A previously convicted rancher in the Amazon walked free today after a new jury acquitted him of plotting the murder of 73-year-old Catholic nun Dorothy Stang,a rainforest defender with Colorado connections.
“We’re very disappointed,” said her brother, David Stang of Palmer Lake. “This prosecution did an excellent job, so we’re just dumbfounded by the decision of the jury.”
A jury in Rio de Janeiro voted 5-2 acquitted Vitalmiro Moura, one of two ranchers accused of ordering Stang’s murder.
Moura had been convicted in May 2007 and sentenced to 30 years, but Brazil requires retrials for first offenders who are sentenced to more than 20 years.
The jury convicted Rayfran Neves das Sales, who confessed to the shooting. Prosecutors said Sales had been promised $25,000 to kill the nun.
He testified that he had acted alone and in self-defense, contradicting previous testimony when he said he had used Moura’s gun.
A sister of Notre Dame de Namur born in Ohio, Dorothy Stang was shot three times in the face among six shots fired at close range on a muddy roadside in the rainforest in February 2005.
She was helping peasants defend a swath of land where prominent ranchers wanted to log and raze to allow their cattle to graze there.
The murder was the latest in a long, violent struggle between rich landowners against activists, settlers and clergy over the last three decades.
Denver filmmaker Daniel Junge and local producers Henry Ansbacher and Nigel Noble won both the grand yury and audience awards for best documentary feature at the South by Southwest Film Festival in Austin, Texas, in March for “They killed Sister Dorothy,” narrated by Martin Sheen.
David Stang last saw his sister in Brazil two months before her murder, when she was given an award for her human rights work by the Brazilian Bar Association.
He remembered his sister’s energy and joy during the visit, like someone half her age.
The day she left, she told her brother, “David, I am going down the road to show support for these poor families who have just had their houses burned down and their crops also burned. They have nothing to eat or anywhere to sleep. I am going there to help them rebuild and to tell the pistoleros to leave, as this land belongs to these people.”
She also said she was “a little nervous; this situation is a tough one.”
She said the recent rain and humidity made her think fondly of the cool air in Colorado, David Stang recalled.
The Associated Press contributed to this story.
Joey Bunch: 303-954-1174 or jbunch@denverpost.com
