BOOK REVIEW: Reflections on the death penalty by Arthur

Koestler and Albert Camus9

Cecilia POPA10
Grundtvig Assistant
UK
The death penalty has been an ample debated subject over the years, and,
unfortunately, the present fails to conclude its existence. We kill in the name of
law and we shrug shoulders when we are wrong, convicting innocent people. The
reflections on the death penalty written by Arthur Koestler and Albert Camus,
with a strict reference to their countries, England and France, are meant to justify
the 17th, 18th, 19th and 20th centuries. But because we still have the capital
punishment in the 21st century, it is extremely important to understand what these
great moralists have said and ask ourselves how truly necessary is the death
penalty.
At about five oclock, the prisoner was placed on an eight and a half foot square
scaffold. He was tied with thick ropes, trapped in iron hoops, which fixated his
arms and legs. One of his hands was burnt in a heating dish filled with burning
sulfur; then he was skinned with large red, hot tongs on arms, legs, and chest.
They shed molten resinous pitch and boiled oil on all wounds. These tortures,
repeatedly, snatched terrible screams from him. Four strong horses, whipped by
four aid executioners, pulled the ropes that were rubbing the bleeding and
swelling wounds of the sufferer; pulling the ropes lasted for an hour. The limbs
were elongated, but were not separated; thus, the executioners cut some muscles;
and the limbs were separated one by one. Damiens, who had lost two legs and an
arm, was still breathing and he gave his last breath only when all his parts got
separated, from his bleeding torso to his last arm.11
Reflections on the death penalty
The book, given its scale, is divided into three sections. In addition to the written
entries by Jean Bloch-Michel, the 1979 and 1957 editions contain annexed
documents. The first section of the book captures the reflections on hanging by
Arthur Koestler, the second presents the reflections on the guillotine by Albert
Camus, and the third section, by Jean Bloch-Michel, reflects on the death penalty
9

The present article is a translation of the Romanian article Recenzie: Reflecii asupra pedepsei
cu moartea de Arthur Koestler i Albert Camus, by Cecilia Popa, published in PROBATION
junior, vol. IV, no. 1, 2012.
10
ppcecilia@yahoo.com
11
The description of Robert-Francois Damiens execution from 1757 by Voltaire in Histoire du
Parlement de Paris, (The history of the Paris Parliament) cap. 67. (p. 176) Damiens was the valet
of the King Ludovic XVI of France, and on January 5th, 1757 he tried to assassinate the sovereign
with a knife, but he only managed to hurt him. For the deed he was accused of regicide and his
execution remains in the history of the death penalty as one of the most horrific executions.

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in France. The volume synthesizes the death penalty issue all over the world,
using a chart with the world study on the death penalty, containing data provided
by Amnesty International an organization engaged in a relentless struggle
against the death penalty. (p. 10)
The death penalty has always been subjected to allegations for moral, economic,
political, and educational reasons.
In 1976 a reversal of the jurisprudence allowed the reintroduction of the death
penalty in the American law in 38 out of the 50 States and in the Federal
Government. Even today, in the United States executions take place in the
presence of relatives of the victim, which prints a family revenge, inspired by the
Biblical formula eye for an eye and tooth for a tooth (p. 8) or also known as the
retaliation law. At the same time, in many American States today, most
condemned to death are or were juveniles at the time of committing the crime.
Thanks to new techniques in criminal justice, in particular the identification of
DNA, it has been reached to prove the innocence of a significant number of
sentenced to death. Since 1973, over 90 offenders were found innocent thanks to
the DNA identification, after they spent many years on the so-called death row.
Pronouncing a death penalty makes a judicial error to be irreparable.
Introductions to the editions from 1979 and 1957 by Jean Bloch-Michel
France
The death penalty has seen both ardent abolitionists and incurable supporters who
expressed their beliefs through both political campaigns and legal actions. In the
'80s, in France, actions drew attention to the death penaltys abolition. In 1976 it
was created a committee to study violence, crime, and delinquency under the
supervision of the Minister of Justice at that time, Alain Peyrefitte. The Response
to violence report was published, which proposed to abolish the death penalty in
the recommendation 103. Surprisingly or not, the Minister of Justice concluded
that France was not prepared for abolition: I do not think this is the time for
death penaltys abolition (p. 15) because before proposing the death penaltys
abolition to the Parliament, French people must be prepared, not at all
challenged. (p. 16) Many of those who form the public opinion believed that the
death penalty protects them.
Jean Bloch-Michel mentioned that the abolition of capital punishment will
trigger, sooner or later, the abolition of life imprisonment sentence. (p. 17)
England
The author argued that democratic regimes are hiding bits of authoritarian regimes
or germs of the civil liberties destruction. Arthur Koestler, who was under the
threat of a death sentence in 1937 for charges of espionage, started a campaign to
abolish the death penalty throughout England in 1955. Also, during that year he
published the volume Reflections on Hanging.

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There is at least one significant difference between the French law and the British
law. In the case of homicide, in the English law there are no mitigating
circumstances. If the French jury could formulate a sentence that could have went
from prison with suspension to the death penalty, the England Assize Court did
not have this possibility: The defendant was either declared innocent and allowed
to leave the court, being removed from prosecution, or he was found guilty and
had no way to avoiding the death penalty. (p. 21) There was however a third
possibility, namely, the defendant was declared guilty but insane, being moved
from the prison to the hospice. But because of the famous MNaghten norms
(which presented, almost unreachable, conditions under which an individual was
considered insane) it was almost impossible for a person guilty of murder to be
declared insane. Practically, they sought a simplification of justice. The jurors and
the judges had to decide between total innocence and total guilt, meaning life or
death. In his book, Arthur Koestler reacted especially against this simplification,
which decided the fate of a highly complex human being through a simplistic
barbaric justice.
The 1957 Law regarding the homicides, approved by the House of Lords, brought
a transformation in the criminal law, by emphasizing a more humane approach to
sentences. In other words, in England the death penalty felt into disuse. At that
time, in France the situation was different, as Jean Bloch-Michel indicated: given
the indifference of the public opinion and those in power, it might be said that it is
a problem that interest no one; but the silence is especially theirs, of the
authorities; it would be enough to torn someone in pieces for everyone to hear the
ugly noise of executions. (p. 23)
The death penalty still exists only because we cover our eyes and ears in order to
know nothing about it. (p. 23-24)
Reflections on Hanging by Arthur Koestler
The death penalty is an issue that is not just about statistics or statistical average,
but morality and feelings. (p. 27)
The legacy of the past
The devil in the box
Executioners were perceived as todays movie stars. Their presence had a sort of
macabre kindness, such as an old family joke that only abolitionists and others
humorless do not know to appreciate it. (p. 30) Lord Chief Justice12 claimed, in
the 1960s, that it was normal for the judge to have his head wrapped in black
when pronouncing the death penalty because it was a sign of mourning. One of
the executioners also claimed that maintaining the traditional aspects of the
process was something sacred.
12

The Magistrate with the highest rank in England; a public function shared with the Lord
Chancellor and for some other duties with the Minister of the Interior. (p. 30)

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Arthur Koestler claimed that British people had a greater degree of discipline and
respect for the law, which is why the death penalty was a necessary evil in those
times. But a series of investigations of the Parliamentary Commission and the
Royal Commission in 1930 and 1948 showed that the irreplaceable faith in the
death penalty in Britain was just a superstition. Like any other superstition, it
manifests as the devil in the box. Vainly the lid is kept being closed by the force
of facts and statistics, the devil would jump out again pushing the box lid with the
unconscious and irrational force of traditional beliefs. (p. 34)
The Bloody Code13
The most important British jurist of the nineteenth century, Sir James Stephen,
argued that that law was the clumsiest, careless, and cruel law that ever disgraced
a civilized country. (p. 35) On the English territory, the hangings and places
intended for them were so frequent, that in the first published guide for travelers
these places were listed as landmarks. (Ibidem) Moreover, almost for a century
and a half, the days of executions were the equivalent of the national holidays, but
were more common than those holidays. Some workers, such as those who were
responsible for the delivery of goods, were not operating on a given day if during
that day an execution took place.
The events of public executions were more than national shame: they were
outbursts of collective madness, whose distant echoes resound even today when at
the prison gate an execution is advertised. [...] The scenes carried out with those
occasions gained unexpected aspects of spiritual and violent agitation. People
were fighting with each other. In 1807, 40,000 people came to witness the
executions of Holloway and Haggerty. The crowd was filled with such frenzy that
when the show ended, on that spot remained nearly 100 dead. (p. 35-36)
Public executions in eighteenth and nineteenth centuries were true public
spectacles where all social classes attended. The ladies of the aristocracy queued
to visit the offenders cells. A good place was booked at exorbitant prices; people
came from the uttermost parts of the country to witness a splendid hanging. And
all this happened in the sensitive period of Romanticism.
In many cases the executioners were drunk during the executions, and because of
this they had to try two or three times to hang someone. Sometimes, the victim
was brought back to their senses by cutting a notch in the heel to let the blood
shed, and then hanged again. In other cases, the executioner and his assistants had
to cling on the victims legs to increase weight. [...] But there were also cases of
victims who returned to their senses on the dissection table. (p. 37)
Similar horrible scenes also took place after the executions were consumed, when
mothers brought their sick children to the scaffold in order to heal them by the
touch of those executed. Moreover, body parts of those killed were used in
preparing medicines for different symptoms, such as toothache.
13

In the early nineteenth century, in England, the criminal law was known as the Bloody Code.
The Code was unique in the world because it mandated the death penalty for around 220 230
offenses and crimes. (p. 34)

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The age of criminal liability in the 18th century was at the age of seven. For a
child to be executed it had to be at least 14, but if someone would have proven a
clear evidence of propensity to evil (p. 38), a child was liable to death by
hanging. Chief Justice claimed that such execution had to take place because the
example given by such punishment will serve to stop other children from
committing similar crimes. (Ibidem) A particular case mentions of a situation of
two children sentenced to death. One of them was illiterate and the other one was
mentally retarded and their education was reduced to what they had learned from
gangster movies and cartoons that appeared in newspapers. (p. 39) But,
according to an official, the movies and the comics with gangsters were
essentially unrelated to the trial. (Ibidem)
An individual who did not turn 21 years old is not considered mature enough to
sign a contract or a will, however, he is considered mature enough to be taken
responsible for a crime and be executed for it. (p. 40)
Catherine the Great said that people are guided by temperance, not by being
excessively harsh (p. 41), and her well known Instructions, intended to abolish
the death penalty, revolutionized Russian criminal justice system.
The death penalty by hanging was considered a panacea against all crimes within
the meaning of the Bloody Code. Thus, England, considered one of the oldest
democracies in Europe, stood out not through the violent effects of foreign
invasion but by its own legislative invasion in its own citizens lives.
The causes of the Bloody Code
There were three causes of the bloody code:
- The industrial revolution in England
- The British disgust towards authority
- The custom of English legal system the precedent, which canceled any
new idea or new approach.
If during medieval time, the death penalty was provided for offenses such as
murder, treason, voluntary arson, and rape, reaching at the beginning of the
eighteenth century for the death penalty to be administered for a total of 50
offenses, the Bloody Code, as noted previously, foresaw executions for
approximately 230 offenses.
The industrial revolution meant that cities were growing fast, without
administration and without security. The old order was disintegrating and social
chaos erupted. The sudden expansion of extreme poverty [...] coincided with
unprecedented accumulation of wealth, which appeared as a challenge in addition
to committing crimes. All foreign visitors agreed that they had never seen such
wealth and splendor as in the homes and shops of London, and in the same time
so many crooks, thieves, and robbers. (p. 43) This revolution lasted a century and
ended in 1829 when the modern police was created.
But the English were afraid of a police that could limit their freedom and,
consequently, they chose the executioner, the familiar figure at the expense of the
new and foreign one. Here is an argument of the defenders of the death penalty

PROBATION junior 49

if the execution by hanging is abolished, the police will need to use arms to fight
against criminals who will not be afraid anymore. (p. 44)
An example of the third cause of the bloody code is given as follows: because of a
gang of thieves from 1775 who robbed a number of owners in Hampshire and
used to cover their faces to avoid being recognized, the Parliament enacted a law
by which any person armed or disguised is guilty of a crime punishable by death
penalty. The thieves gang disappeared quickly from Hampshire but the law
remained in force for almost a century, until 1873. The purpose of this law
expanded, allowing judges to apply it for a wide range of situations. And so, that
precedent created the basis for other convictions. From this singular case, 350
more cases of criminals were sentenced to die. This situation showed the
unlimited power a magistrate could have.
The oracles
The English judiciary system is not based on a code, but on the application of the
so called Common Law, which is the custom or the habit. (p. 45) The Judges
decisions were registered and received precedent value.
However, the English law did not accept torture as a mean to obtaining
confessions, as did the Roman Law or the Canon Law. In England, to carve out
was simply a more severe form of execution, not an investigation process. While
in other countries from the continent the procedure was inquisitorial, in England
the procedure was accusatory. (p. 46)
But even if torture was not used, England was far from being compassionate.
The aversion toward written law left the English judiciary system at the hands of
the oracles, the wig wearers who judged strictly on the basis of the precedent.
The law was not only applied by them but also made by them. (Ibidem)
Any legislative attempt brought by their opponents or by third parties, who
repealed the death penalty, at least for some crimes, was categorically rejected
because as Lord Chief said we do not want to witness the change of laws in
England. (p. 47) Lord Chief also added that the death penalty law was voted in
the most glorious period of our history and there is no reason to risk it by
exposing it to some experiments. (Ibidem) So, hanging publicly a seven-year-old
child was not reason enough.
The public revolt
Between 1808 and 1837 a decisive fight was worn in order to repeal the Bloody
Code. The reformist movement had always faced the argument that only the
death penalty has an exemplary meaning. (p. 48)
In 1811 the petitions in this regard triggered a surprising evolution of the death
penalty issue. On behalf of the public, reformists required changes in sentences. In
1819 there were already over 12,000 petitions coming from different entities such
as the guildsmen in London, bankers, juries etc. Therefore, the Parliament created
the Select Committee, which prepared a report that included for the first time a
statistic of crime and punishment in England and the amendments to the

PROBATION junior 50

provisions of criminal law for the past three centuries. (p. 49) The report
incorporated the view of various social actors such as the merchants, guards,
priests, but not the judges.
And soon the public opinion stopped challenging the bloody code.
Hanging is not enough
Another famous English jurist, this time from the seventeenth century, remained
associated with the Piously Butchery by wheel and rope supporting it with
biblical quotes. The heart and the entrails of a man needed to be torn from the
living body of the hanged one. Any argument for removing cruelty during the
executions was fined with the idea of destroying the Constitutions foundation.
Another form of execution dating since 1296, such as burning someone alive, did
not include the barbarian torture, and so it was considered meaningless of an
exemplary value. And it was repealed in 1816.
In 1948 corporal punishment was abolished because, according to the Atkins
inquiry Committee on corporal punishment, we do not have the assurance that
corporal punishment has a tremendous effect in terms of its exemplary, as claimed
by those in favor of its application. (p. 55) However, one form of corporal
punishment still remained in use, such as whipping, administered by a chief
guardian who knows the job because by applying a humiliating punishment, the
offender would be deprived of all hopes for reformation. (Ibidem)
The judges and the rights of the accused
Only by 1836, those who were accused by a crime, punishable by death penalty,
were allowed to be defended by a lawyer. (p. 56) Until then, it was considered
that the lawyer presence would undermine the confidence that he [the offender]
can have in the absolute impartiality of the judge (Ibidem), moreover, the
presence of a counsel was quite unnecessary as long as the judge was seen as the
best friend of the accused. (Ibidem)
For 70 years the judges opposed categorically the creation of a Court of Criminal
Appeal. Only in 1907 this institution was created. Before that, there was no
institution to which a death sentenced could have made an appeal. The only hope
an offender had, in this situation, was to receive royal clemency.
The doctrine of maximum roughness
When the social progress started to surpass the law, and the harshness of
punishments appeared to public opinion as disproportionate, the jurors began to
falter before providing a verdict. (p. 58)
Cesare Beccaria, head of the judiciary reform in the Age of Enlightenment in
Europe, argued that the purpose of punishment is to protect society, and when this
punishment does not serve its purpose, the legal barbarism becomes no more than
common barbarism: the same ferocious spirit that drives the hand of the
legislator, also leads the hand of parricides or assassins. (p. 59)

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Koestler argued that the harshness breeds impunity and thus the moderate
punishments are more effective in preventing crime than the excessive ones,
because they are applied without delay and without hesitation. (Ibidem)
Moreover, people are scared to give excessive punishments to their peers amid
inhuman laws. He also accused the monopoly of judges in England, nowhere else
present, comparing them with the alchemists in the Middle Ages who lived
hidden in a mysterious universe composed of secret formulas, with their spirit
back to the past, refractory to external changes, wanting to know nothing but their
inaccessible world. (p. 60)
Social changes always lead to one of these two alternatives: harsher laws or
milder laws. And England chose a bloody Code. Judges became victims of their
own professional deformation (p. 61) because they knew too little about human
nature and about the killers profile, so their behaviors became inhuman.
From a psychiatric point of view, the horrors of the Bloody Code such as
hanging children and the orgies that took place during the public executions were
nothing more but symptoms of a disease known as hysterical anxiety. (Ibidem)
Thieves and cops
This fourth power of magistrates had a considerable support from the
representatives of the Church.
Those who opposed the abolition of the death penalty were the first ones in line to
suffer if laws were to be tamed, because they believed that if laws would change,
their already poorly paid work would become more difficult. They believed in
death penalty because of its power of example and repression, and of its easiness
in implementation.
During a survey held in 1856, concluded with the purpose of determining whether
executions should be public or not, a retired police inspector argued that I do not
think there is a way that could equally execute in secret and satisfy the public. (p.
64)
The Committee recommended that executions should not be public, but these
executions continued to be performed publically for another 12 years. The
Committee's decision based on that survey considered that, statistically speaking,
the assumption according to which the abolition of death penalty would lead to an
increase in armed criminals was not valid. The number of crimes committed with
illegal weapons was not correlated with the number of executions. In Belgium,
where the death penalty was abolished at the time, armed criminals were fewer
than in France where capital punishment was in force.
Interesting is also the fact that ones decision to be part of one side or the other of
this discussion was related to someones position. Before he became Interior
Minister, Sir Samuel Hoare fought for abolition; as soon as he took receipt of the
portfolio he opposed it. Soon after he had ended the portfolio he returned to being
an opponent of the death penalty, addressing the subject in a very moving book.
(p. 69) Therefore, a public position was reason enough to have a stricter attitude
and be more refractory to external influences.

PROBATION junior 52

Reflections on hanging a pig or what is criminal responsibility

In the Middle Ages, and, for some isolated cases, even in the nineteenth century,
the animals guilty of killing a human being were judged as humans were,
according to the law. They were defended by a lawyer, sometimes paid, and in
most cases they were sentenced to be hanged, burned or buried alive. (p. 70)
As outrageous as it was, the picture of an animal killed for allegedly breaking the
law was very common. But, intellectually speaking, why are we more outraged
by the execution of an animal than of a human being? (p. 71) As long as the
mental deficiency and the lack of moral sense were not sufficient to annul the
criminal responsibility and the possibility to plead guilty but insane, arguments
such as your dog knew the nature of his action and knew it hurt while performing
it were very common. (p. 72) Moreover, the law had such definition of
dementia that no one was really insane enough to be able to fit in it. (p. 73) Thus,
a mentally ill person who was brought before the court could have been admitted
to a psychiatric institution or placed under surveillance, but only if he or she did
no commit a crime punishable by death penalty.
The precedent without the precedent or the M'Naghten norms
Dementia, as a defense, is an exception in the processes related to offenses other
than murder, while in the case of murder it becomes almost a rule. This is
because murder is closer to dementia than any other crime. (p. 77)
M'Naghten was an insane man, a protestant from Northern Ireland who believed
that the Pope, the Jesuits Order, and the Conservative Party leader wanted to kill
him. Reason why he bought a gun and went to kill the Conservative Party leader.
He did not shoot him, instead he shot his secretary. Eight doctors were heard at
his trial and all eight of them said that given his fixed idea, M'Naghten had no
control over his actions. (p. 79) Based on this decision, M'Naghten was sent to
the hospice, but because many discussions surrounded this event, the oracles
claimed that such insane man as M'Naghten needed to be hanged in order to
prevent other insane people from doing similar acts. Therefore, the House of
Lords drew up a questionnaire on criminal liability of those with mental
disabilities. The questionnaire was sent to 15 judges who presided over the courts
of the kingdom. No medical staff was approached in this regard. The judges'
decision was contradictory to the decision of the doctors, and they suggested that
the man should be hanged. That judges decision became known as M'Naghten
norms and it was used as precedent for 113 years.
M'Naghten norms were created when the word psychiatry did not exist and there
was no such thing for a man to have a biological past, animalistic instincts, and
impulses that [...] are still part of his natural heritage and, at the same time, a
partial explanation and justification of his actions; in addition, no one imagined
that education, the childhood experience, and the social environment are largely

PROBATION junior 53

responsible for the formation of the character, including the character of

criminals. (p. 81-82)
Yet, all depended on the judges humanity or its lack the judge should refer
strictly to the law, then expand the meaning of words used by the law to the
point where the individual who does not have the exercise of the judiciary
language gets confused by the judge who distorts and deforms the poor words
until one gets to wonder if disputing the language is even necessary; and which
language distortions obvious benefit is that it can mean whatever the judge wants
to mean. (p. 85) And opposing a judges words, sometimes a mans life was put
at stake. (p. 86)
Koestler argued that the judges were the obstacles in reforming these norms. They
did not even consider the experience of other countries, because the foreigners
are different. (p. 87) Koestler also claimed that the best advocate for the
abolition of the death penalty is the argument used by proponents themselves and
their mentality. (p. 90)
The free will and the determinism or the philosophy of hanging
A cause can generate one or more effects. The genetics and the social
environment generate the human behavior. And even if the individual has the free
will, his decisions are a result of his past.
From a scientific point of view, a man's actions are strictly determined by genes
that have been transmitted through his heritage, by the endocrine glands or his
liver, by education, and by past experiences which shape his habits, thoughts,
beliefs, and philosophy, similar to the functioning of a watch that is determined by
its springs, by its wheels, and the connections between them. (p. 93)
Education is the foundation for a set of behaviors and reactions of an individual
able to act according to social norms. But if the free will is a pure illusion, a
paradox is created The criminal responsibility would be an absurdity, because
the word responsibility implies the possibility of free election during an action,
while free will is an illusion and all our actions are pre-determined. I could not
help myself would be enough to say in defense of anyone, because none of us can
help being what we are. (p. 94)
But we must agree that it is up to us, at least to some extent, to choose our
activity for the next five minutes, because our whole experience with reality,
any impetus and incentive to exercise our will rests on the decisions that occur
from one moment to another, certainly not on the experience solely based on the
conduct of a monotone chain in which each link was connected in ancient times.
(p. 95) Especially because the man cannot live without the illusion that he is the
master of his own destiny. (p. 97) But science shows that the man, when it comes
to choosing how he acts, is free like a robot in doing so. (Ibidem)
But whether we speak of free will or determinism, we need laws because if the
behavior of radioactive atoms would depend on no law, the world would not form
the universe, but chaos. (p. 99)

PROBATION junior 54

In fact, the dilemma of freedom-predestination is the essence of the human

condition. (p. 103)
Lord Goddard and the Sermon on the Mountain or the result to a philosophy of
hanging
Every sentence has three goals: to punish, to protect, and to rehabilitate. (p.
105)
The death penalty involves revenge, but in this case is not only the criminal who
needs to be punished, but also the alcoholic father, the mother who raise him like
that [...] the teachers, employers, and the entire society who were accomplices of
the murderer, who assisted him or incited him to act the way he acted. (p. 106)
The religious and metaphysical systems had to explain the presence of evil and
answer why did God give man freedom to choose evil? (p. 107)
The humanization of the criminal justice system through the courts for children,
parole or through the presence of open prisons was due to the understanding of the
social origins of a crime. Unfortunately, a death penalty makes impossible any
reparation.
If for any offense, other than murder, the judge had a wide range of sentences
from which to choose, for murder he could decide in two ways only: innocent or
sentenced to death. But the greatest defect of the law on murder is that it
provides a unique punishment for an offense for which defining liability can be
extremely difficult. (p. 112)
Law makers believed that abolishing the death penalty would also deny an
offenders criminal responsibility and it would force the use of notions such as
uncontrollably impulse and diminished liability, which would lead to more
controversy.
Being impossible to predict when a man acted freely, and must die, and when
under compulsion, which means that he has the right to live, the only solution is to
bring the law regarding the death penalty at the same level with the other laws, by
removing the sentence that addresses the death penalty [], which only gives the
possibility of all or nothing. (p. 113)
Unfortunately, jurors cannot reduce the length of the rope, as you cannot strangle
or break the neck with suspension. (p. 115)
Reflections on the guillotine by Albert Camus
When the supreme justice causes only vomiting to the honest man, whom it
supposes to defend, it is hard to argue that having this sentence brings peace and
order in the city. On the contrary, it appears clearly that it is no less outrageous
than the murder itself, and the new assassination, not only that it does not stop
insulting the society, but it does defile it again. (p. 119-120)

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A social problem becomes a serious illness because no one dares to talk about it
openly the death penalty is a necessary evil that legitimizes murder because it
is necessary, but of which no one speaks about because it is wrong. (p. 120)
And when imagination sleeps, words are emptied of meaning: deaf people take
note about the conviction of a man without paying him attention; but if the
machine is showed to them, if they touch the machines wood and iron, if they
hear the noise of the falling head, the public imagination, suddenly awakened
from sleep, will repudiate both this type of expression and the death penalty. (p.
121)
Albert Camus did not believe that man is a social animal, but was convinced that
man cannot live outside society, so establishing a punishment was due to the
societys responsibility, but on a rational and efficient scale. Like Arthur Koestler,
Albert Camus also believed that capital punishment does nothing more than
dirtying the society, more so as its supporters could not justify it rationally.
The last public execution in France took place in 1939, when authorities pointed
that advertising a public execution in the press did nothing more but delight the
sadistic instincts among readers. (p. 124) The executions were moved behind
closed doors. What kind of power of example can have the stealthily killing at
night in the courtyard of a prison?, Camus asked himself. (Ibidem) During the
National Assembly in 1791, a representative of the people argued that for
controlling people it takes a frightening spectacle. (Ibidem) Moreover,
proponents of the death penalty had as a singular argument for this punishment,
the power of example. But how could it give an example if it did take place
behind closed doors?
And what crime is more heinous than the murder committed for public delight,
which remains imperfect for the show? The blood leaves the vessels in the
severed carotid. Muscles contract, their fibrillation is intoxicating; the intestines
curl and the heart beating is irregular, incomplete, fascinating; the mouth grips at
moments in a terrifying grimace; it is true that on this decapitated head, with
immobile eyes, with dilated pupils they dont watch, fortunately, but they are not
troubled either, they have no cadaver opalescence and they do not move; their
transparency is alive, but their fixation is of death; all these can take minutes, even
hours to individuals without disabilities: death is not immediate... (p. 126) It is
said that Charlotte Cordaz's face blushed by the palm of the executioner after
beheading. (Ibidem) The sociologist Tarde argued that it is better to kill without
torture than to torture without killing. (p. 129)
By masking these executions, the state confirms that it does not really believe in
their power of example (p. 128), and that these executions are taking place due to
tradition and routine. A law is applied mot--mot, and our inmates die imitatively
based on a theory in which executioners do not believe. (p. 129)
Furthermore, moving these executions behind closed doors could have triggered
the delay of abolishing the death penalty If you remove the atrocity of this
show, if you perform executions inside prisons, you will quell the excessive
public outrage from recent years and you will strengthen the death penalty,

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because now it has no reason to be carried out and becomes more hideous; either
you kill publicly or admit that you do not feel authorized to kill. (Ibidem)
Camus also asked to consider a paradox about the death penalty, which is that the
society is at least naive to believe in the power of example of such punishment, as
long as it does not stop the actual crimes.
The law will always be less complex than the nature itself. The power of example
that the capital punishment proclaimed (and still proclaims) was statistically
unfounded. Koestler wrote that in England while pickpockets were executed,
others thieves showed their mastery in the crowd surrounding the scaffold on
which their fellow criminals were hanged; out of 250 criminals who were
hanged, 170 previously witnessed one or two executions; in 1886, out of 167
sentenced to death who were initially imprisoned in Bristol penitentiary, 164
witnessed at least one execution before. (p. 131)
Any form of passion, such as love, honor or revenge defeats pain, and so, death. If
we want that capital punishment to be a truly scarecrow, human nature should be
different, more exactly, to be as stable and calm as the law itself. (p. 132)
Any criminal will declare his innocence before a trial and will be afraid of death
only after trial. Camus said that for the law to scare, it should not allow any
mitigating circumstance. The survival instinct is essential as is the death instinct.
Therefore, the desire to kill sometimes coincides with the desire to die the
preservation instinct is replaced, in various proportions, by the instinct of
destruction. In a sense, you kill in order to die. (p. 133)
The statistics for this issue during the 20th century showed that there was no
correlation between the death penalty and crime, the only connection was the law.
Basically, the offender is cut in half not so much for the crime he committed, but
for all the crimes that could have been committed and were not, and that may be
committed and will not. (p. 135)
If it is important to frequently demonstrate to the people the power a death
penalty has, than the executions must be frequent; but that means that crimes must
be frequent as well, which will only prove that the death penalty does not impress
to the extent that it should do, hence it is both useless and necessary. (Ibidem)
And if it useless but necessary, then the state hides it. Therefore, the death penalty
is a law that knows the crime that it triggers, in order to turn on the machinery of
death, and ignore the one that prevents it.
Like Koestler, Camus also concluded that the death penalty is a form of revenge
because sanctioning without preventing is called, indeed, revenge. (p. 138)
Even if we agree that the murder of a victim is compensated through the death of
his or her offender, the difference between death penalty and homicide is similar
to the difference between a prison and a concentration camp. Moreover, the
capital punishment is a premeditated death, and a premeditated murder is
considered more serious than a violent, but unpremeditated, crime.

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The individual sentenced to death is basically tortured, oscillating between hope

and animal despair, because degrading and devastating fear, which is a subject
that the convicted man deals with for months or even years while waiting for the
execution, is a more frightening punishment than the death itself, which the victim
was not subjected to. (p. 140)
There is not a big deal to know when you are going to die, a sentenced to death
from Fresnes said. Maddening and frightening is not knowing if youll live. (p.
141) The consciousness remains in a state of inert material, a consciousness that
becomes a mans main enemy. I have no courage even for that (p. 143)
witnessed a young offender who was asked to write his family, a few moments
before execution. If waiting for the execution is a destruction of self, we could
talk about two deaths, the first being by far the worst. And this fundamental
injustice hurts also the offenders relatives.
Camus described how a great surgeon confessed that he did not inform his
patients, not even the faithful ones, when they had an incurable cancer. He
considered that the shock could kill their faith. (p. 144)
After all, when criminals kill they assume the risk of the most dreadful of deaths,
but those who kill these criminals risk nothing, outside of a promotion. (p. 143)
Referring again to the law of retaliation, the crime is committed by an individual
totally guilty against a totally innocent person, the victim. But the society, which
assumes that it represents the victim, is not at all innocent. It is responsible for the
crime that represses. And so, every society has the criminals it deserves. (p.
145-146)
Camus believed that overcrowded houses and inns were already serious nurseries
of crime. So, the French society already had the outbreaks of crime. The author
also mentioned that during the 50s, 60% of the violent crimes were caused by
alcohol consumption. A survey conducted in 1951 in the Fresnes prison yard,
among common law prisoners, showed that 29% of them were chronic alcoholics
and 24% came from alcoholic families. (p. 146-147)
According to Camus, the early 1880s were marked by an increase in crime due to
the legalization of opened kiosks without prior authorization for selling alcohol.
The state that does sow alcohol should not be surprised that collects crime. (p.
147)
If we agree that an alcoholic who commits a crime does not have full
responsibility, then the sentence should not be absolute.
Every society has its own brutes. But the problems they create cannot be solved
by the death penalty. Surely, this punishment could cut the problem from its roots,
but the capital punishment applies not only to these brutes and thus, Camus asked
Can we be sure that none of those executed is recoverable? Can we swear that
none of them is innocent? (p. 149) In 1860, the jurist Olivecroix used the
statistical probability to calculate the judicial error. The conclusion was that one
in 257 cases is innocent and condemned to death penalty. (p. 150)

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Guilt is not established with great rigor in a test tube. A second tube will show
the opposite, and the personal equation will preserve its importance in this deadly
math. And today as yesterday it persists the risk of error. (p. 152)
Camus argued that the processes held at the Court of Assize are influenced by
unpredictability: defendant's history, his attitude, his diction, incidents evaluation
during the hearing, etc. And all these influenced the final decision of the jury. In
1832, the justice reform in France allocated jurors the possibility to grant
undetermined extenuating circumstances, therefore it mattered the way the jury
assessed these circumstances. Death penalty cases are no longer accurately
provided by the law, but by the jury, which [...] makes an assessment based on the
trial. (p. 153)
The Greeks believed that a crime let unpunished would contaminate the fortress.
Camus argued that convicting and harshly punishing an innocent man would also
contaminate a society in an equal manner.
The author mentioned that in the French law the death penalty was classified
based on different crimes, but he also argued that the justice ruled by humans is
not at all as classified as this particular penalty. Why? Because it does know it
can be untrue. Camus asked why justice, in these circumstances, does not show
modesty and does not leave enough space for maneuvers around sentences, so a
possible mistake could be repaired? (p. 154) he continued saying that there are
no righteous people, only hearts more or less unjust, and without absolute
innocence there is no supreme justice. (p. 157)
Camus also considered that the supreme penalty was in fact a religious sanction,
and this religious spectrum allowed corrections in the afterlife. But the capital
punishment as a social construct cannot do that.
Furthermore, the emperor Julian used to avoid giving administrative tasks to
Christians because their belief did not agree with killing other people, and so were
reluctant to administer a death sentence. But later on, Christians came to accept
the death penalty, justifying it through the rehabilitation that happens because of
the immortality of the soul.
As mentioned previously, in social terms the death penalty does nothing but
eliminate a temporary problem, while it permanently crushes the human belief in
life by giving death absolute power. (p. 161)
Proclaiming that an individual must categorically be removed from society,
because he is absolutely wrong, is similar in saying that a society is absolutely
good (p. 162), which is literally false. Moreover, the blood, like alcohol, will
eventually get addictive, like the friendly wine, and bloody laws draw bloody
manners. (p. 163)
Albert Camus reflections are concluded with his belief that societies will not
know peace until they will take death out of their laws.
Dont kill Cain, let live in him a sign of reprobation, also seen by the peoples
eyes, this is the lesson we must learn from the Old Testament. (p. 167)

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The death penalty in France by Jean Bloch-Michel

Jean Bloch-Michel mentioned that throughout the history many thinkers admitted
that individual's life is only a conditional gift received from the state (Rousseau),
or that the death penalty was considered to be part of the nature of things,
absolved by the good and wrong (Montesque), or that the society has the right to
take the life of an individual as long as this life is the most important asset of the
social order (Diderot).
In the years following the French Revolution, the Criminal Code reduced the
number of offenses punishable by death to 32, according to the ordinance 115
from 1670. The death penalty continued to be implemented in four procedures: by
decapitation, by hanging, by breaking on the wheel, and by burning.
Just as Camus stated, the executions by hanging were filled with horrifying events
the executioner, keeping his hands on the arm of the gallows, gets on the tied
hands of the convicted and kicks the convicted stomach with his knees [...] while
the offender spins around four times. (p. 177) Usually, the body remained
hanged for display for one day, before being thrown away to the landfill.
For certain types of offenses, such as murder and premeditated murder, grand
theft, burglary, rape of young girls, the torment of breaking someone on the wheel
was composed of two parts. First, the offender, naked under his shirt, was laid on
a cross, sited on the scaffold, with his head placed on a stone and his limbs
bounded with ropes. The executioner, then, hit him with a rod of iron about 11
times. Second, the body was fixated on the wheel until the heels touched the neck,
and this display was exposed to the public.
In cases of parricide (the act of murdering ones parents), uxoricide (the act of
murdering ones wife) and the murder of priests, after the offenders were broken
on the wheel, they were also burned either alive or dead. Combining forms of
executions was very common. Another combination of executions was burning
and hanging, when the offender was hanged first and then burnt. The practice of
such combinations did not want to aggravate the first procedure, but rather to
reinforce the second one. (p. 179)
Throwing corpses to the landfills or abandoning them along the road, and not
burying them according to the Christian faith, was a form of destroying the
afterlife of those executed. It was about total exclusion, not only from the human
society. (p. 180)
On October 9, 1789, Dr. Guillotin brought to the attention of the National
Assembly the decree regarding the provisional reforming of the criminal
procedure (Ibidem) to which he added six new articles:
-

The first article specified that all of those who commit the same type of
crime to be punished in the same way, regardless of their social status;
The second article suggested that the same procedure should be used
during the execution, regardless of the offense;

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The third article mentioned that the family of the offender should not be
stigmatized as long as the criminal acted alone;
The fourth article specified that those who blame the relatives of those
who committed crimes are to be punished;
The fifth article stated that the offenders property should not be
confiscated;
And the sixth article indicated that the families could bury the bodies of
those executed without having to detail in the citys register the way they
died.

On January 21, 1790, this decree was voted, not before Dr. Guillotin proposed for
the first time the guillotine as a tool for execution, a machine yet to be invented at
the time.
The draft of the Criminal Code, including these changes, was brought to debate on
May 30, 1791. On June 1, 1791, the Assembly decided to maintain the death
penalty by beheading, although this decision was not free from controversies,
such as the fact that this type of execution could easily transform into torture if
not executed properly. This death penalty was adopted along with punishments
such as forced labor, detention in a maximum-security prison, simple detention,
pillory, civil degradation, wrist amputation, deportation, and red iron marking.
In the early 1792 an executioner from Paris sent a memorandum to the Minister of
Justice in which he stated that for an execution to happen according to the law
and lack any horrible events, it would require a highly skilled executioner and an
offender who complies with the procedure. (p. 186)
On March 20, 1792, the Assembly adopted the use of guillotine to execute
offenders, and on April 25, 1792, it took place the first public execution by
guillotine. These public executions ceased in 1939.
In 1810 the Napoleon Criminal Code reintroduced the usage of torture during
imprisonment, but reduced the number of crimes punishable by death, from 32 to
27. By 1832 the punishments such as wrist amputation, red iron marking, and
exposure at the pillory were taken out of the law.
For a short period of time in 1866, prisoners were forced to wear a straitjacket.
But it was soon forbidden, after a former detainee wrote his memoirs and
mentioned about this method of torture.
If in 1793 the law stipulated the presence of one executioner in every department
of the French judiciary system, by 1832 the number of executioners was reduced
drastically. A decision from March 9, 1849 stated the presence of only one chief
executioner in every Court of Appeal and one deputy executioner in every
department of the Court. (p. 193) And by 1870, the decree from November 25
reduced the existence of executioners to just one chief executioner and five deputy
executioners throughout France.
The Napoleons Code referred to 27 offences punishable by death, but the
revision of the code, which took place in 1832, reduced these offences to 16. By
1848, when the Article 5 of the Constitution was amended, the death penalty for

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civilians was abolished in France. Only in the military justice code the death
penalty was still applicable for those convicted of desertion.
The second world war brought the death penalty through a decree from July 29,
1939, referring that it should be applied for civilian or military attempts against
the state security, in both peace and war times. (p. 195) This decree led to the
adoption of other laws providing the death penalty for other crimes. And the
period before Liberation and the one that followed it were marked by a sharp and
pronounced increase in the death penalty. (p. 197)
Immediately after the war, the exceptional tribunals, the courts, and the high
court became operational and issued numerous condemnations. Over 2,640 death
sentences were pronounced, out of which 768 resulted in executions. This
situation also led to an increased application of the death penalty for crimes in the
common law.
Jean Bloch-Michel pointed out that the number of offenses should not only be
correlated with the increase in the population number or with that of alcoholism,
but also with the increased number of suicides in France. If in 1830 the number of
suicides was 2,084, it reached to about 10,000 in the early twentieth century.
Based on these reflections, we can conclude that abolishing the death penalty is a
matter of political, economic, and social developments, without which a nation is
not eager to deal with, voluntarily.
Just as torture was seen as the maximum limit on the punishment scale, but it got
lowered to the death penalty without torture. Likewise, the scale will be lowered
again to the life imprisonment with hard labor. Those who make this proposal
know that in few years, against life imprisonment will be vigorous protests like it
happens today against death penalty, and they will require a lowering of the
maximum limit, once again. (p. 201)
Although these reflections are correlated to the 17th, 18th, 19th, and the 20th
centuries, they are the legacy on which we still execute in the twenty-first century.

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