Neto de Moura, the judge from the Oporto Court of Appeal who has been severely criticised for playing down a violent assault with a weapon on a woman who had an affair, is said by his lawyer, to be “serene awaiting the outcome.”
Ricardo Serrano Vieira, a lawyer for the judge who will be heard on Friday at the Supreme Court of Justice, said that "the judgment in question is irreproachable from a legal point of view."
The hastily arranged hearing comes after the Superior Council of Magistrates opened an investigation to review the judge’s evaluation of the case in which Neto invoked the Bible, the Penal Code of 1886 and civilizations that punish adultery with the death penalty, to play down the violence and injury inflicted on the victim by her husband and her former lover.
The president of the Supreme Court of Justice has already reacted to the controversy. António Henriques Gaspar said that "personal beliefs and states of the soul are not helpful as arguments."
Gaspar’s endorsement of Neto’s ruling, in which the sentences handed to the men were suspended, despite their having attacked the woman with a nail-studded club, have caused national and international outrage and demonstrations.
A petition on the internet has been signed by nearly 19,000 people calling for the Ombudsman to act.
