Capital punishment in France

Last updated

Europe holds the greatest concentration of abolitionist states (blue). Map current as of 2022

.mw-parser-output .legend{page-break-inside:avoid;break-inside:avoid-column}.mw-parser-output .legend-color{display:inline-block;min-width:1.25em;height:1.25em;line-height:1.25;margin:1px 0;text-align:center;border:1px solid black;background-color:transparent;color:black}.mw-parser-output .legend-text{}
Abolished for all offences
Abolished in practice
Retains capital punishment Death Penalty laws in Europe.svg
Europe holds the greatest concentration of abolitionist states (blue). Map current as of 2022
  Abolished for all offences
  Abolished in practice
  Retains capital punishment

Capital punishment in France (French : peine de mort en France) is banned by Article 66-1 of the Constitution of the French Republic, voted as a constitutional amendment by the Congress of the French Parliament on 19 February 2007 and simply stating "No one can be sentenced to the death penalty" (French : Nul ne peut être condamné à la peine de mort). The death penalty was already declared illegal on 9 October 1981 when President François Mitterrand signed a law prohibiting the judicial system from using it and commuting the sentences of the seven people on death row to life imprisonment. The last execution took place by guillotine, being the main legal method since the French Revolution; Hamida Djandoubi, a Tunisian citizen convicted of torture and murder on French soil, was put to death in September 1977 in Marseille. [1]

Contents

Major French death penalty abolitionists across time have included philosopher Voltaire; poet Victor Hugo; politicians Léon Gambetta, Jean Jaurès and Aristide Briand; and writers Alphonse de Lamartine and Albert Camus.

History

Ancien Régime

Robert-Francois Damiens being dismembered for his attempted murder on Louis XV. Supplice de Damiens.jpg
Robert-François Damiens being dismembered for his attempted murder on Louis XV.

Prior to 1791, under the Ancien Régime, there existed a variety of means of capital punishment in France, depending on the crime and the status of the condemned person:

On 6 July 1750, Jean Diot and Bruno Lenoir were strangled and burned at the stake in Place de Grève for sodomy, the last known execution for sodomy in France. [2] Also in 1750, Jacques Ferron was either hanged or burned at the stake in Vanvres for bestiality, the last known execution for bestiality in France. [3] [4] [5]

Adoption of the guillotine

Robespierre and associates executed 1794 Execution de Robespierre full.jpg
Robespierre and associates executed 1794
Public execution by guillotine in Lons-le-Saunier, 1897 France - Public execution on Guillotine 1897.jpg
Public execution by guillotine in Lons-le-Saunier, 1897

The first campaign towards the abolition of the death penalty began on 30 May 1791, but on 6 October that year the National Assembly refused to pass a law abolishing the death penalty. However, they did abolish torture, and also declared that there would now be only one method of execution: 'Tout condamné à mort aura la tête tranchée' (All condemned to death will have their heads cut off).

In 1789, physician Joseph-Ignace Guillotin proposed that all executions be carried out by a simple and painless mechanism, which led to the development and eventual adoption of the guillotine. Beheading had previously been reserved only for nobles and carried out manually by handheld axes or blades; commoners would usually be hanged or subjected to more brutal methods. Therefore, the adoption of the guillotine for all criminals regardless of social status not only made executions more efficient and less painful, but it also removed the class divisions in capital punishment altogether. As a result, many felt the device made the death penalty more humane and egalitarian.

The guillotine was first used on Nicolas Jacques Pelletier on 25 April 1792. Guillotine usage then spread to other countries such as Germany (where it had been used since before the revolution), Italy, Sweden (used in a single execution), the Netherlands and French colonies in Africa, Canada, French Guiana and French Indochina. Although other governments employed the device, France has executed more people by guillotine than any other nation.

Penal Code of 1791

On October 6, 1791, the Penal Code of 1791 was enacted, which abolished capital punishment in the Kingdom of France for bestiality, blasphemy, heresy, pederasty, sacrilege, sodomy, and witchcraft. [6] [7]

1939 onwards

Public executions were the norm and continued until 1939. From the mid-19th century, the usual time of day for executions changed from around 3 pm to morning and then to dawn. Executions had been carried out in large central public spaces such as market squares but gradually moved towards the local prison. In the early 20th century, the guillotine was set up just outside the prison gates. The last person to be publicly guillotined was six-time murderer Eugen Weidmann who was executed on 17 June 1939 outside the St-Pierre prison in Versailles. Photographs of the execution appeared in the press, and apparently this spectacle led the government to stop public executions and to hold them instead in prison courtyards, such as La Santé Prison in Paris. Following the law, the first to be guillotined inside a prison was Jean Dehaene, who had murdered his estranged wife and father-in-law, executed on 19 July 1939 at St-Brieuc.

The 1940s and the wartime period saw an increase in the number of executions, including the first executions of women since the 19th century.[ citation needed ]

Marie-Louise Giraud was executed on 30 July 1943 for being an abortion provider, which was labeled a crime against state security.[ citation needed ]

In the 1950s to the 1970s, the number of executions steadily decreased, with for example President Georges Pompidou, between 1969 and 1974, giving clemency to all but three people out of the fifteen sentenced to death. President Valéry Giscard d'Estaing oversaw the last executions.[ citation needed ]

Up to 1981, the French penal code [8] stated that:

In addition, crimes such as treason, espionage, insurrection, piracy, aggravated murder, kidnapping with torture, felonies committed with the use of torture, setting a bomb in a street, arson of a dwelling house, and armed robbery made their authors liable to the death penalty; moreover, committing some military offenses such as mutiny or desertion or being accomplice or attempting to commit a capital felony were also capital offenses.

Clemency

The right to commute death sentences belonged exclusively to the President of the Republic, whereas it had belonged exclusively to the monarch in earlier ages.

President Charles de Gaulle, who supported capital punishment, commuted 24 death sentences. During his term of office, 35 people were guillotined, 4 others executed by firing squad for crimes against the security of the state, while 3 other were reprieved by amnesty in 1968. The last of those executed by firing squad was OAS member Lt. Colonel Jean-Marie Bastien-Thiry, who was an organizer of the infamous assassination attempt on de Gaulle in 1962.

No executions took place during two-term acting President Alain Poher, neither in 1969 following De Gaulle's resignation, nor in 1974 following Pompidou's death.

President Georges Pompidou, who opposed capital punishment, commuted all but three death sentences imposed during his term.

President Valéry Giscard d'Estaing, who stated that he "felt a deep aversion to the death penalty", also commuted all but three death sentences. During his presidency, the last three capital executions in France took place.

Amnesty

Parliament (rather than the executive) held the power to grant amnesty for death sentences. One example of general amnesty for all people sentenced to death and awaiting execution took place in 1959 after de Gaulle's inauguration when an Act of Parliament commuted all such sentences. [9]

Abolition

The first official debate on the death penalty in France took place on 30 May 1791 with the presentation of a bill aimed at abolishing it. The advocate was Louis-Michel Lepeletier of Saint-Fargeau and revolutionary leader Maximilien de Robespierre supported the bill. However, the National Constituent Assembly, on 6 October 1791, refused to abolish the death penalty. Soon after, tens of thousands of people of various social classes would be executed by guillotine during the Reign of Terror.

On 26 October 1795, the National Convention abolished capital punishment, but only to signify the day of general peace. The death penalty was reinstated on 12 February 1810, under Emperor Napoleon I, in the French Imperial Penal Code.

In 1848, the provisional government of the French Second Republic, established by the February Revolution, decreed the abolition of the death penalty for political crimes. [10]

President Armand Fallières, a supporter of abolition, systematically pardoned every convict condemned to death over the first three years of his term (1906–1913). In 1906 the Commission of the Budget of the Chamber of Deputies voted for withdrawing funding for the guillotine, with the aim of stopping the execution procedure. On 3 July 1908 the Keeper of the Seals, Aristide Briand, submitted a draft law to the Deputies, dated November 1906, on the abolition of the death penalty. Despite the support of Jean Jaurès, the bill was rejected on 8 December by 330 votes to 201.

Under the pro-Nazi Vichy Regime, Marshal Pétain refused to pardon five women due to be guillotined; no woman had been guillotined in France in over five decades. Pétain was himself sentenced to death following the overthrow of the Vichy Regime, but General Charles de Gaulle commuted Pétain's sentence to life imprisonment on the grounds of his old age (89 years), as well as his previous military duty during the First World War. Other Vichy officials, including notably Pierre Laval, were not so fortunate and were shot. Under Vincent Auriol's presidency, three more women were beheaded, one in Algeria and two in France. The last Frenchwoman to be beheaded (Germaine Leloy-Godefroy) was executed in Angers in 1949. In 1963, Lt. Colonel Jean-Marie Bastien-Thiry became the last person to be executed by a firing squad.

Defended by lawyer Robert Badinter, child murderer Patrick Henry narrowly escaped being condemned to death on 20 January 1977, and numerous newspapers predicted the end of the death penalty. On 10 September 1977, Hamida Djandoubi was guillotined and became both the last person executed in France as well as the last person executed by beheading in the Western world, and by any means in Western Europe. On 18 September 1981, Badinterthe new Minister of Justice proposed the final abolition of the death penalty in the National Assembly, the same day as the newly-elected socialist president François Mitterrand backed his efforts, and the National Assembly finally pushed abolition through that same year. Badinter had been a longtime opponent of capital punishment and the defense attorney of some of the last men to be executed.

Abolition process in 1981

  • 16 March 1981: During the presidential election campaign, François Mitterrand declared that he was against the death penalty. [11] [12] This was taken up in the Socialist Party's 110 Propositions for France electoral program, along with other justice reforms.
  • 19 March: The last sentence of death (against Philippe Maurice) was confirmed by the Court of Cassation, the last to gain legal force.
  • 10 May: Mitterrand was elected President in the second round against Valery Giscard d'Estaing. [13]
  • 25 May: François Mitterrand pardoned Philippe Maurice, commuting the sentence to life imprisonment. [14] [15] He was released on license in 2000.
  • 26 August: the Council of Ministers approved the bill to abolish the death penalty.
  • 17 September: Robert Badinter presented the bill to the National Assembly. It passed on 18 September, by 363 votes to 117. [16]
  • 28 September: The Court of Assizes of Haut-Rhin issued the very last sentence of death, in absentia, against tailor Jean-Michel Marx for attempted murder. From May to September, a total of four sentences of death were issued by the lower courts after Philippe's case was confirmed by the supreme court, but never ratified by the Court of Cassation. On the same day, Robert Badinter presented his bill to abolish the death penalty before the Senate.
  • 30 September: several amendments were rejected in the Senate. The law was officially passed by the two chambers.
  • 9 October: the law was promulgated and all seven remaining sentences commuted. The last Western European country to practise the death penalty abolished it.

Current status

Today, the death penalty has been abolished in France. Although a few modern-day French politicians (notably the far-right Front national [1] former leader Jean-Marie Le Pen) advocate restoring the death penalty, its re-establishment would not be possible without the unilateral French rejection of several international treaties. (Repudiation of international treaties is not unknown to the French system, as France renounced its obligations under the NATO treaty in 1966, though it rejoined the pact in 2009. [17] )

On 20 December 1985, France ratified Additional Protocol number 6 to the European Convention to Safeguard Human Rights and fundamental liberties. This prevents France from re-establishing the death penalty, except in times of war or by denouncing the Convention.

On 21 June 2001, Jacques Chirac sent a letter to the association "Ensemble" saying he was against the death penalty: "It's a fight we have to lead with determination and conviction, because no justice is infallible and each execution can kill an innocent; because nothing can legitimise the execution of minors or of people suffering from mental deficiencies; because death can never constitute an act of justice." On 3 May 2002, France and 30 other countries signed Protocol number 13 to the European Convention on Human Rights. This forbids the death penalty in all circumstances, even in times of war. It went into effect on 1 July 2003, after having been ratified by 10 states.

Despite these efforts, in 2004, a law proposition (number 1521 [18] ) was placed before the French National Assembly, suggesting re-establishment of the death penalty for terrorist acts. The bill was not adopted. On 3 January 2006, Jacques Chirac announced a revision of the Constitution aimed at writing out the death penalty. (On the previous 13 October, the Constitutional Council had deemed the ratification of the Second Optional Protocol to the international pact necessitated such a revision of the Constitution. The protocol concerned civil and political rights aimed at abolishing the death penalty.)

On 19 February 2007, the Congress of the French Parliament (the National Assembly and the Senate, reunited for the day) voted overwhelmingly for a modification of the Constitution stating that "no one can be sentenced to the death penalty." There were 828 votes for the modification, and 26 against. The amendment entered the Constitution on 23 February.

Variations in French opinion

During the 20th century, French opinion on the death penalty has greatly changed, as many polls have showed large differences from one time to another.

Executions from 1958 to abolition

The following people were executed during the Fifth Republic (between 1959 and 1977), making them the last executed people in France. [24]

Executed personDate of executionPlace of executionCrimeMethodUnder president
Jean Dupont14 April 1959 Paris Child murder with premeditation Guillotine Charles de Gaulle
Abcha Ahmed30 July 1959 Metz Murder with premeditation
Mohamed Benzouzou26 September 1959 Lyon
Mouloud Aït Rabah23 February 1960
Ahmed Cherchari
Abdallah Kabouche17 March 1960
Mohamed Feghoul5 April 1960Assassination
Menaï BrahimiAccomplice of Feghoul's premeditated murder
René Pons21 June 1960 Bordeaux Matricide
Boukhemis Taffer9 July 1960LyonTerrorist attack
Georges Rapin26 July 1960ParisMurder with premeditation
Abderrahmane Lakhlifi30 July 1960LyonAccomplice of assassination attempts
Miloud Bougandoura5 August 1960Multiple murders
Abdelkader Makhlouf
Salah Dehil31 January 1961 Terrorist attack
Louis Jalbaud7 December 1961 Marseille Multiple murders before robbery
Albert Dovecar 7 June 1962 Marly-le-Roi Assassination against Algiers Commissaire principal Roger Gavoury Firing Squad
Claude Piegts
Lt. Roger Degueldre 6 July 1962 Ivry-sur-Seine Treason/Multiple murders
Lt. Col. Jean Bastien-Thiry 11 March 1963Treason/Assassination attempt against President Charles de Gaulle
Stanislas Juhant17 March 1964ParisMurder after robberyGuillotine
Raymond Anama17 June 1964 Fort-de-France Murder with premeditation
Robert Actis27 June 1964LyonMurder before robbery
Mazouz Ghaouti
Lambert Gau22 June 1965Fort-de-FranceMurder with premeditation
Saïb Hachani22 March 1966LyonMultiple murders with premeditation
Günther Volz16 December 1967MetzChild murder after rape
Jean-Laurent Olivier11 March 1969 Amiens Multiple child murders after rape
Roger Bontems28 November 1972Paris Hostage crisis and accomplice of Buffet's murders with threats of death (was serving 20 years for armed robbery) Georges Pompidou
Claude Buffet Murder of a prison guard and a prison nurse in an hostage crisis (while already serving a life sentence for murder)
Ali Ben Yanes12 May 1973MarseilleChild murder after aggravated assault and attempted murder
Christian Ranucci 28 July 1976Child murder after kidnapping Valéry Giscard d'Estaing
Jérôme Carrein 23 June 1977 Douai Child murder after kidnapping and attempted rape
Hamida Djandoubi 10 September 1977Marseille Torture murder after pimping and rape

Notable opponents

Notable advocates

Related Research Articles

Capital punishment, also known as the death penalty and formerly called judicial homicide, is the state-sanctioned killing of a person as punishment for actual or supposed misconduct. The sentence ordering that an offender be punished in such a manner is known as a death sentence, and the act of carrying out the sentence is known as an execution. A prisoner who has been sentenced to death and awaits execution is condemned and is commonly referred to as being "on death row". Etymologically, the term capital refers to execution by beheading, but executions are carried out by many methods, including hanging, shooting, lethal injection, stoning, electrocution, and gassing.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Guillotine</span> Apparatus designed for carrying out executions by beheading

A guillotine is an apparatus designed for efficiently carrying out executions by beheading. The device consists of a tall, upright frame with a weighted and angled blade suspended at the top. The condemned person is secured with a pillory at the bottom of the frame, holding the position of the neck directly below the blade. The blade is then released, swiftly and forcefully decapitating the victim with a single, clean pass; the head falls into a basket or other receptacle below.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Capital punishment by country</span>

Capital punishment, also called the death penalty, is the state-sanctioned killing of a person as a punishment for a crime. It has historically been used in almost every part of the world. Since the mid-19th century many countries have abolished or discontinued the practice. In 2022, the five countries that executed the most people were, in descending order, China, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and the United States.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Hamida Djandoubi</span> Tunisian murderer (1949–1977)

Hamida Djandoubi was a Tunisian convicted murderer sentenced to death in France. He moved to Marseille in 1968, and six years later he was convicted of the kidnapping, torture and murder of 21-year-old Élisabeth Bousquet. He was sentenced to death in February 1977 and executed by guillotine in September that year, and also the last person to be lawfully executed by beheading anywhere in the Western world. Marcel Chevalier served as chief executioner.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Robert Badinter</span> French politician, lawyer and author (1928–2024)

Robert Badinter was a French lawyer, politician, and author who enacted the abolition of the death penalty in France in 1981, while serving as Minister of Justice under François Mitterrand. He also served in high-level appointed positions with national and international bodies working for justice and the rule of law.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Clairvaux Prison</span> High-security prison in France

Clairvaux Prison was a high-security prison in France, on the grounds of the former Clairvaux Abbey.

Marcel Chevalier worked as the last chief executioner in France.

Capital punishment in Canada dates to Canada's earliest history, including its period as first a French then a British colony. From 1867 to the elimination of the death penalty for murder on July 26, 1976, 1,481 people had been sentenced to death, and 710 had been executed. Of those executed, 697 were men and 13 women. The only method used in Canada for capital punishment of civilians after the end of the French regime was hanging. The last execution in Canada was the double hanging of Arthur Lucas and Ronald Turpin on December 11, 1962, at Toronto's Don Jail. The National Defence Act prescribed the death penalty for certain military offences until 1999, although no military executions had been carried out since 1946.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Capital punishment in Sweden</span>

Capital punishment in Sweden was last used in 1910, though it remained a legal sentence for at least some crimes until 1973. It is now outlawed by the Swedish Constitution, which states that capital punishment, corporal punishment, and torture are strictly prohibited. At the time of the abolition of the death penalty in Sweden, the legal method of execution was beheading. It was one of the last states in Europe to abolish the death penalty.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Capital punishment in Europe</span>

Capital punishment has been completely abolished in all European countries except for Belarus and Russia, the latter of which has a moratorium and has not carried out an execution since September 1996. The complete ban on capital punishment is enshrined in both the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union (EU) and two widely adopted protocols of the European Convention on Human Rights of the Council of Europe, and is thus considered a central value. Of all modern European countries, San Marino, Portugal, and the Netherlands were the first to abolish capital punishment, whereas only Belarus still practises capital punishment in some form or another. In 2012, Latvia became the last EU member state to abolish capital punishment in wartime.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Capital punishment in the Czech Republic</span>

Capital punishment is forbidden by the Charter of Fundamental Rights and Freedoms of the Czech Republic and is simultaneously prohibited by international legal obligations arising from the Czech Republic's membership of both the Council of Europe and the European Union.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Capital punishment in Switzerland</span>

Capital punishment is forbidden in Switzerland under article 10, paragraph 1 of the Swiss Federal Constitution. Capital punishment was abolished from federal criminal law in 1942, but remained available in military criminal law until 1992. The last actual executions in Switzerland took place during World War II.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Capital punishment in Greece</span>

Capital punishment in modern Greece was carried out using the guillotine or by firing squad. It was last applied in 1972 during the military junta. The death penalty was abolished in stages between 1975 and 2005.

Capital punishment has been abolished in Mongolia since 2016, following a previous eight-year moratorium.

Capital punishment is no longer a legal punishment in Rwanda. The death penalty was abolished in the country in 2007.

The Central African Republic has abolished capital punishment, after the National Assembly passed a bill abolishing it on 27 May 2022. Prior to its abolition in law, the nation was considered "Abolitionist in Practice." The country carried out its last executions, of six unnamed men, in January 1981.

Capital punishment was abolished in Namibia in 1990. The last execution was carried out in 1988, under the rule of South Africa.

Jean-Louis Pelletier was a French criminal lawyer.

Philippe Maurice was a French criminal and academic, mostly famous for being sentenced to the guillotine for murder in 1980, and subsequently pardoned by president Francois Mitterrand in 1981. His sentence of death was the last confirmed throughout the French legal system, as well as the last person to receive an executive pardon from a death sentence in France. While imprisoned Maurice became a historian, and currently specialises in Medieval history.

References

  1. 1 2 "The guillotine is named after a man who hated capital punishment". bnd. Retrieved 2017-09-29.
  2. "Today in LGBT History – July 6". Archived from the original on 2021-01-27. Retrieved 2019-07-07.
  3. Reflections on Hanging By Arthur Koestler
  4. Ever Since Adam and Eve: The Evolution of Human Sexuality By Malcolm Potts, Roger Short
  5. Top 10 animals on trial
  6. Homosexuality in Modern France By Associate Professor of History Jeffrey Merrick, Bryant T. Ragan, Bryant T. Ragan, Jr.
  7. "Chronologie" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 2019-10-29. Retrieved 2019-07-07.
  8. "L'application de la peine de mort en France avant 1981 – L'abolition de la peine de mort en France – Dossiers – La Documentation française" (in French). Ladocumentationfrancaise.fr. 2001-10-08. Retrieved 2015-02-18.
  9. Aleksander Hall, Charles de Gaulle, p. 291, Iskry, Warsaw, 2002.
  10. "Proclamation de la Deuxième République par Lamartine". gouvernement.fr. Retrieved 27 June 2022.
  11. "16 mars 1981 : le coup de poker de François Mitterrand". Le Point (in French). 16 March 2022. Retrieved 15 December 2024.
  12. Rodière, Michèle (1987). L'Abolition de la peine de mort (in French). Documentation française. p. 51. ISBN   978-2-11-001758-1 . Retrieved 15 December 2024.
  13. Seigneur, Pierre (1 January 1995). Les Présidents de la République (in French). FeniXX. p. 30. ISBN   978-2-7062-5871-8 . Retrieved 15 December 2024.
  14. "Le gracié". Le Monde (in French). 21 December 1995. Retrieved 15 December 2024.
  15. "Philippe Maurice, sauvé de la guillotine en 1981". Ouest-France (in French). 6 October 2011. Retrieved 15 December 2024.
  16. "Abolition de la peine de mort - Histoire - Assemblée nationale". www2.assemblee-nationale.fr. Retrieved 15 December 2024.
  17. Cody, Edward (March 12, 2009). "After 43 Years, France to Rejoin NATO as Full Member". The Washington Post . Retrieved April 5, 2017.
  18. "Assemblée nationale – Rétablissement de la peine de mort pour les terroristes". Assemblee-nationale.fr. Retrieved 2015-02-18.
  19. IFOP (1998). "Le rétablissement de la peine de mort – Sondage IFOP – France Soir". IFOP – France Soir. Archived from the original on 2006-01-11. Retrieved 2006-06-17.
  20. [usurped]
  21. "Droitisation et pessimisme : l'étude-choc de Sciences Po – Le Point". Lepoint.fr. 2014-01-14. Retrieved 2015-02-18.
  22. "La défiance des Français envers la politique atteint un niveau record". Lemonde.fr. 2013-01-15. Retrieved 2015-02-18.
  23. "Massive jump in number of French people in favour of the death penalty – poll". 17 September 2020.
  24. Archived February 27, 2008, at the Wayback Machine
  25. C'était De Gaulle by Alain Peyrefitte ISBN   978-2-07-076506-5
  26. "Le point de vue de Zemmour sur la peine de mort". YouTube. 2011-06-17. Retrieved 2015-02-18.[ dead YouTube link ]

Bibliography