On October 9, 1981, France officially abolished the death penalty. The law, presented by Justice Minister Robert Badinter, was signed by President François Mitterrand and put an end to the centuries-old practice of the state carrying out death sentences. The text was published in the “Official Journal“ on October 10.
Its first article is short: “The death penalty is abolished“. Later, it was this formulation that Badinter defined as the essence of the law.
The speech that changed the law
On September 17, 1981, Badinter stood at the rostrum of the National Assembly and delivered the speech that became one of the landmark political moments of the Fifth Republic. “I have the honor, on behalf of the government of the Republic, to ask the National Assembly to abolish the death penalty in France“, the minister declared.
He emphasized two theses - that the death penalty does not prove its deterrent effect and that no judicial system is completely immune from errors. With an irreversible verdict, a wrong judicial assessment cannot be corrected.
On September 18, deputies adopted the bill by 363 votes to 117. Twelve days later, the Senate, in which the right has a strong representation, approved the text by 160 votes to 126. Thus, the law passed both chambers, although a significant part of French society continues to support the death penalty.
The last execution was four years earlier
France had not carried out an execution since September 10, 1977. Then, Hamida Djandoubi, convicted of murder, was guillotined in Marseille. He remains the last person executed in France and the last victim of the guillotine in Western Europe.
Until the law was adopted, the courts continued to pronounce death sentences. However, there was no new execution between the last execution and the abolition of the sentence. Some of the decisions were overturned on appeal, while other convicts were pardoned or their sentences were commuted to life imprisonment.
As a lawyer, Badinter had already defended defendants in cases that ended in death sentences. In 1977, he managed to save Patrick Henry from the guillotine, whose trial made the lawyer one of the most famous French opponents of the death penalty.
From legal change to constitutional ban
The abolition in 1981 made France the last Western European country to abandon the death penalty. In 2007, the ban received even greater legal protection after it was included in the Constitution through Article 66-1: “No one may be sentenced to death“.
Thus, the date October 9, 1981, remains not only the day on which France abolished the guillotine from its criminal law, but also a turning point in the decades-long dispute over the limits of state power and the irreversibility of punishment.
Sources: lemonde.fr, apnews.com