By akademiotoelektronik, 10/04/2023

Death Penalty: How Patrick Henry Escaped It Just Five Years Before It Was Abolished

"To death ! To death !" These words have been ringing out for three days before the Assize Court of Aube, in the city of Troyes. For the last day of hearing of the trial of Patrick Henry, 23, the murderer of little Philippe Bertrand, 7, many of them met while awaiting the deliberation. At 6:30 p.m. on February 20, 1977, after only an hour and a half of deliberation, the members of the jury, seven men and three women, returned to their places. The room freezes, the breaths are cut with the approach of the long awaited decision. The verdict ends up falling: mitigating circumstances are retained. A cry then breaks the silence that intoxicates the room, it is the mother of the murderer who exclaims, relieved. To everyone's surprise, her son will not be guillotined.

Read alsoDeath penalty: the long road to abolition

A year earlier, Patrick commits a terrible crime in the city of Troyes: he takes the life of a child. He kidnaps little Philippe after school and hopes for a ransom in return. But 18 days later, the boy's lifeless body was found wrapped in a blanket under a bed in a hotel room. Difficult to forget the words of the television presenter Roger Gicquel which follow: “France is afraid”. Stupor gives way to hatred and anger, the city of Troyes is set ablaze, then the whole of France. We are in 1977, five years before the abolition of the death penalty in France in 1981. A look back at this trial, which forever marked French judicial history.

The “irreversible penalty” trial...

The trial opened in Troyes on January 18, 1977. Patrick Henry's fate already seemed sealed: "the trial of irreversible punishment, that of blood money", wrote Le Figaro on January 18, 1977. An indefensible man was then judged , and lawyers did not rush to defend him. It was finally Maître Robert Bocquillon who got down to it, and the man immediately called on a colleague to support him: Robert Badinter, who had already pleaded in this court, five years earlier, in the case Buffet-Bontems, the cause of two defendants. Condemned to the death penalty, their execution in the early morning of November 28, 1972 forever marked Robert Badinter, lawyer for the second thief. This time, for the trial of Patrick Henry, he did not come to defend a man, he came to take his revenge and advocate the abolition of the death penalty.

The hearings begin, the material facts are exposed. The newspapers of the time, including Le Monde and Le Figaro, then reported the cold and detached personality of the accused, who did not express an ounce of remorse. Memories are still marked by his cynicism, when, during the search for the little boy, he was suspect number one and came out of police custody: in front of the media, he proclaimed his innocence: "I am for the trouble of death in this case. We do not have the right to attack the life of a child”, he even declared.

And yet, Patrick Henry killed the child, because "his crying bothered him," he confessed to the police. For 12 days, the boy's lifeless body remains under a hotel bed, while Patrick resumes his daily life: dinners, a weekend in Switzerland with friends, nightclub outings... The man is indefensible in view of the horror of his crime and his utter cynicism. “Implacable” even, according to Robert Badinter. The abolitionist lawyer prefers to remain in the background on the question of the facts and the personality of his client, while the Advocate General does not make gifts. "Where there was a trial of Patrick Henry, which was impaidable, I chose to substitute the death penalty trial", analyzes Robert Badinter after the trial in Paris Match.

See also – Death penalty: 40 years later, Robert Badinter pleads for “universal” abolition

... becomes that of the death penalty.

If it did not lead to the de facto end of the death penalty in France - two were then pronounced - the trial of Patrick Henry nevertheless had a strong resonance in the debates on abolition. He was first struck by the horror of the crime, but it was the decision and the scope of the trial that marked people's minds even more. In this case, everything was in place for the accused to be sentenced to death, but it turns out that the jurors were not influenced by the public opinion which rumbled at the door of the court. Moreover, a local newspaper had published their names and addresses, while the whole town buzzed with one cry: "Death!" How to explain a verdict that goes against all predictions?

Several leads and analyzes were made following the deliberation, by the media and the main parties concerned. The speech of Patrick Henry's sister is a first track: she offers him, at the bar, a moving proof of love, so much so that two jurors cried, reports Le Monde in its hearing report. “When the sister appeared, so close to all of us, all of a sudden, something changed,” recalls Robert Badinter. “We said to ourselves: there is also the mother of the assassin, his sister, his father”.

Then, among the 46 hearings of witnesses, several possibly influenced the opinion of the jurors: that of Father Clapier who communicated with him and with whom he resumed contact in prison. The latter recalls the irresponsible nature of the death penalty, a “decision of desperation”. But also others, further removed from the case, such as Professor Lwoff, 74 years old and Nobel Prize in Medicine, the jurist Jacques Léauté, director of the Paris Institute of Criminology and the psychiatrist and criminologist Yves Roumajon. All find themselves at the helm, not to defend the man, but to affirm their abolitionist convictions.

Read alsoThese countries that still practice the death penalty in the world

However, the personality who had the most weight in the balance is unequivocally Monsignor Fauchet, Bishop of Troyes, who had called a few days earlier in a message published in the bulletin of the diocese to the serenity of consciences. An investigation by Claude Fouchier, ex-reporter at RTL, had shown that out of nine jurors drawn by lot, at least three had religious convictions, and these prohibited them from voting for death. Convictions reinforced by the speech of their bishop.

«À nous d'aider à ce que la justice soit rendue sereinement. Cela suppose que chacun lutte contre ses propres passions, sa peur, son esprit de vengeance, pour que les jurés puissent se prononcer en leur âme et conscience.» «Vous avez appris qu'il a été dit «œil pour œil et dent pour dent», «tu aimeras ton prochain et tu haïras ton ennemi», et moi je vous dis: «Aimez vos ennemis et priez pour ceux qui vous persécutent afin d'être vraiment les fils de votre Père qui est aux cieux.»Appel à la sérénité de l'évêque de Troyes, dans un message de Noël à ses diocésains.

The conscience of lawyers facing the conscience of men

On the third day, the final pleas are expected. The noose is tightening, the end is approaching. Maître Émile-Lucien Fraisse, lawyer for the civil party, turns to the jurors and asks for death “so that there are no more parents in tears; so that there are no more innocents immolated; so that we never see these unbearable images again.”

Master Bocquillon, he tries to give a little humanity to the man of ice: “If we are particularly sensitive to the atrocity of this affair, it is that Patrick Henry is the normal son of normal people. He is a spoiled child of the profit society and has whirled around in crime. The monster is the son of a woman who is here. He could be ours, mine, everyone's son. So, this pity that he did not have for his victim, I ask you with all my heart that you have it for him”.

But those words alone wouldn't have convinced the jury, he knew. Robert Badinter, who was here to defend the abolition of the death penalty, then involved himself body and soul in his one and a half hour plea: "I do not believe in the grace of the President of the Republic in what concerns Patrick Henry. What you have in your hands and you alone is the right of life and death. You can kill him or not."

And the lawyer pronounces this terrible sentence, voluntarily putting images on the words to influence the decision of the jurors: "If you vote for death, know well that it will be cut in two". He adds: “Then time will pass. There will be other heinous crimes, because there always have been. And then one day, in ten years, in fifteen years, the death penalty will be abolished in France, as it is almost everywhere. And you will be alone with your vote. You will tell your children that you have sentenced a child killer to death, and you will see their eyes.”

After so much ardor in the defense, three jurors burst into tears. The fate of a man is now in their hands. The accused, who had remained almost silent throughout the trial, then spoke up and asked Philippe's parents for forgiveness: “I know how terrible what I did was. I know that better than anyone. And I regret it from the bottom of my heart.” After only 1h30 of deliberation, the jurors return. The president reads the answers. And against all odds, the young man is not sentenced to death but to life imprisonment, due to "mitigating circumstances". “Your young age has served you,” addresses the president. Patrick promises: “You won't regret it”.

See also - Death penalty: a disturbing survey? (09/15/2020)