France Rejects Bid To Rehabilitate Man Guillotined In 1957 | Barron's

Céline Bruneau

France's highest appeals court Tuesday rejected restoring "honour" to a man executed in 1957 by guillotine for killing a policeman, dashing his family's hopes of a historic rehabilitation.

The son of Jacques Fesch, 27, who was executed on October 1, 1957 for killing 35-year-old Jean-Baptiste Vergne during an armed robbery, said he brought the request in a bid to "re-establish the honour" of his father.

But...

France's highest appeals court Tuesday rejected restoring "honour" to a man executed in 1957 by guillotine for killing a policeman, dashing his family's hopes of a historic rehabilitation.

The son of Jacques Fesch, 27, who was executed on October 1, 1957 for killing 35-year-old Jean-Baptiste Vergne during an armed robbery, said he brought the request in a bid to "re-establish the honour" of his father.

But the Court of Cassation ruled that the elements of the case "do not constitute sufficient guarantees of repentance". Its decision is definitive.

France, which abolished capital punishment in 1981, allows convicted criminals to demand "legal rehabilitation" after serving their sentence -- a right extended in 2020 to the descendants of convicts put to death.

Fesch's son, Gerard Fesch, who despite never knowing his father has championed his cause for years, had argued that obtaining a rehabilitation would not change the facts of the case.

"It's very disappointing, 30 years of fighting for nothing," said Gerard Fesch, 69, who only discovered the real identity of his father decades after his execution.

"The Court of Cassation is missing the opportunity to take a major humanist decision on the right of any offender -- whatever their crime -- to be able to make amends," said family lawyer Patrice Spinosi,.

The Constitutional Council, France's highest constitutional authority, rejected a 2020 attempt to have Fesch pardoned, saying people executed for their crimes "were unable to fulfil the conditions" required by law to prove themselves worthy of regaining their former status in society.

The French parliament then passed a law in 2020 allowing descendants to make the demand on behalf of deceased relatives.

Described as "lazy and boastful" by the court that convicted him, Jacques Fesch turned to religion in a dramatic repentance while on death row that some French Catholics today deem worthy of beatification.

He wrote and exchanged letters with a monk and these texts have enjoyed considerable popularity since his death. A private school in the northern Normandy region is now named after him.

Public prosecutors argued in their recommendation to the court there was no proof establishing that Jacques Fesch made amends with society or his victims before his death.

Beheading people with the guillotine was the official means of capital punishment from the French Revolution until France's last execution in September 1977.

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