Brazil’s Supreme Court Closes ‘Caso Evandro,’ Making Exonerations Final

Overview

• Brazil’s top court ended the case after rejecting a bid by Paraná prosecutors to undo the acquittals, and the prosecutors confirmed they did not file a new appeal, which made the annulments final.
• Four people once convicted — Osvaldo Marcineiro, Davi dos Santos Soares, Beatriz Abagge, and the late Vicente de Paula Ferreira — are now legally innocent.
• Justice Gilmar Mendes wrote that the verdicts rested on extrajudicial confessions obtained by torture, and that once those were excluded the remaining evidence was only indirect and insufficient.
• Tapes showing the torture surfaced in 2020 through journalist Ivan Mizanzuk’s Projeto Humanos podcast, which spurred a 2023 review by Paraná’s court and a 2025 endorsement by the Superior Court of Justice.
• The cleared defendants say they will seek compensation for decades of prison time and stigma, while the boy’s killer from the 1992 crime has still not been identified.