‘Lawyer of the murderers’ fought tirelessly against the guillotine

On September 17, 1981, there was a sacred silence in the Assemblée Nationale when Robert Badinter, who died on Friday, ascended the pulpit. The French Minister of Justice is in parliament to defend one of the most important election promises of left-wing President François Mitterrand, who took office in May of that year: the abolition of the death penalty. The guillotine was last used in France in 1977, but on paper beheading for capital offenses was still a possibility. A change in the law must put an end to this.

France, Badinter orates, was one of the first countries to formally ban torture, and one of the first countries to abolish slavery. (By the way, before it was reintroduced a few years later.) How can it be one of the last Western countries with the death penalty? He quotes Enlightenment thinkers and representatives who opposed the death penalty in the first years after the Revolution of 1789 on the basis of the Declaration of Human Rights. “We reject this justice that eliminates people, this justice of fear and death […]. For us, this is anti-justice, because here passion and fear win over reason and humanity,” Badinter argues. “Soon, thanks to you, French justice will no longer kill.”

His speech has become famous and fragments have been shown regularly on French television over the last forty years. This was partly due to Badinter himself. The fight against the death penalty had become the fight of his life and he kept it alive with publications and public appearances. He became the human rights conscience of France. Anyone who wanted to interview him about current political issues usually received no response. On the other hand, he always made time for an interview about his fight against the death penalty.

Conscientious book

Badinter grew up in a Jewish family in Paris in the years before the Second World War. His father was arrested in 1943 during a raid in Lyon – in ‘free France’ according to the collaborationist Vichy regime – and deported to Sobibor, where he died shortly after arrival. Young Robert goes into hiding in the Alps with his mother. After the war he studied literature and law in Paris, and later on a scholarship also in the United States. In 1951 he established himself as a lawyer. After a previous marriage, he married Élisabeth Bleustein-Blanchet in 1966, the feminist who became known in subsequent years as Élisabeth Badinter.

His fight against the death penalty began with a case in 1972. He then defends former soldier Roger Bontems, who is tried together with cellmate Claude Buffet for killing a guard and a nurse during a hostage situation in prison. Both are sentenced to the guillotine, while Badinter manages to make it plausible that only Buffet actually killed the two. So the French state has executed someone who did not take anyone’s life – Bontems. His conscientious book about the process, L’Execution (1973), becomes a bestseller.

Visually described execution

When Patrick Henry, suspected of a gruesome child murder, struggles to find a lawyer in 1976, Badinter intervenes. He manages to avoid the trial, a year later, a death penalty trial in itself to make.

Badinter, with the help of witnesses called, describes the beheadings of Bontems and Buffet in detail and vividly. He recalls “the noise made by the knife that cuts a living man in two” and describes the enormous amount of blood that then spurts across the prison yard. He points out to the jurors their personal responsibility: “It is not the executioner who prepares the guillotine, it is you.” And he goes through the arguments for the death penalty one by one. If it really had a deterrent effect, France should have had lower crime rates than neighboring countries without the death penalty. Henry may no longer be capable of reoffending, he says, “but if you cut him in half, it won’t stop anyone else.”

Patrick Henry (center), suspected of kidnapping and murdering a seven-year-old child, is escorted by police officers after his arrest in Troyes on February 18, 1976.

While an angry crowd in front of the Palace of Justice in the town of Troyes chants “Death to Patrick Henry” and before the trial even members of the government have spoken out in favor of his beheading, Badinter manages to convince the jury. Seven of the twelve members vote for his execution; eight would have been needed. Henry, who was undeniably guilty, gets a life sentence. Although the guillotine was used a few more times in subsequent years, this trial is seen as the beginning of the end for the French death penalty.

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It gives Badinter, a prominent member of the Parti Socialiste, hero status in left-wing circles, although according to polls in the 1970s a large majority of French people still support the death penalty. After the trial, he received death threats for years, and a bomb even exploded at his house in Paris. When Mitterrand appointed him as minister in 1981, conservative newspapers mentioned him l’avocat des assassins, the murderers’ lawyer, symbol of the lax left. His ministership, in which he managed to decriminalize homosexuality a year after the abolition of the death penalty, ultimately lasted five years. He then served as President of the French Constitutional Council for nine years.

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