STJD fines Santos R$ 15,000 over fans’ spitting at Mirassol’s Reinaldo | OneFootball

The Superior Tribunal de Justiça Desportiva has fined Santos R$ 15,000 after supporters spat towards Mirassol full-back Reinaldo, overturning an earlier acquittal.

According to Globo.com, the tribunal’s plenary upheld an appeal from its prosecutor’s office and reversed the fourth disciplinary commission’s decision, which had cleared the club after it identified one offender and filed a police report.

The sanction was based on article 213, section I, of the Brazilian Code of Sports Justice, which punishes clubs for failing to prevent and repress disorder in their stadium. In the first hearing, prosecutors argued video evidence showed a second fan spitting at the same moment as the one named by Santos, but commissioners said he could not be identified and kept the acquittal.

In Friday’s sitting, rapporteur auditor Anderson Prezia Franco said the footage clearly shows a second supporter, in black cap and shirt, also spitting almost simultaneously, while noting uncertainty over how many spits reached Reinaldo. He added that a match report carries only a relative presumption of truth, and the burden was on prosecutors to show another supporter acted.

In setting the penalty, Franco acknowledged Santos’ efforts to identify the first fan and ruled out a harsher sanction such as loss of home advantage, saying the incident was not a generalised disturbance. His vote was backed by auditors Maxwell Borges de Moura Vieira, Rodrigo Aiache, Antonieta da Silva Pinto, Sérgio Henrique Furtado Coelho Filho and Luiz Felipe Bulus Alves Ferreira.

Source: Globo.com

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