Code for which we all hope.

From the humanitarian idylls of the eighteenth century to its bloody scaffolds the road runs straight and is easily followed; we all know today’s executioners are humanists. And therefore we cannot be too suspicious of humanitarian ide-ologies applied to a problem like that of capital punishment. I should like to repeat, by way of conclusion, that my oppo-sition to the death penalty derives from no illusions as to the natural goodness of the human creature, and from no faith in a golden age to come. On the contrary, the abolition of capital punishment seems necessary to me for reasons of qualified pessimism, reasons I have attempted to explain in terms of logic and the most realistic considerations.

Not that the heart has not made its contribution to what I have been saying: for anyone who has spent several weeks among these texts, these memories, and these menall, intimately or re-motely, connected with the scaffold—there can be no ques-tion of leaving their dreadful ranks unaffected by what one has seen and heard. Nevertheless, I do not believe there is no responsibility in this world for what I have found, or that one should submit to our modern propensity for ab-solving victim and killer in the same moral confusion. This purely sentimental confusion involves more cowardice than generosity, and ends up by justifying whatever is worst in this world: if everything is blessed, then slave camps are blessed, and organized murder, and the cynicism of the great political bosses—and ultimately, blessing everything alike, one betrays one’s own brothers. We can see this happening all around us.

But indeed, with the world in its present condition the man of the twentieth century asks for laws and institutions of convalescence that will check without crushing, lead without hampering. Hurled into the unregulated dynamism of history, man needs a new physics, new laws of equilibrium. He needs, most of all, a reasonable society, not the anarchy into which his own pride and the State’s inordinate powers have plunged him. It is my conviction that the abolition of the death penalty will help us advance toward that society.

In taking this initiative, France could propose its extension on either side of the iron curtain; in any case she could set an example. Capital punishment would be replaced by a sentence of perpetual forced labor for criminals judged incorrigible, and by shorter terms for others. As for those who believe that such punish-ment is still more cruel than capital punishment itself, I wonder why, in that case, they do not reserve it for Landru and his like and relegate capital punishment to secondary offenders.

One might also add that such forced labor leaves the con-demned man the possibility of choosing his death, whereas the guillotine is a point of no return. On the other hand, I would answer those who believe that a sentence of perpetual forced labor is too mild a punishment by remarking first on their lack of imagination and then by pointing out that the privation of liberty could seem to them a mild punishment only to the degree that contemporary society has taught them to despise what liberty they have.28

That Cain was not killed, but bore in the sight of all men a mark of reprobation is, in any case, the lesson we should draw from the Old Testament, not to mention the Gospels, rather than taking our inspiration from the cruel examples of the Mo-saic law. There is no reason why at least a limited version of such an experiment should not be attempted in France (say for a ten-year period), if our government is still capable of redeem-ing its vote for alcohol by the great measure in behalf of civilization which total abolition would represent.

And if pub-lic opinion and its representatives cannot renounce our sloth-ful law which confines itself to eliminating what it cannot amend, at least, while waiting for a day of regeneration and of truth, let us not preserve as it is this «solemn shambles» (in Tarde’s expression) which continues to disgrace our so-ciety.

The death penalty, as it is imposed, even as rarely as it is imposed, is a disgusting butchery, an outrage inflicted on the spirit and body of man. This truncation, this living severed head, these long gouts of blood, belong to a barbarous epoch that believed it could subdue the people by offering them de-grading spectacles. Today, when this ignoble death is secretly administered, what meaning can such torture have? The truth is that in an atomic age we kill as we did in the age of steelyards: where is the man of normal sensibility whose stomach is not turned at the mere idea of such clumsy surgery?

If the French state is incapable of overcoming its worst im-pulses to this degree, and of furnishing Europe with one of the remedies it needs most, let it at least reform its means of administering capital punishment. Science, which has taught us so much about killing, could at least teach us to kill decently.

An anesthetic which would permit the accused to pass from a state of sleep to death, which would remain within his reach for at least a day so that he could make free use of it, and which in cases of refusal or failure of nerve could then be administered to him, would assure the elimina-tion of the criminal, if that is what we require, but would also provide a little decency where today there is nothing but a sordid and obscene exhibition.

I indicate these compromises only to the degree that one must sometimes despair of seeing wisdom and the principles of civilization impose themselves upon those responsible for our future. For certain men, more numerous than is supposed, knowing what the death penalty really is and being unable to prevent its application is physically insupportable. In their own way, they suffer this penalty too, and without any justifi-cation. If we at least lighten the weight of the hideous images that burden these men, society will lose nothing by our ac-tions. But ultimately even such measures will be insufficient. Neither in the hearts of men nor in the manners of society will there be a lasting peace until we outlaw death.

The end

Notes:

1. A description of the actual procedure in French prisons. Cf. the movie We Are All Murderers.—Translator.
2. According to the optimistic Dr. Guillotine, the condemned man would feel nothing at all—at most a «slight coolness at the back of his neck.»
3. Justice sans bourreau, No. 2, June, 1956.
4. Published by Roger Grenier, in Les Monstres, Gallimard. 5. Editions Matot-Braine, Reims.
5. In 1905, in Loiret.
6. The magazine Réalités, No. 105, October, 1954.
7. One can read week, after week in our press about criminals who wavered between killing others and killing themselves.
8. Vide the report of the English Select Committee of 1930 and of the Royal commission which has continued this study recently: «All the figures that we have examined confirm our statement that the aboli-tion of the death penalty has provoked no increase in the number of crimes committed.»
9. Report of the Select Committee, 1930.
10. Bela Just, La Potence et la croix, Fasquelle. 12. Roger Grenier, op. cit.
11. Ibid.
12. Several years ago I urged the reprieve of six Tunisians who had been condemned to death for the murder of three French police-men in a riot: the circumstances during which the killing had oc-curred made responsibility difficult to determine. A note from the office of the President of the Republic informed me that my petition was being considered by the appropriate authorities. Unfortunately, by the time this note was in the mail I had already read that the sentence had been carried out two weeks before. Three of the con-demned men had been put to death, the other three reprieved. The reasons for reprieving the latter rather than those who were executed had not been decisive. I conclude that because there were three victims there had to be three death penalties.
13. Roemen, condemned to death at the time of the Liberation, re-mained in chains 700 days before being executed: a scandal. Those condemned by common law wait, as a general rule, three to six month until the morning of their death. Yet if one wishes to pre-serve their chances of reprieve, it is not advisable to shorten the delay. I can bear witness, moreover, that the examination leading to a recommendation of mercy is conducted in France with a gravity that does not exclude an evident willingness to reprieve to the full extent that law and public opinion will allow.
14. Since there are no executions on Sunday, Saturday night is al-ways a good night in death row.
15. Bela Just, op. cit.
16. A great surgeon, himself a Catholic, told me that he had learned never to tell his patients, even when they were believers, that they were suffering from an incurable cancer. The shock, he believed, was too dangerous, and even risked jeopardizing their faith.
17. Devoyod, op. cit. It is impossible to read objectively the petitions for reprieve presented by fathers and mothers who evidently can-not comprehend the punishment that has suddenly fallen upon them. 20. France ranks ahead of all other nations in consumption of alcohol, fifteenth in construction.
18. At the end of the last century, the partisans of capital punish-ment made much of an increase in the incidence of crime after 1880, which seemed to parallel a diminution in the application of the death penalty. It was in 1880, however, that the law permit-ting retail liquor establishments to set up shop without previous authorization was promulgated. Such facts are not difficult to in-terpret!
19. It should be pointed out that it is the custom in American prisons to conduct the condemned man