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Video length: 3 min
Death of Robert Badinter: the abolition of the death penalty, the fight of a lifetime
Robert Badinter, who died on the night of Thursday February 8 to Friday February 9, never considered a career in politics. By becoming François Mitterrand’s Keeper of the Seals, he continued his path and his fight: the abolition of the death penalty. – (France 2)
Robert Badinter, who died on the night of Thursday February 8 to Friday February 9, never considered a career in politics. By becoming François Mitterrand’s Keeper of the Seals, he continued his path and his fight: the abolition of the death penalty.
He kept the original copy at home: this law of October 9, 1981 abolishing the death penalty. His life’s work, he said, and the epilogue of a fight that began nine years earlier, when, as a young trial lawyer, he was unable to save the head of Roger Bontems, recognized as an accomplice during a bloody hostage situation. “To execute is to cut a living man in two. (…) I will move from the stage of conviction as an abolitionist to the stage of activism”he declared then.
A text adopted with certain voices from the right
In 1976, the criminal Patrick Henry was saved thanks to the plea of Robert Badinter. At the time, the majority of opinion was in favor of capital punishment. In 1981, once François Mitterrand elected, the law for the abolition of the death penalty is one of the first presented to the Assembly. For his speech, Robert Badinter chooses each word. The text will be adopted quite widely, with certain voices coming from the right, including that of Jacques Chirac. For the 40th anniversary of the law, in 2021, Robert Badinter received unanimous tribute as he fought for universal abolition.
