Judge Maria Sandra Kayat Direito, from the 1st Criminal Chamber of the Court of Justice of Rio de Janeiro (TJRJ), dismissed the defense appeal of the Navy officer, Cristiano da Silva Lacerda. The judge upheld the conviction for the qualified homicides of Geraldo Pereira Coelho and Osélia da Silva Coelho, parents of her ex-boyfriend, Felipe da Silva Coelho. Related news: Navy officer is sentenced to 80 years in prison for killing couple. In the decision, the loss of the public position of Navy captain and the minimum compensation of R$200,000 for moral damages to the victims' families were maintained. The defense lawyers wanted to annul the trial alleging ineptitude in the complaint, alleged violation of the chain of custody, restriction of defense due to the accused's alleged amnesia, nullity of the mental insanity report and lack of intent due to the ingestion of alcohol and medication. All arguments were rejected. The judge highlighted “that the complaint met the legal requirements and that the mental insanity examination concluded that the defendant was fully capable of understanding the illicit nature of his acts, in addition to the thesis that drunkenness or the use of medication having excluded criminal liability having been ruled out”. When analyzing the dosimetry, Maria Sandra Kayat assessed the need to partially reduce the penalty applied in the sentence, removing one of the negative judicial circumstances used to increase the base sentence, but did not accept the annulment of the trial. As a result, the sentence was recalculated from 80 to 72 years in prison. “In this context, the absence of confession or repentance does not constitute suitable information to justify the denial of a judicial circumstance provided for in article 59 of the Penal Code, under penalty of undue punishment for the exercise of a fundamental right.” The crime occurred in June 2022, in Jardim Botânico, south of Rio, and was motivated by the defendant's nonconformity with the end of his romantic relationship with Felipe. For this reason, Cristiano stabbed the two elderly people to death to cause suffering to his ex-partner. The Sentencing Council recognized the qualifications of bad motive, cruel means and resource that made it impossible to defend the victims, in addition to the reason for increasing the sentence due to the fact that the crimes were committed against elderly people.