The defence of Jair Bolsonaro has lodged a formal petition with Brazil’s Supreme Federal Court (STF) seeking to annul the 27-year prison sentence imposed on the former president for orchestrating a coup attempt after his 2022 electoral defeat. Filed on Friday, the request for criminal revision argues that the conviction, handed down last September by the First Panel of the STF, represents a “grave judicial error” and that the case should have been tried by the court’s full plenary. Bolsonaro, 71, has been under house arrest in Brasília since late March on humanitarian grounds after a series of hospitalisations, while his political allies portray the prosecution as a politically motivated purge orchestrated by Justice Alexandre de Moraes, the lead investigator in the case.

The petition, grounded in a seldom-used procedural mechanism that allows a defendant to challenge a final sentence, also demands that any re-evaluation be conducted by justices of the Second Panel who did not participate in the original ruling. Viewed from Brasília, the manoeuvre is a calculated gamble: the STF’s internal rules give the full court discretion over whether to accept the revision, and legal analysts in São Paulo note that the court has rarely overturned its own verdicts at this stage. Flávio Bolsonaro, a senator and the former president’s eldest son, who recently declared his own presidential ambitions, told journalists that the STF now has “the chance to make the right thing” by conducting a dispassionate review of the evidence. His comment underscores the deep mistrust between the Bolsonaro clan and the judiciary that has defined Brazilian politics for half a decade.

Adding further tension, Justice Alexandre de Moraes on Saturday blocked a separate legislative bid that would have drastically reduced Bolsonaro’s sentence, potentially allowing his release as early as 2028. The bill, challenged by two political parties and the Brazilian Press Association, had passed Congress after lawmakers overturned a presidential veto. The swift judicial intervention suggests that the STF is determined to maintain its authority over the sentencing phase, even as the defence seeks to reopen the entire case. From a regional perspective, the twin legal battles—the revision request and the blocked early-release bill—illustrate how Bolsonaro’s incarceration has become a proxy war between the institutions he once sought to subvert and the political movement that still rallies around him.

Looking ahead, the STF’s response to the revision petition will be a defining test of its institutional independence and its willingness to revisit a verdict that already polarises the nation. International observers, particularly from Washington and London, are watching closely: a rejection would confirm the court’s hard line on anti-democratic conspiracies, while any concession would embolden Bolsonaro’s supporters and deepen the crisis of legitimacy surrounding the 2022 transition. For now, the former president remains under house arrest, his legal team betting that the same court that convicted him may yet be persuaded by an argument of procedural impropriety. The odds, by any sober calculation, remain long.