustion of appeals in the second instance.

The two parties, supporters of Lula, complain that the actions on the matter are ready and should have already been considered. There are processes discussing the issue ready to be analyzed by the plenary since December 2017, but the president of the Supreme Court has already warned that she sees no reason to consider them now—the court's understanding, which allows the provisional execution of the sentence, was established in 2016.

Lula's defense team is trying to secure a decision from higher courts that would allow him to be released from prison and run for president.

The Workers' Party member claims innocence regarding the crimes attributed to him in the triplex case and says he is the target of political persecution aimed at preventing him from running in the October election.