Many French Want the Guillotine Back
Poll suggests majority favor death penalty
Today it is forty years since the French National Assembly first voted to end the death penalty. It was a controversial decision at the time and, four decades later, the matter still causes controversy in this country.
At the time of capital punishment’s abolition, the French were still using the guillotine as their chosen method of taking a convict’s life. The last person to be beheaded by this machine was Hamida Djamboudi in September of 1977.
Today the guillotine seems a savage way to take the life of even the most vile of criminals, but is was actually introduced at the request of Dr Joseph Ignace Guillotin for humanitarian reasons.
He wanted a method of execution that was both less cruel and more egalitarian than its predecessors. Up until then the French had a variety of methods by which they could end a person’s life, depending on both the rank and stature of the victim, and the crime being punished. Nobility were only ever executed by beheading with a sword or axe while commoners were generally hung.
