French Penal Code of 1791
The French Penal Code of 1791 was a penal code adopted during the French Revolution by the Constituent Assembly |Constituent Assembly], between 25 September and 6 October 1791. It was France's first penal code, and was influenced by the Enlightenment thinking of Montesquieu and Cesare Beccaria.
General presentation
The principle of legality was a key philosophical foundation of the 1791 Code. This principle holds that no one may be convicted of a criminal offense unless a previously published legal text sets out in clear and precise wording the constituent elements of the offense and the penalty which applies to it. In the spirit of the 1789 Declaration of the [Rights of Man and of the Citizen], Cesare, Marquis of Beccaria summarized the principles that were to be the foundation of the procedural system. In his words, "every citizen should know what punishment he should endure." This concept was revolutionary in 1791 and clearly departed from the arbitrary trials of the ancien régime. The Code of 1791 was straightforward in this respect; most definitions were clear, leaving little room for the interpretation of the judge.The adoption of the 1791 Code effectively repealed all previous criminal ordinances and royal edicts relating to criminal matters. The Code was an important influence on the Napoleonic French [Penal Code of 1810|Penal Code of 1810], which replaced it.
Crimes and punishments under the Code
Under the Penal Code of 1791, punishments were ranked by order of severity as follows:- death; execution was to take the form of decapitation, but was limited to the simple deprivation of life, without torture of the condemned ;
- hard labor in chains ;
- confinement, for a maximum of 20 years; communication with other prisoners or with visitors was not allowed ;
- detention, for a maximum of 6 years.
All of these penalties — with the obvious exceptions of death and deportation — resulted in the loss of all rights associated with the status of active citizen, a form of civic disenfranchisement that lasted until rehabilitation.
The Code also introduced the concept of involuntary manslaughter, which precluded any criminal conviction, while still allowing for the award of civil damages. Similarly, legitimate self-defense exempted a person from any criminal conviction in the case of a homicide.
The Code distinguished between murder and assassination. Rape was punished by six years of hard labor. Article 32 imposed a sentence of twelve years of hard labor on anyone who had "intentionally destroyed the proof of a person’s civil status".
A sentence of 24 years of hard labor was applicable in cases such as violent theft committed under aggravating circumstances.
Regarding abortion, the Code criminalized the abortionist, punishable by "twenty years in irons", but not the women who had recourse to it.
Life imprisonment and branding with a hot iron were both abolished by the Penal Code of 1791, but were later reintroduced in the Penal Code of 1810.
The Code made France the first European country to effectively legalize sodomy by simply ignoring it. Thus, the 1791 Code was the first Western code of law to decriminalize such conduct since Classical Antiquity. Its sponsor, Louis-Michel le Peletier, presented it to the Constituent Assembly saying that it only punished 'true crimes', not the artificial offenses condemned by 'superstition'.