The death penalty is one of the measures formerly demanded by the National Front which have now disappeared from Marine Le Pen’s programme. Explanations…
Does Marine Le Pen intend to “go back on the death penalty” as some of her opponents accuse? At the time of the debate between two rounds against Emmanuel Macron, this question could come back to the fore, the president-candidate trying to stop the strategy of demonization, normalization and today even of trivialization of the candidate of the National Rally.
“I see that despite all the efforts, the true face of the far right is coming back. It is a face that does not respect freedoms, the constitutional framework, the independence of the press and fundamental freedoms. Rights harshly and dearly acquired which are at the heart of our values such as the abolition of the death penalty”, dropped the president-candidate in the program “Les 4 truths”, on France 2 this week. “This recipe which consists in changing the Constitution by hand under the pretext of consulting the people, which consists in choosing the journalists, which consists in telling us the same day ‘me to reconsider the death penalty? I am not against it, except so obviously we put people in prison for life'”.
“There is no forbidden debate in a great democracy.” (Marine Le Pen on April 15 on BFMTV)
What Marine Le Pen says: during the presidential campaign, Marine Le Pen showed some signs of wavering on the question of the return of the death penalty. On April 14, 2022 on France 2, she felt that this question “could go through a referendum”, like many other subjects on her program such as the end of jus soli, the questioning of the right of asylum, the primacy of French law over European and international law and the national preference for employment and housing. But the next day, April 15, on BFMTV, the candidate backtracked on this specific point: returning to the death penalty was deemed impossible because “unconstitutional” by the RN candidate herself. Recalling all the same that “there is no forbidden debate in a great mature democracy”, she declared: “I think that it is not useful to put in place the death penalty from the moment when , as I wish, will be implemented real perpetuity”.
The death penalty, Marine Le Pen’s band-aid
What there is to know : the return of the death penalty is an old demand of the National Front Jean-Marie Le Pen period, which was taken up by his daughter during his first presidential campaign, in 2012. Already in 2017, the candidate will try to evacuate the subject by announcing, as of February, that the death penalty would not appear in its program. Marine Le Pen then spares her base by indicating that the return of the death penalty could be proposed via a “popular initiative referendum”.
For this presidential campaign 2022 this time, the death penalty disappears definitively. The security component of Marine Le Pen’s program prefers the restoration of minimum sentences “so that all criminals and delinquents have a sanction”, the removal of “any possibility of reduction and adjustment of sentences, in particular for violence against people” or “actual perpetuity”.
Real perpetuity already exists in the criminal code, articles 221-3 and 221-4 allowing judges to pronounce an unlimited security period. But in practice, it is extremely rare or even non-existent, with sentence adjustments or conditional release always remaining open after a sentence has been pronounced.