The Death Penalty
by Victor Hugo
There is one abiding constant in the criminal law. A principle that is both universal and unquestioned. The rule that criminal defendants are entitled to the presumption of innocence unless otherwise their guilt can be proven by preponderance of evidences beyond any reasonable amount of doubt.
This is a difficult undertaking for you, here present, ladies and gentlemen. But this is a very important task. We do not want an innocent person to suffer or be wrongly imprisoned or worse be executed and his precious life be terminated, just because of a wrongful conviction.
I understand that prudence and reason will compel each and every one of you to condemn and to punish whosoever committed this crime. But, ladies and gentlemen, in fulfilling this mission of convicting the offender, you must not punish the innocent one. For to do so would be to perpetuate an injustice more atrocious than the crime itself.
GENTLEMEN OF THEJURY, there sits an innocent man.
And if there is a culprit here, it is not my son—it is myself — it is I.
I, who for these last twenty-five years have opposed capital Punishment — have contended for the inviolability of human life — have committed this crime, for which my son is now arraigned.
Here I denounce myself, Mr. Judge Advocate General!
I have committed it under all aggravated circumstances — deliberately, repeatedly, tenaciously. Yes, this old and absurd lex talionis — this law of blood for blood — I have combated all my life—all my life, gentlemen of the jury! And, while I have breath, I will continue to combat it, by all my efforts as a writer, by all my words and all my votes as a legislator!
I declare it before the crucifix; before that victim of the penalty of death, who sees and hears us; before that gibbet, to which, two thousand years ago, for the eternal instruction of the generations, the human law nailed the Divine!
Ladies and gentlemen, with all reverence to truth, with all honesty and sincerity, in all that my son has written on the subject of capital punishment — and for writing and publishing which he is now before you on trial — in all that he has written, he has merely proclaimed the sentiments with which, from his infancy, I have inspired him to believe..
Gentlemen jurors, the right to criticize a law, and to criticize it severely — especially a penal law — is placed beside the duty of amelioration, like a torch beside the work under the artisan’s hand. This right of the journalist is as sacred, as necessary, and as imprescriptible, as the right of the legislator.
What are the circumstances then?
A man, a convict, a sentenced wretch, is dragged, on a certain morning, to one of our public squares.
There he finds the scaffold!
As a natural instinct, he shudders, he struggles, he refuses to die. The victim clings to the scaffold and shrieks for pardon. His clothes are torn—his shoulders bloody—still he resists.
At length, after three quarters of an hour of this monstrous effort, of this spectacle without a name, of this agony, after this age of anguish, gentlemen of the jury, they reinforced, drag forth the wretch again, they pull him forward, haggard, bloody, weeping, pleading, howling for life — calling upon God, calling upon his father and mother — for like a very child had this man become in the prospect of death — they set him forth to execution. There to that guillotine. He is hoisted on to the scaffold, and his head falls! And then through every conscience runs a shudder.
May he rest in Peace.
And now let me ask you Gentlemen Jurors: What have we here to chew upon?
Gentlemen here gathered, listen to the voice of justice and reason. It cries out to you that in all fairness and equality, these scenes of death, these pictures of dreadful agony under the guillotine painted with so much ceremony, are nothing but cowardly assassinations, nothing but dismal crimes committed not by individuals but by an entire nation which by virtue of unjustifiable misconception, attempted to legislate morality.
Honorable gentlemen, the imposition of the penalty of death gives society the unmistakable message that human life no longer deserves respect when it is useful to take it and that murder is legitimate when deemed justified by pragmatic concerns.
Indeed, never had legal murder appeared with an aspect so indecent, so abominable. And feel jointly implicated in the deed.
It is at this very moment that from a young man’s breast escaped a cry, wrung from his very heart, a cry of pity and of anguish, a cry of horror, a cry of humanity.
And this very cry, this very cry of reason, would you punish, Gentlemen Jurors?
In the sanity of your conscience, I hope you will not.
And in the face of these appalling facts which I have narrated in this honorable court, you would say then to the guillotine “Thou art right” and to pity, saintly pity, “Thou art wrong”.
Gentlemen of the Jury, this cannot be!
A decent and humane society does not deliberately kill human beings. Free countries are those where the inalienable rights of man as promulgated within the letters of the Constitution are respected and where, consequently, the laws and punishments are humane and just.
Gentlemen Jurors, in the light of all these arguments I have presented to you, may you find the courage to do what is right.
Find my son not guilty!
Set free that innocent man!
Gentlemen, I have finished.
