In Brazil, “the courts treat suspects too harshly, and convicts too leniently,” says the Economist:
Gratifying as it may be to see billionaires behind bars, some lawyers are troubled by Mr Moro’s penchant for locking up suspects before they go on trial. Most are loth to challenge a charismatic judge. Those who publicly object tend to work for one of the innumerable defence teams. All 11 directors of the comically named but serious Institute for the Defence of the Right to Defence are thus employed. Heloisa Estellita, a professor of criminal law at the Fundação Getulio Vargas Law School in São Paulo, is one of the few public critics of Mr Moro’s methods who is independent. She thinks he has wrongly “used pre-trial detention to extract plea bargains”. […]
Pre-trial detention should not be used to browbeat them into co-operating with investigations or to signal the gravity of the charges they face. The Lava Jato inquisitors deny they are doing this, but readers of Blackstone’s report will wonder. Timothy Otty, its lead author, has written human-rights opinions on behalf of Abdullah Ocalan, a Kurdish separatist leader, and detainees at the American prison in Guantánamo Bay. “Just as it was wrong to jettison the protection of liberty and right to fair trial as part of the war on terror, so it would be wrong in the fight against corruption,” says Mr Otty. […]
However, “the law can be as weirdly indulgent as it is harsh,” says the periodical. “Convicts are entitled to go home while they exhaust their appeals,” and that can take years.
Many critics of the system, including Mr Moro, think convicts should have to file appeals from their jail cells. That would make sense. So would an overhaul of the criminal code which left at liberty people presumed innocent and guaranteed them a fair trial.