Leo Lins talks to camera in a video from Youtube. His lawyer criticised the ruling. Credit: @leolins.oficial
A court has sentenced comedian Leo Lins to more than eight years in prison for inciting intolerance through a stand-up performance viewed by over three million people on YouTube.
On Tuesday 3 June, Brazilian comedian Leo Lins was sentenced to over eight years in prison for making discriminatory remarks in a stand-up routine that targeted a wide range of minority groups — including black people, obese individuals, elderly people, those living with HIV, homosexuals, evangelicals, Indigenous communities, people from the impoverished northeast of Brazil, Jews, and people with disabilities.
The federal court in São Paulo ruled that the right to freedom of expression is not absolute, and when it comes into conflict with human dignity, the latter must prevail. Lins’s defence team has announced plans to appeal the verdict.
The court found that performances such as Lins’s contribute to “the spread of verbal violence in society and promote intolerance.” The jokes in question were part of a 2022 show titled Perturbador (“Disturbing”), which was also uploaded to YouTube. The public prosecutor’s office filed a complaint about the content, and in 2023, a different court ordered the video to be removed from the internet. By that time, it had already amassed over three million views.
Collective moral damages
In addition to the prison sentence, Lins has been ordered to pay a fine of 300,000 reais (approximately €54,000) for collective moral damages. His lawyer criticised the ruling, saying: “Watching a comedian receive the same punishment as someone convicted of drug trafficking, corruption, or even murder, all because of jokes told on stage, is deeply troubling.”
The court considered the wide dissemination of the material to be an aggravating factor. In its judgement, the third criminal chamber of the federal court of São Paulo stated that “freedom of expression cannot be used as an excuse to make hateful, prejudiced, and discriminatory remarks.”
Several fellow comedians have spoken out in defence of Lins. Antonio Tabet, creator of the show Porta dos Fundos, wrote on X: “You might not find Leo Lins’s jokes funny — you might even detest them — but sentencing someone to prison over them is madness and harmful. I hope this irrational decision is overturned.” Comedian Jonathan Nemmer expressed dismay that Brazil is “a country that takes comedians’ jokes seriously but treats politicians’ actions as a joke.”
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