France | Valéry Giscard d'Estaing, Last President to Let Men Walk to the Guillotine, Dies of COVID-19 at 94

Valéry Giscard d'Estaing, France's president from 1974 to 1981, has died at the age of 94.

He died of complications from coronavirus, surrounded by his family at his estate in central France.

A centre-right, pro-Europe politician, Giscard d'Estaing also liberalised laws on divorce, abortion and contraception during his seven years in power.

In later life, Giscard d'Estaing liked to portray himself as the grand old man of French politics.

He was seen by many as arrogant and aloof; his presidential popularity was short-lived and he was eventually squeezed out of office by a strengthening of opposition from both the left and the right.

Although he voiced his opposition to the death penalty, he refused to commute three of the death sentences passed during his term, and the last use of the guillotine in France took place in 1977.

Giscard d'Estaing lost the 1981 presidential election to Francois Mitterrand, who shortly after his election commuted all standing death sentences and later had the death penalty abolished in France.

Subsequently, Giscard d'Estaing based himself in his political heartland - the Auvergne region of central France - delivering regular pronouncements to newspapers and on television about the state of the nation.

'No regrets' over Ranucci execution

In an interview to be aired this week on French television [this story was published in October 2010], former French President Valéry Giscard d'Estaing, 84, says that he feels "no regrets" for allowing the execution of Christian Ranucci in 1976.

Christian Ranucci, 22, was guillotined after he was convicted of kidnapping and killing 8-year-old Marie-Dolorès Rambla. Ranucci proclaimed his innocence until he was executed at dawn in Marseilles' Beaumettes prison. His last words were to his lawyers: 'Rehabilitate me!', he said.

"Ranucci was guilty, he had been sentenced to death by a jury, the punishment needed to be carried out," the former President says about the controversial Ranucci case.

"I do not regret my decision. The case files (...) and the trials proved that he was guilty," the former French President says in the interview.

A tight election race, high pro-death penalty ratings in opinion polls after similar abduction-and-murder cases occurred in France contributed to Giscard d'Estaing turning a blind eye to some of the case's inconsistencies and ultimately rejecting Ranucci's clemency plea, the film's authors suggest.

Christian Ranucci was executed on 28 July 1976 for kidnapping and killing a young girl two years earlier. He claimed his innocence throughout the trial, although he initially confessed to the crime. He later recanted, arguing that his confession had been obtained under duress after being interrogated for 17 hours.

Discrepancies and inconsistencies

Ranucci's lawyers pointed out several discrepancies in the case, such as finding no evidence of the child's presence in Ranucci's car, conflicting and varying eyewitness testimonies, discarded exculpating evidence and testimonies, potential tampering with evidence by the Marseilles police, and prosecution malpractice.

These discrepancies and inconsistencies became the prime material used by journalist and writer Gilles Perrault in his book, "Le Pull-Over Rouge" (The Red Sweater). Perrault questions Ranucci's guilt, suggests that the investigation was botched and claims that Ranucci was executed despite "extremely inconclusive evidence" because the country needed swift action.

Christian Ranucci was tried in Aix-en-Provence on March 9-March 10, 1976 and sentenced to death. His appeal for a second trial was overturned by a higher court on June 16. President Valéry Giscard d'Estaing refused to commute Ranucci's death sentence.

Ironically, a local television station that had been misinformed by an erroneous Agence France-Presse dispatch mistakenly announced on the eve of the execution that Ranucci's death sentence had been commuted. Prison officers who had watched the TV news bulletin rushed to inform Ranucci that his life had been spared. Over half an hour later, a presidential press release officially denied that claim.

"A deep loathing for the death penalty"

Christian Ranucci was the first of the last three death row inmates executed in France. Although Giscard d'Estaing had publicly stated before his election that he "felt a deep loathing for the death penalty" and wished to have it replaced with life in prison without the possibility of parole, he allowed three executions to be carried out during his tenure, Christian Ranucci in 1976, then Jérôme Carrein and Hamida Djandoubi in 1977, while he commuted four death sentences to life in prison.

These were the last executions carried out in France. Hamida Djandoubi was the last death-row inmate executed in France.

Capital punishment was abolished in France in 1981 after François Mitterrand became President of France. Mitterrand urged his then Justice Minister and renowned abolitionist Robert Badinter to draft a Bill providing for the abolishment of the death penalty and its replacement with life in prison with the possibility of parole.

Mr. Valéry Giscard d'Estaing also says in tonight's interview that he would "probably" have maintained the death penalty if he had been re-elected as President of France in 1981. "I think that I would not have made the decision [to seek the abolition of the death penalty]", he says. He also says that he remains "careful" about [abolishing the death penalty], even after so many years.

"To me, the death penalty was legitimized by its deterrence value. I am on the side of victims for one very simple reason, and that is because victims can't talk. And when the victims are children or frail, abused or tortured women, I think that it is no longer tolerable and that deterrence must be put into practice."

Sources: BBC News, Staff, December 3, 2020; AFP & Death Penalty News staff, October 11, 2010

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