Capital punishment in France
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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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, who was put to death in September 1977 in Marseille.
Notable opponents
- Voltaire (writer and philosopher)
- Nicolas de Condorcet (philosopher)
- Louis-Michel Le Peletier de Saint-Fargeau (politician)
- Victor Hugo (writer and politician)
- Alphonse de Lamartine (writer and politician)
- Léon Gambetta (politician)
- Jean Jaurès (Socialist leader)
- Aristide Briand (politician, long-time President of the Council and Minister)
- Gaston Leroux (writer)
- Albert Camus (writer)
- Michel Foucault (philosopher)
- Robert Badinter (attorney and Minister of Justice)
- Julien Clerc (singer)
Notable advocates
- Francis I of France
- Catherine De Medici
- Cardinal Richelieu
- Henry IV of France
- Louis XIII
- Louis XIV
- Louis XV
- Charles de Secondat, baron de Montesquieu (philosopher)
- Jean-Jacques Rousseau (philosopher)
- Louis XVI
- Marie Antoinette
- Napoleon Bonaparte
- Napoleon II
- Napoleon III
- Louis XVIII
- Charles X
- Louis-Philippe I
- Joseph De Maistre
- Alexis De Tocqueville
- Benjamin Constant (philosopher and politician)
- Auguste Comte (philosopher)
- Maurice Barrès (writer and politician)
- Charles de Gaulle (President) (only for men; commuted a majority of sentences<ref>C'était De Gaulle by Alain Peyrefitte Template:ISBN</ref>)
- Jean-Marie Le Pen (politician)
- Alain Madelin (politician)
- Robert Ménard (politician)
- Éric Zemmour (writer and journalist)