In a move that could dramatically alter the fate of Brazil’s former leader, the Chamber of Deputies has passed a bill that might slash Jair Bolsonaro’s hefty 27-year prison sentence to a mere fraction of its original length.
According to Breitbart, late Tuesday night into Wednesday morning, Brazil’s lower house voted 291-148 to approve the so-called "Dosimetry Bill," which aims to reduce penalties for those convicted of “anti-democratic acts,” potentially dropping Bolsonaro’s sentence to as little as two years if it clears the Senate in 2025.
The drama unfolded after a contentious three-hour debate, delayed for hours by leftist lawmaker Glauber Braga of the Socialism and Liberty Party, who physically blocked the directive desk in protest of the bill and unrelated personal grievances.
Braga’s obstruction didn’t last long—Brazilian Legislative Police stepped in and escorted him off the premises, clearing the way for the late-night vote.
This bill isn’t the full amnesty some of Bolsonaro’s allies in the Liberal Party pushed for earlier this year—that idea flopped without enough support—but it’s a compromise that tweaks penalty calculations for “collective” crimes like the January 8, 2023, riots.
Those riots, which trashed the headquarters of Brazil’s Presidency, Congress, and Supreme Court without any reported fatalities, are at the heart of the legal storm surrounding Bolsonaro and others convicted alongside him.
In September, Brazil’s Supreme Federal Tribunal handed Bolsonaro a staggering 27 years and 3 months for charges tied to an alleged “coup” plot to overturn his narrow 2022 election loss to Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, who’s now in his third term.
The charges include attempting to abolish democratic rule and participating in an armed criminal group, with Bolsonaro officially beginning his sentence in November at a Federal Police facility in Brasília.
Under the new bill, penalties for such “collective” offenses would focus only on the most severe charge—here, the coup accusation—with an added fraction of time, potentially shrinking Bolsonaro’s imprisonment to just over two years, pending judicial interpretation and credits for work or study inside.
Congressman Paulinho da Força, a key voice on the bill, told Metrópoles, “My text considers Bolsonaro, but it doesn’t solve his problem.”
“Just to give you an idea, the reduction in my text falls from 27 years and 3 months to 2 years and 4 months [in closed prison]. Could there be a greater benefit than that?” he added, framing this as a significant but not total reprieve for the former president.
Let’s unpack that: a cut from nearly three decades to a couple of years sounds like a lifeline, but it still keeps Bolsonaro behind bars—hardly the “get out of jail free” card his base might crave, and a reminder that even conservative wins come with strings attached.
Meanwhile, Bolsonaro, now 70, faces health struggles, with his legal team recently requesting two surgeries—one for persistent hiccups tied to complications from a 2018 assassination attempt, and another for a worsening hernia—along with a fresh plea for house arrest after a skin cancer diagnosis. Past bids for humanitarian house arrest have been shot down by the Supreme Federal Tribunal, and with his full sentence stretching to 2052, the clock isn’t exactly on his side.
As the bill heads to the Senate for debate in 2025, with a possible vote as early as December 17 according to Senator Otto Alencar, President Lula da Silva is reportedly mulling a veto, showing frustration with the Chamber’s timing and leadership—though 122 votes for the bill came from his own coalition allies, exposing cracks in party loyalty.