The lawyer Marcelo Bessa, of the firm Ávila de Bessa, left the legal team of former president Jair Bolsonaro on Thursday (Sept. 24) in the coup plot case before Brazil's Supreme Federal Court (STF). His exit came hours after the team filed, and then withdrew, a request to suspend the execution of Bolsonaro's 27-year, three-month prison sentence.
What is documented so far is this: the suspension request was filed with Justice Nunes Marques as part of a revisão criminal, a post-conviction review that seeks to annul the verdict. According to Folha de S.Paulo, the defense pulled back in less than three hours. In its withdrawal petition, the team asked the justice to ratify the retreat and said the review should proceed "regularly", with the original arguments and requests intact, G1 reports. Only the suspension request was dropped.
Official note calls it a strategy review
Right after the retreat, the defense issued a note announcing Bessa's departure and saying the case will now be handled only by the lawyers who acted in the criminal trial. Contacted by TV Globo, the team said the withdrawal is a "reassessment of the strategy". The full note, published by Folha, reads:
"This is a reassessment of the defense's strategy. From this moment on, the case will be handled entirely by the lawyers who acted in the defense during the criminal proceedings. For this reason, it was understood to be more appropriate to withdraw the injunction request, so that colleagues can assess the measures they intend to adopt. The Ávila de Bessa firm will no longer act in the case."
The internal reason for the reversal is not in the note. According to reporting by Folha, the withdrawal followed disagreements among the lawyers representing Bolsonaro in cases before the court, though details of the dispute were not disclosed. Bessa is a lawyer for the PL, Bolsonaro's party. He previously worked on the defenses of Bolsonaro and party president Valdemar Costa Neto, and served in the legal team of the presidential campaign of Senator Flávio Bolsonaro, the former president's son.
The case and the argument withdrawn
Bolsonaro was convicted in September 2025 by the First Chamber, a panel of the Supreme Court, for leading an attempted coup d'état, and began serving his sentence in November. In March, on health grounds, he was moved to house arrest under court-imposed restrictions. In the withdrawn request, the defense argued the trial should have taken place before the court's full bench of ten justices, because the acts attributed to Bolsonaro were allegedly committed while he held the presidency. "Unduly suppressed liberty cannot be restored", the lawyers wrote. During the trial, the First Chamber had already examined and rejected requests from the defenses for the case to be heard by the full bench, according to G1.
In practical terms, nothing changed in the execution of the sentence: the conviction stands and Bolsonaro remains under house arrest. The revisão criminal is still pending before the STF, now led by the trial lawyers. Readers can follow the case through the Supreme Court's official docket, where Justice Nunes Marques's rulings are published. Any claim that Bolsonaro has been released, or that his sentence was suspended, is only confirmed by a published decision of the court.