Background
Lincon Ribeiro Evangelista filed a habeas corpus petition directly with the Superior Tribunal de Justiça (STJ) seeking immediate progression to an open (minimum-security) prison regime. The STJ President summarily denied the petition at the threshold, finding that the challenged decision had been issued by a single appellate judge (desembargador relator) at the court of origin — not by a collegiate panel — and that Evangelista had therefore failed to exhaust his remedies in the lower court before petitioning the STJ.
Evangelista responded by filing an internal appeal (agravo regimental), arguing that exhaustion of prior instances is not an absolute requirement in habeas corpus proceedings. Because habeas corpus is a constitutional guarantee of immediate protection of liberty, he contended that formal procedural barriers may be relaxed when there is an evident illegal restraint. He asked the STJ either to reverse course and grant the writ on the merits, ordering his transfer to an open regime, or, in the alternative, to compel the sentencing court to rule on his progression request within 48 hours.
The Federal Public Ministry (Ministério Público Federal) was notified of the initial dismissal and registered awareness of that decision. The Fifth Panel of the STJ considered the appeal during its virtual session held May 28 to June 3, 2026.
The Court’s Holding
The Fifth Panel unanimously denied the agravo regimental and upheld the summary dismissal. The court reaffirmed that its constitutional jurisdiction to hear habeas corpus petitions under Article 105, I, “c” of the Federal Constitution is triggered only when the challenged decision was rendered by a collegiate body of the court of origin. A ruling issued by a single relator does not satisfy that requirement; the petitioner must first exhaust internal remedies — specifically by filing an agravo regimental with the collegiate panel of the lower court — before the STJ’s jurisdiction is engaged. Proceeding otherwise would constitute an improper bypassing of an entire judicial tier (supressão de instância).
The court also rejected Evangelista’s argument that evident illegality warranted relaxation of the exhaustion rule. It held that a habeas corpus de ofício — the device by which a court may sua sponte grant a writ upon identifying a flagrant illegality — is an instrument of the court’s own initiative and cannot be invoked by a party as a mechanism to obtain merits review of a petition that never cleared the threshold admissibility requirements.
The decision was unanimous, with Justices Reynaldo Soares da Fonseca (presiding), Ribeiro Dantas, Joel Ilan Paciornik, and Messod Azulay Neto all voting with the reporting Justice.
Key Takeaways
- The STJ’s habeas corpus jurisdiction under Article 105, I, “c” of the Federal Constitution attaches only to decisions of collegiate appellate bodies, not to monocratic rulings by a single judge-rapporteur; a party must obtain a collegiate ruling at the lower court before petitioning the STJ.
- The constitutional nature of habeas corpus as a liberty-protection guarantee does not automatically override the exhaustion-of-remedies requirement; the STJ applies that requirement strictly absent truly flagrant and manifest illegality.
- A habeas corpus de ofício (sua sponte grant of relief) is solely within the court’s own discretion upon identifying an obvious illegality; it is not a vehicle parties may invoke to circumvent admissibility bars.
Why It Matters
This decision reinforces the STJ’s well-settled, uniform practice of requiring exhaustion of collegiate review in the court of origin before it will exercise habeas corpus jurisdiction. Defense counsel seeking sentence-execution benefits — such as regime progression — must ensure that any adverse single-judge ruling in an intermediate appellate court is first challenged before that court’s full panel; skipping that step will result in outright dismissal at the STJ, delaying rather than accelerating relief for the incarcerated petitioner.
The ruling also draws a clear line on the habeas corpus de ofício doctrine, clarifying that it is a judicial prerogative rather than a procedural escape hatch for litigants. Practitioners should note that invoking the specter of unconstitutional imprisonment is insufficient, on its own, to persuade the STJ to relax exhaustion rules or exercise sua sponte jurisdiction where the procedural prerequisites have not been met.