Portugal’s Supreme Court of Justice (STJ) has reduced from 22 to 16 years the prison sentence given to a man for the killing of a Brazilian woman he met in the Algarve, whose burned body was found in the Alentejo.
In a statement issued on Friday, the court said it had “today reduced from 22 to 16 years (14 years for the homicide and two years for the remaining offences) the sentence imposed on a defendant for, among other offences, aggravated homicide”.
The Supreme Court recalled that the Faro court had originally sentenced the defendant “in a cumulative sentence, to 25 years in prison (22 years for homicide and the remainder for the other crimes of which he was accused)”. The Évora Court of Appeal later cut this to 22 years (21 for the homicide and one for the other offences). The Supreme Court has now reviewed that ruling.
“The STJ found that it was not possible to convict the defendant of aggravated homicide (Article 132(1) of the Penal Code), which requires proof of special reprehensibility or perversity in the act, and that he could only be convicted of simple homicide (Article 131 of the Penal Code), which carries a lower sentencing range,” it explained.
Portugal’s highest criminal court found that “nothing in the proven facts” sheds light on “when, how and in what manner the crime was committed”.
Even when taken together, the court argued, the specific circumstances were not enough to amount to the special reprehensibility or perversity that aggravated homicide requires, “as legal scholarship and the Constitutional Court stress”. It listed the defendant’s prior acquaintance with the victim, his knowledge of her youth, foreign nationality and sex work, his physical superiority, and the fact that the events took place at night in an isolated spot.
The Faro court convicted José Mascarenhas in December 2025 and jailed him for 25 years for the December 2022 killing of Josielly Fontes. At first instance, it found proven the offences of aggravated homicide, theft, desecration of a corpse, attempted misuse of a bank card, and computer forgery.
According to the Faro court, the defendant knew the victim earned large sums through sex work and devised a plan to take her bank cards. He used physical force to take her belongings.
The car he used was found abandoned in the Algarve on 22 December 2022, with the victim’s mobile phone inside. Her charred body was found about three weeks later at Santana da Serra, in the municipality of Ourique, in Beja district.
The defence appealed against the Faro verdict. The Évora Court of Appeal reduced the term from 25 to 22 years, and the STJ has now brought it down to 16.
Source: LUSA
Photo credit: Marisa Rodrigues
