Only five months passed between the election of François Mitterrand as President of the Republic on May 10, 1981, and the publication on October 10, 1981, of the law abolishing the death penalty. The bill was presented in the summer and passed by Parliament in September.
SUMMARY
The presentation of the bill in August 1981
The vote on the bill in September 1981
The promulgation of the law on October 9, 1981
The presentation of the bill in August 1981
On August 29, the bill (no. 310) was tabled in the National Assembly
The explanatory statement is deliberately brief:
“LADIES AND GENTLEMEN,
A country that loves freedom cannot, in its laws, retain the death penalty. It is imperative for freedom not to grant anyone absolute power such that the consequences of a decision are irremediable. It is another to refuse the definitive elimination of an individual, even if he is a criminal.
A justice system that shirks this dual requirement admits its impotence and reduces its civilizing influence. The death penalty confirms a social failure; its abolition responds to an ethical principle.
The rejection of the death penalty, constantly demanded by the major schools of thought and repeatedly raised before parliamentary assemblies, had never yet been able to clearly impose itself on the collective conscience, as if the entire nation, agitated for two centuries by this torment, did not dare to get rid of it. However, the principle is now tacitly accepted since the French people have twice voted for candidates who claimed to be in favor of abolition. We must therefore draw the consequences, and translate into our laws a choice to which the voters have implicitly consented. By recalling that the studies conducted lead to the same conclusion: there is no correlation between the evolution of bloody crime and the absence or presence of the death penalty.
The time has come for France, which has so often been at the forefront of freedoms and legal progress, to make up for the delay it has fallen behind in this area compared to the countries of Western Europe which reject a punishment considered to be inhuman, degrading and cruel.
Having clung for too long to this survival from another age, France finds itself today, thanks to a profound internal renewal, in a position to join an international opinion which, through the voice of various organisations and, very recently, through those of the Council of Europe and the Assembly of the European Communities, has spoken out unambiguously against the maintenance of the death penalty.
Read the rest of the speech
On September 18, the entire bill was adopted by the National Assembly by a vote of 363 to 117. Article 1 was adopted by a majority of 369 to 113.
An additional article was also adopted, specifying that a bill reforming the penal code would determine the adaptation of the rules for the execution of sentences made necessary for the application of the abolition law.
Ten days later, on September 28, the debate began in the Senate. In addition, several senators tabled amendments, including Edgar Faure, with a view to maintaining the death penalty for the most heinous crimes.