Court sentences female lawmaker to 50 years imprisonment for killing husband

A court has sentenced a female lawmaker to 50 years imprisonment for killing her husband.

A court in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, in a judgment on Sunday, sentenced former Brazilian female legislator, Flordelis dos Santos, to 50 years in gaol for the murder of her husband in 2019.

The husband of the  lawmaker, Dos Santos, 61 years, pastor Anderson do Carmo, was identified to in Brazil’s elite Evangelical Christian movement before he was shot dead at their home in a Rio suburb in June 2019. The lawmaker was renowned for adopting several street children from slums of Rio de Janeiro.

Prosecutors had charged Dos Santos in August 2020 with “orchestrating the homicide, enlisting (several of her grown children) to take part in the crime and attempting to disguise it as an armed robbery.”

Prosecutors stated that they  suspect the motive for the murder was to take control of the couple’s finances, which Do Carmo, then 42, managed with “rigorous control.”

Dos Santos was protected over the years by parliamentary immunity but she lost it after being ousted by a near-unanimous vote of her colleagues in August 2021.

The Public Prosecutor’s Office complaint stated that the former female legislator was also found guilty of trying to murder her husband with poison on at least six previous occasions, including forgery of documents and armed criminal association.

Dos Santos was elected to Congress for the conservative Social Democratic Party in 2018.

Born in the Rio favela, or slum, of Jacarezinho, she met Do Carmo in 1994.

They both founded the Community of the Evangelical Ministry Flordelis.