Masters of the Lost Land by Heriberto Araujo

Author:Heriberto Araujo
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2022-12-09T00:00:00+00:00

18

Amazonian Justice

ON October 10, 2006, Wellington de Jesus Silva was arraigned on charges of murder before a Belém-based court.

The trial of the man who had taken Dezinho’s life was being held in the state capital after Batista had successfully filed a motion requesting the transfer from Rondon. The argument the CPT lawyer had presented to the court was that the plaintiff could not get a fair jury trial in that town ridden with violence.

The judgment was crucial for Maria Joel, and she wasn’t alone on that day in which she would cross paths with the man who had misled her, entered her home, and killed her husband. Hundreds of supporters traveled to the state capital and camped at the entrance of the courthouse, a landscaped square of mango trees located in downtown Belém, not far from the shores of the muddy waters of the Pará River.1 Many of these supporters were members of the Sindicato and FETAGRI, and they carried banners displaying Dezinho’s picture to pressure both the jury and Raimundo Moisés Alves Flexa—a bespectacled judge who had presided over some of the trials in the case of Dorothy’s murder—to hand down a tough sentence. Even the actress Sabatella flew to the state capital to attend the trial.

Everyone was eager to hear Wellington’s testimony and follow the unfolding of the case. Many wondered what Wellington’s position would be, whether he would reveal the whole scheme behind the murder. The defendant indeed had good reason to confess. He had been caught in the act by the townspeople and there was ample evidence proving that he had been the shooter, including the gunshot residue found on the clothes he was wearing the night of the murder.2 It seemed extremely unlikely that Wellington would be acquitted by the jury, so people thought his attorneys—public defenders, because he had no way to pay for a private lawyer—would advise him to plead guilty, cooperate, and disclose the name of the instigators.

The defendant was without handcuffs when he was brought to the courtroom. The now twenty-five-year-old man wore an oversize yellow shirt and looked tiny and fragile when he entered and sat in the large wooden chair placed in front of Judge Flexa. Although six years had passed since the murder, Wellington’s physical appearance was almost the same as the day he’d been arrested—slim and clean-shaven, with short hair, and utterly introverted. But his mien was different. Wellington now looked gloomy and evasive, and his face had lost the guileless air that had once made him seem a reluctant outlaw.

The big news of the day was revealed soon after Wellington was presented to the judge. Commotion erupted in the courtroom as Américo Lins da Silva Leal, the trial lawyer who had defended one of the fazendeiros in Dorothy’s case, presented himself as Wellington’s new defense attorney, replacing the lawyers who had been handling his case.

The son and grandson of judges, Leal specialized in winning jury trials for seemingly undefendable landowners and loggers charged with felonies.3 Five-foot-seven

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