Former Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro has withdrawn an emergency request to suspend his prison sentence of 27 years and three months just two hours after submitting the filing on Thursday.
Attorneys representing the former head of state gave no reason for their sudden decision to abandon the plea for urgent relief.
In a court petition submitted on Thursday, September 24, the defense confirmed that Bolsonaro was respectfully withdrawing the provisional application filed earlier that day and asked the court to formally ratify the abandonment.
The defense stated that the withdrawal applied only to the interim injunction, adding that Bolsonaro's broader criminal review petition must continue its normal course while fully reiterating all legal arguments and requests made in the original filing.
Bolsonaro's legal team had initially asked the court on Thursday for the immediate suspension of his prison term of 27 years and three months, which was imposed following his conviction in a plot to stage a coup. The request was directed to Justice Nunes Marques, who acts as the rapporteur for a broader criminal review filed in May this year, with the lawyers seeking to keep the sentence on hold until a final ruling on the case.
The First Panel of the Supreme Federal Court convicted Bolsonaro in September 2025 for crimes relating to an attempted coup following the 2022 presidential election.
Jurisdiction of the Supreme Court panel
The primary argument raised in the criminal review is that serious doubt exists over whether the First Panel held the constitutional authority to try and convict Bolsonaro.
Bolsonaro's lawyers argued that the internal rules of the Supreme Federal Court establish that only the full plenary court, consisting of all eleven justices, has the mandate to process and judge the president of the republic for common crimes.
The defense acknowledged that the court regulations do not explicitly specify which judicial body must try a former president for actions allegedly committed during their presidency. Because of that legal gap, the attorneys argued, the issue should have been placed before the full bench rather than delegated to a five-member panel.
Allegations of withheld investigative evidence
The defense petition also renewed accusations that Bolsonaro's right to an adequate legal defense was compromised by late and incomplete access to evidence gathered by investigators.
To support that position, the lawyers cited a recent crisis within the Supreme Federal Court involving Justice Alexandre de Moraes and Daniel Vorcaro. That dispute began after Justice Andre Mendonca lifted the confidentiality order on a Federal Police report containing messages exchanged between Moraes and Vorcaro, leading the court to schedule a plenary session to decide whether to open an investigation into Moraes.
Following that disclosure, allies of Moraes pushed for the complete lifting of secrecy across the Master Case, arguing that Mendonca should not have the power to decide which evidence Moraes could use to defend himself.
Bolsonaro's defense argued that this episode showed a pattern that had also occurred during the former president's trial, claiming that authorities engaged in a prior screening of the evidence made available to his legal team. According to the filing, Moraes granted defense access in February 2025 only to materials used in the formal charges, while failing to provide all items seized during the wider investigation at that stage.
Political background and legal appeals
Bolsonaro, a former army captain who governed South America's largest nation from January 2019 to December 2022, represents the conservative Liberal Party. He narrowly lost his re-election campaign in late 2022 to Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, a result that his staunchest supporters contested in demonstrations across Brasilia.
The Supreme Federal Court serves as Brazil's highest judicial authority, operating from the capital city of Brasilia. The institution splits most of its case load between two panels of five justices each, reserving matters of broad constitutional weight or cases against top sitting officials for the eleven-member plenary court.
Under Brazilian law, a criminal review is an exceptional legal instrument that permits a convicted person to challenge a definitive criminal conviction when they allege substantial legal errors or procedural violations. While the emergency request to freeze his prison term has been abandoned, the underlying criminal review continues before Justice Marques as the court prepares to consider the challenge on its merits.
