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Badinter fights death penalty
Becoming Minister of Justice in 1981, when the left came to power, Robert Badinter carried the abolition bill implementing a campaign promise from President François Mitterrand – (FRANCE TELEVISIONS)
It was one of François Mitterrand’s promises, the abolition of capital punishment had become one of Robert Badinter’s priorities during his appointment to the Ministry of Justice.
It was when he failed, in 1972, to save Roger Bontems from the guillotine, an accomplice in a deadly hostage-taking, that Robert Badinter, died on the night of Thursday to Friday February 9, at the age of 95 years, pass “from intellectual conviction to militant passion” against the death penalty, he testifies in his book Abolition. Minister of Justice under François Mitterrand, he passed the law of October 9, 1981 which abolished the death penalty, in a France then majority in favor of this supreme punishment.
In a fiery speech lasting more than two hours, the Minister of Justice solemnly asks the National Assembly to approve the bill. “Tomorrow, thanks to you, French justice will no longer be a justice that kills (…). Tomorrow, you will vote for the abolition of the death penalty”he declared before the National Assembly on September 17, 1981.
The bill was adopted the next day by the deputies, and on September 30 by the senators. The law “abolishing the death penalty” was promulgated on October 9, 1981. “No one can be sentenced to the death penalty” : 25 years later, on February 19, 2007, the abolition was included in the Constitution by the Parliament meeting in Congress in Versailles.
