No laughing matter: Brazilian comic sentenced to eight years in prison for jokes deemed ‘bigoted’

A Brazilian comedian was given an eight-year prison sentence for making "bigoted" jokes during a stand-up comedy gig back in 2022. 

Comedian Léo Lins, 42, on Tuesday was given an eight-year and three-month prison sentence by a court in São Paulo, Brazil.

During a 2022 performance in Curitiba, Lins made jokes about elderly people, LGBTQ people, Christians, Jews, and black Brazilians. 

A video of him making these jokes was posted on YouTube and ordered to be taken down in 2023 as critics labeled it as discriminatory content, according to the Brazil Reports outlet.

The Federal Public Prosecutor’s Office charged Lins with two laws in Brazil related to hate crimes and discrimination: Law No. 7.716/1989 and Law No. 13.146/2015.

Judge Bárbara de Lima Iseppi ruled that Lins' remarks went beyond free speech and became hate speech. 

Lins' legal team said that this decision by the court showed that free speech was under attack and would “criminalize comedy.”

“It seems like people have lost the ability to interpret the obvious,” he said in a statement. “We’re living through one of the biggest epidemics of our time: rational blindness. Judgments are now based entirely on emotion — no one listens anymore, they only want to impose their own truth.”