"were shot. Under Vincent Auriol's presidency, three more women were beheaded; one in Algeria and two in France. The last Frenchwoman to be beheaded (Germaine Leloy-Godefroy) was executed in Angers in 1949. In 1963, Lt. Colonel Jean-Marie Bastien-Thiry the last person executed by a firing squad. Having been defended by lawyer Robert Badinter, Patrick Henry narrowly escaped being condemned to death on 20 January 1977 for the murder of a child. Numerous newspapers predicted the end of the death penalty. On 10 September 1977, Hamida Djandoubi was guillotined; he would be the last person executed in France. Robert Badinter, a"
"by the guillotine (in France) was highwayman Nicolas Jacques Pelletier in April 1792. The last execution was of murderer Hamida Djandoubi, in Marseilles, in 1977. Djandoubi's execution was the last judicial use of the guillotine in the world. Throughout its extensive overseas colonies and dependencies, the device was also used, including on St Pierre in 1889 and on Martinique as late as 1965. In Nordic countries, decapitation was the usual means of carrying out capital punishment. Noblemen were beheaded with a sword, and commoners with an axe. The last executions by decapitation in Finland in 1825, Norway in 1876, Faroe"
"last execution in France; the death penalty was abolished in 1981. Jules-Henri Desfourneaux Jules-Henri Desfourneaux (17 December 1877, Bar-le-Duc – 1 October 1951) was the last French executioner to officiate in public. He came from a long line of executioners named Desfourneaux stretching back many hundreds of years . Like all French executioners since 1792 his method of application of the death penalty was beheading by guillotine. Desfourneaux was recruited by his predecessor Anatole Deibler and attended his first execution as second assistant in 1909. Following the death of Deibler in 1939 - the latter having died of a heart"
"experiences with the guillotine. Marcel Chevalier Marcel Chevalier (28 February 1921 in Montrouge, Hauts-de-Seine – 8 October 2008 in Vendôme) worked as the last chief executioner (Monsieur de Paris) in France. He succeeded André Obrecht in 1976 and held his position until 1981, when capital punishment was abolished under president François Mitterrand and justice minister Robert Badinter. The method of application of the death penalty for civil capital offences in France from 1791 to 1981 was beheading with the guillotine. Military executions were by firing squad. Chevalier, who started his executioner's career in 1958, performed about 40 executions. After his"
"the French Revolution, executions began again in the city center. On 4 February 1832, the guillotine was moved behind the church of Saint Jacques, just before being moved again, to the Grande Roquette prison, on 29 November 1851. On 6 August 1909, the guillotine was used on the junction of the Boulevard Arago and the Rue de la Santé, behind the La Santé Prison. The last public guillotining in France was of Eugen Weidmann, who was convicted of six murders. He was beheaded on 17 June 1939 outside the prison Saint-Pierre, rue Georges Clemenceau 5 at Versailles, which is now"
"methods of execution were also used, such as the wheel or burning at the stake. The guillotine was thus perceived to deliver an immediate death without risk of suffocation. Furthermore, having only one method of civil execution was seen as an expression of equality among citizens. The guillotine was then the only civil legal execution method in France until the abolition of the death penalty in 1981, apart from certain crimes against the security of the state, or for the death sentences passed by military courts, which entailed execution by firing squad. For a period of time after its invention,"
"execution), and French colonies in Africa, French Guiana and French Indochina. Public executions were the norm and continued until 1939. From the mid-19th century, the usual time of day for executions changed from around 3 pm to morning and then to dawn. Executions had been carried out in large central public spaces such as market squares but gradually moved towards the local prison. In the early 20th century, the guillotine was set up just outside the prison gates. The last person to be publicly guillotined was six-time murderer Eugen Weidmann who was executed on 17 June 1939 outside the St-Pierre"
"Jérôme Carrein Jérôme Henri Carrein (July 2, 1941 – June 23, 1977) was the second-to-last convicted criminal to be executed by guillotine in France. On 27 October 1975 in Arleux, Northern France, Jérôme Carrein, father of five children, often of no fixed abode, an alcoholic and a tuberculosis sufferer, met Cathy Petit, an eight-year-old local girl. Petit was the daughter of the owner of a bar that Carrein frequented. He enticed the girl to follow him into nearby marshlands to search for fish bait, dispatching the girl's brother Éric to report to their mother. Cathy and Carrein walked up to"
"the condemned person. The first campaign towards the abolition of the death penalty began on 30 May 1791, but on 6 October that year the National Assembly refused to pass a law abolishing the death penalty. However, they did abolish torture, and also declared that there would now be only one method of execution: 'Tout condamné à mort aura la tête tranchée' (All condemned to death will have their heads cut off). The guillotine had been proposed as a means of execution in 1789 by Joseph-Ignace Guillotin. The French Revolution marked the end of hanging by requiring all executions to"
"example). The first execution by guillotine was performed on highwayman Nicolas Jacques Pelletier on 25 April 1792. He was executed in front of what is now the city hall of Paris (Place de l'hôtel de ville). All citizens deemed guilty of a crime punishable by death were from then on executed there, until the scaffold was moved on 21 August to the Place du Carrousel. The machine was successful because it was considered a humane form of execution, contrasting with the methods used in pre-revolutionary ""Ancien Régime"". In France, before the invention of the guillotine, members of the nobility were"
"1966 for secret executions. In Switzerland it was used for the last time by the canton of Obwalden in the execution of murderer Hans Vollenweider in 1940. The guillotine was also introduced into Greece in 1834, along with the firing squad, as a method of execution. It was last used in Greece in 1913. In Sweden, where beheading became the mandatory method of execution in 1866, the guillotine replaced manual beheading in 1903 and it was used only once, in the execution of murderer Alfred Ander in 1910 at Långholmen Prison, Stockholm. He was also the last person to be"
"Marcel Chevalier Marcel Chevalier (28 February 1921 in Montrouge, Hauts-de-Seine – 8 October 2008 in Vendôme) worked as the last chief executioner (Monsieur de Paris) in France. He succeeded André Obrecht in 1976 and held his position until 1981, when capital punishment was abolished under president François Mitterrand and justice minister Robert Badinter. The method of application of the death penalty for civil capital offences in France from 1791 to 1981 was beheading with the guillotine. Military executions were by firing squad. Chevalier, who started his executioner's career in 1958, performed about 40 executions. After his appointment as chief executioner,"
"last sentences of death by guillotine at La Santé were Roger Bontems and Claude Buffet. They were the authors of an escape attempt with hostage taking which ended with the death of the hostages in 1971. Sentenced to death at Troyes on 29 June 1972, they were executed on the following 28 November. According to them, those sentenced to death from Île-de-France were locked in Fresnes Prison (which theoretically would, in 1978, become the only prison entitled to host executions) but neither were executed – the abolition of the death penalty having been decided in the meantime. Nevertheless, it is"
"only to signify the day of general peace. With the arrival of Napoleon Bonaparte, the death penalty was reinstated on 12 February 1810, in the French Imperial Penal Code. The President of the Republic Armand Fallières, a supporter of abolition, continued to systematically pardon every convict condemned to death over the first three years of his seven-year office. In 1906 the Commission of the Budget of the Chamber of Deputies voted for withdrawing funding for the guillotine, with the aim of stopping the execution procedure. On 3 July 1908 the Garde des Sceaux, Aristide Briand, submitted a draft law to"
"Revolution, where it was celebrated as the people's avenger by supporters of the revolution and vilified as the pre-eminent symbol of the Reign of Terror by opponents. The name dates from this period, but similar devices had been used elsewhere in Europe over several centuries. The display of severed heads had long been one of the most common ways a European sovereign displayed their power to their subjects. The guillotine remained France’s standard method of judicial execution until the abolition of capital punishment in 1981. The last person to be executed in France was Hamida Djandoubi, who was guillotined on"
"death sentences on the spot. One such guillotine is still on show at the War Remnants Museum in Ho Chi Minh City. The only recorded use of the guillotine in North America took place on the French island of St. Pierre in 1889, of Basque-born assassin Carlos Zuzuarregui, with a guillotine brought in from Guadeloupe. In the Caribbean, it was used more routinely in Guadeloupe and Martinique, the last time in Fort-de-France in 1965. In 1996 in the US, Georgia State Representative Doug Teper unsuccessfully sponsored a bill to replace that state's electric chair with the guillotine. In recent years,"
"Jules-Henri Desfourneaux Jules-Henri Desfourneaux (17 December 1877, Bar-le-Duc – 1 October 1951) was the last French executioner to officiate in public. He came from a long line of executioners named Desfourneaux stretching back many hundreds of years . Like all French executioners since 1792 his method of application of the death penalty was beheading by guillotine. Desfourneaux was recruited by his predecessor Anatole Deibler and attended his first execution as second assistant in 1909. Following the death of Deibler in 1939 - the latter having died of a heart attack in a Metro station while en route to his 401st"
"Louis XV, was executed in 1757 by drawing and quartering, the traditional punishment for regicide. His punishment lasted an hour before he died. the last man in France to suffer that penalty. Among the last persons to be hung in Paris was the Marquis de Favras, who was hung on the Place de Greve for attempting help Louis XVI in his unsuccessful flight from Paris. In October 1789 Doctor Joseph-Ignace Guillotin, in the interest of finding a more humane method, successfully had the means of execution changed to decapitation by a machine he perfected, the guillotine, built with the help"
"the main method of execution had been by beheading by means of the guillotine. Other than a small number of military cases where a firing squad was used (including that of Jean Bastien-Thiry) the guillotine was the only legal method of execution from 1791, when it was introduced by the Legislative Assembly during the last days of the kingdom French Revolution, until 1981. Before the revolution, beheading had typically been reserved to noblemen and carried out manually. In 1981, President François Mitterrand abolished capital punishment and issued commutations for those whose sentences had not been executed. The first person executed"
"Joseph-Ignace Guillotin Dr. Joseph-Ignace Guillotin (; 28 May 1738 – 26 March 1814) was a French physician, politician and freemason who proposed on 10 October 1789 the use of a device to carry out death penalties in France, as a less painful method of execution. Although he really did not invent the guillotine, and in fact opposed the death penalty, his name became an eponym for it. The actual inventor of the prototype was a man named Antoine Louis. Guillotin wrote an essay to get the degree of Master of Arts from the University of Bordeaux. This essay impressed the"
"French observed a strict code of etiquette surrounding such executions. For example, a man named Legros, one of the assistants at the execution of Charlotte Corday, was imprisoned for three months and dismissed for slapping the face of the victim after the blade had fallen in order to see whether any flicker of life remained. The guillotine was used in France during the French Revolution and remained the normal judicial method in both peacetime and wartime into the 1970s, although the firing squad was used in certain cases. France abolished the death penalty in 1981. The guillotine was also used"
"July 1867. Geneviève Guénat, the last woman to be executed, was beheaded by this method in Delsberg, Bern on 7 September 1862, Héli Freymond in Vaud on 11 January 1868. In 1848 the death penalty for political crimes was forbidden by the constitution. In 1874, with the introduction of the new federal constitution in 1874, it was generally abolished throughout the country. However, because of an increase in crime - much due to the economic depression at the time - capital punishment was re-introduced in 1879. The revocation of the ban, however, was not obligatory and only a number of"
"guillotine on 21 May 1894. His last words were reputed to be """"Courage, camarades! Vive l'anarchie!"""" I became an anarchist only recently. It was no longer ago than around mid-1891 that I threw myself into the revolutionary movement. Previously, I had lived in circles wholly permeated with the established morality. I had been accustomed to respecting and even cherishing the principles of the nation, family, authority and property. But those educating the present generation all too often forget one thing – that life, indiscreet with its struggles and setbacks, its injustices and iniquities, sees to it that the scales are"
"Capital punishment in Belgium Capital punishment in Belgium was formally abolished on August 1, 1996 for all crimes, in both peacetime and wartime. The last execution for crimes committed in peacetime took place in July 1863, when in Ypres a farmer was executed for murder. The last execution for an ordinary crime took place on 26 March 1918 at Veurne Prison when Emile Ferfaille, a military officer found guilty of killing his pregnant girlfriend, was guillotined. This was the first execution to be carried out since 1863. The guillotine that was used had to be imported from France. Between November"
"Christian Ranucci (guillotined on July 28, 1976) and Jérôme Carrein (guillotined on June 23, 1977), had not received a reprieve from President Valéry Giscard d'Estaing. Shortly afterwards, at 4:40 a.m., he was executed by guillotine at Baumettes Prison in Marseille. While Djandoubi was the last person executed in France, he was not the last condemned. No more executions occurred after capital punishment was abolished in France in 1981 following the election of François Mitterrand. Hamida Djandoubi Hamida Djandoubi (; September 22, 1949 – September 10, 1977) was a Tunisian agricultural worker and convicted murderer. He moved to Marseille, France, in"
"the guillotine was called a louisette. However, it was later named after Guillotin who had proposed that a less painful method of execution should be found in place of the breaking wheel, though he opposed the death penalty and bemoaned the association of the guillotine with his name. Louis Collenot d'Angremont was a royalist famed for having been the first guillotined for his political ideas, on 21 August 1792. From June 1793 to July 1794 (the Reign of Terror) about 17,000 people were guillotined. Former King Louis XVI and Queen Marie Antoinette were executed at the guillotine in 1793. Towards"
"the death penalty was abolished in France, the last execution having taken place four years earlier in Marseille. ""The Plague, The Fall, Exile and The Kingdom and Selected Essays"" (Everyman's Library Contemporary Classics) (Hardcover) by Albert Camus (Author), David Bellos (Introduction), Stuart Gilbert (Translator), Justin O'Brien (Translator) (2004) , Reflections on the Guillotine ""Reflections on the Guillotine"" is an extended essay written in 1957 by Albert Camus. In the essay Camus takes an uncompromising position for the abolition of the death penalty. Camus's view is similar to that of Cesare Beccaria and the Marquis de Sade, the latter having also"
"be accomplished by means of the blade, rather than reserving it only for nobles. However, as beheading by a hand-held axe or blade was a comparatively inefficient and unreliable method of execution compared with hanging, the mechanical guillotine was adopted; it was also regarded as a more humane way to take the life of the condemned than earlier messy ways of execution. The device was first used on Nicolas Jacques Pelletier on 25 April 1792. Guillotine usage then spread to other countries such as Germany (where it had been used since before the revolution), Italy, Sweden (used in a single"
"by Catholic Church teaching. Abortion was legalized during the French revolution, but was re-criminalized in France with the imposition of the 1810 Napoleonic Code, which punished any person who procured an abortion with imprisonment. In 1939, the Penal Code was altered to permit an abortion that would save the pregnant woman's life. During the German occupation during World War II, the Vichy régime made abortion a capital crime. The last person to be executed for abortion was Marie-Louise Giraud, who was guillotined on 30 July 1943. Following the war, the death penalty for abortion was abolished, but abortion continued to"
"Beaurieux, who observed the head of executed prisoner Henri Languille, on 28 June 1905: During the span of its usage, the French guillotine has gone by many names, some of which include these: Guillotine A guillotine (; ) is an apparatus designed for efficiently carrying out executions by beheading. The device consists of a tall, upright frame in which a weighted and angled blade is raised to the top and suspended. The condemned person is secured with stocks at the bottom of the frame, positioning the neck directly below the blade. The blade is then released, to quickly fall and"
"Nicolas Jacques Pelletier Nicolas Jacques Pelletier (c. 1756April 25, 1792) was a French highwayman who was the first person to be executed by means of the guillotine. Pelletier routinely associated with a group of known criminals. On the night of 14 October 1791, with several unknown accomplices, he attacked a passerby in the rue Bourbon-Villeneuve in Paris and stole his wallet and several securities. During the robbery he also killed the man, though this is disputed in later literature as possibly just having been an assault and robbery or also an assault, robbery, and rape. He was apprehended and accused"
"of Europe, the practice died down later. In France the last person to be executed for witchcraft was Louis Debaraz in 1745. In Germany the last death sentence was that of Anna Schwegelin in Kempten in 1775 (although not carried out). The last known official witch-trial was the Doruchów witch trial in Poland in 1783. In 1793, two unnamed women were executed in proceedings of dubious legitimacy in Poznań, Poland. Anna Göldi was executed in Glarus, Switzerland in 1782 and Barbara Zdunk in Prussia in 1811. Both women have been identified as the last women executed for witchcraft in Europe,"
"on the pavement. The first execution – and the first in Paris for ten years – took place on 6 August 1909. It was that of a parricide called Georges Duchemin. On 7 May 1932 Eugene Boyer, a 27-year-old criminal who was denied a presidential pardon the previous day by President Paul Doumer, was to be executed. He was saved from the guillotine ""in extremis"" (twenty minutes before) following the assassination of the Chief of State on the same day as the execution was scheduled: in France, the president could reverse his decision until the last moment and obviously Boyer"