Brazilian Acquitted In Killing Of U.S. Nun

An Amazon rancher convicted of ordering the killing of an Ohio nun has been acquitted in a retrial, a court official said Tuesday.

A jury voted 5-2 to acquit Vitalmiro Moura, one of two ranchers accused of ordering the killing of 73-year-old Dorothy Stang three years ago, court spokeswoman Gloria Lima said.

Moura had been convicted and sentenced to 30 years in May 2007 in the killing of Stang, a rain forest defender, over a land dispute. But Brazil requires retrials for first offenders who are sentenced to more than 20 years.

His earlier conviction was a rare case of prominent rancher being convicted for ordering a killing in violent Para state, and human rights groups hailed his conviction as a sign Brazil was cracking down on the impunity that has long existed in the region.

On Tuesday, relatives of the murdered nun said they were stunned by the verdict.

"The prosecution was excellent. They present their case very well, so we're very surprised at the result," said David Stang, who flew from his home near Colorado Springs to attend the trial. "I don't know what else to say, we're surprised, shocked."

Stang's sister Marguerite Hohm, 75, reached at her home in Fairfax, Va., said she watched the trial through a live feed on the Internet, although she was not able to understand because participants spoke Portuguese.

"I saw the judge shaking hands with the defendants and I didn't understand what was going on," Holm said. "We're very saddened."

Judge Moises Flexa ordered Moura, who had been jailed since 2005, released immediately following the verdict.

Moura's defense lawyer celebrated the verdict saying, "the jury made the correct decision that Vitalmiro Bastos Moura had no reason to kill Sister Dorothy."

Imbiriba said, however, he had no doubt the prosecution would appeal the jury's decision.

Of the approximately 800 land-related killings of settlers, unionists and priests that have plagued Brazil's Para state over the last 30 years, only four so-called masterminds have ever been convicted, according to a tally kept by the Catholic Church's Land Pastoral, which monitors land violence in Brazil.

Activists have compared Stang, who was born in Dayton, Ohio, to Chico Mendes, a rain forest defender killed in 1988 in Brazil's western Amazon state of Acre.

The jury on Tuesday also convicted Rayfran Neves das Sales, who had confessed to firing six, close-range shots at Stang on a muddy road deep in the Amazon rain forest in 2005.

Prosecutors said he had been offered $25,000 to kill the nun after she fought to preserve a patch of jungle that ranchers wanted to raze for logging and cattle ranching.

Sales told the court that he had acted alone and in self-defense, contradicting previous testimony in which he said he had used Moura's gun. Tuesday's decision ended his third trial for the crime, after a panel of judges annulled two earlier convictions last year.

Two other men were convicted in connection with the killing in 2005 and 2006. Rancher Regivaldo Galvao, has avoided trial by petitioning Brazil's Supreme Court.

David Stang said that, while attending the trial, he had received information that the Supreme Court had rejected Galvao's petition.

"We the family wish to say: He needs to be tried quickly," Stang said by telephone from the Para state capital of Belem.

The Supreme Court's decision could not be immediately confirmed.