Crime and punishment

Earth Island Journal, Summer, 2009

In April, a Brazilian court ordered the arrest and retrial of an Amazon rancher who had been acquitted of ordering the murder of Dorothy Stang, an American nun who worked tirelessly to protect the rainforest and its inhabitants. Stang's family and government prosecutors say the court order could deliver some long-overdue justice to a region where political violence often goes unpunished.

For more than 30 years, Stang organized to safeguard the Amazon rainforest and to defend the rights of the poor settlers whose lands are often seized by wealthy ranchers. Her tireless activism earned her powerful enemies. In 2005, she was shot six times at close range with a revolver in the jungle city of Anapu.

In 2007, a state court in Para found rancher Vitalmiro Bastos de Moura guilty of orchestrating the shooting, and also sentenced the gunman, Rayfran das Neves Sales, to 28 years in prison. But last year Moura's sentence was overturned by Para's highest court after defense attorneys presented a video of a man who said he was a middleman between the hit men and the ranchers and claimed that Moura had nothing to do with the murder. Another judge has now reversed the acquittal, ruling that the video was inadmissible since it was filmed while the man was in prison and without a judge's approval.

"We're elated and we are convinced we will get a guilty verdict in the new trial," says prosecutor Edson Souza. (Unlike the US, Brazil has no double jeopardy law.)

Stang's murder brought new international attention to the illegal seizure and clearance of rainforest to graze cattle, grow soy, and harvest timber--and heightened awareness about the systemic injustices in the Amazon.

If Moura were to serve jail time for Stang's murder, it would mark an important precedent for the violent region. According to the Pastoral Land Commission, more than 1,100 activists, small farmers, judges, priests, and other rural workers have been killed in land disputes in Brazil in the last two decades. Fewer than 100 cases have gone to court, and most of those who are convicted and go to jail are the hired gunmen. Fewer than 20 of the ranchers who pay for the killings have been found guilty, and of those, none are serving a sentence today.

"I am excited that perhaps Dorothy will find justice," says David Stang, the nun's brother.

--THE GUARDIAN (UK), 4/8