The Covert Abolition of the Death Penalty: a Comparative Analysis of France and Mississippi
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University of Mississippi eGrove Honors College (Sally McDonnell Barksdale Honors Theses Honors College) Spring 5-9-2020 The Covert Abolition of the Death Penalty: A Comparative Analysis of France and Mississippi Emma S. Rice University of Mississippi Follow this and additional works at: https://egrove.olemiss.edu/hon_thesis Part of the International and Area Studies Commons Recommended Citation Rice, Emma S., "The Covert Abolition of the Death Penalty: A Comparative Analysis of France and Mississippi" (2020). Honors Theses. 1913. https://egrove.olemiss.edu/hon_thesis/1913 This Undergraduate Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by the Honors College (Sally McDonnell Barksdale Honors College) at eGrove. It has been accepted for inclusion in Honors Theses by an authorized administrator of eGrove. For more information, please contact [email protected]. THE COVERT ABOLITION OF THE DEATH PENALTY: A COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS OF FRANCE AND MISSISSIPPI © 2020 By Emma S. Rice A thesis presented in partial fulfillment of the requirements for completion of the Bachelor of Arts degree in International Studies Croft Institute for International Studies Sally McDonnell Barksdale Honors College The University of Mississippi University, Mississippi May 2020 Approved: _________________________________ Advisor: Dr. William Berry _________________________________ Reader: Dr. William Schenck _________________________________ Reader: Dr. Anne Quinney Abstract This study places that question in the context of two places which both share a common history of using brutal death penalties: France and Mississippi. This thesis seeks to answer the question of what the abolition of the death penalty in France suggests about the likelihood of its abolition in Mississippi, in light of a cultural comparison of their respective attitudes toward crime and punishment. 2 Table of Contents I. Introduction ............................................................................................................................. 4 II. Abolition in France .................................................................................................................. 6 III. Mississippi ......................................................................................................................... 12 IV. Literature Review and Framework .................................................................................... 16 V. Findings ................................................................................................................................. 23 A. Executions .......................................................................................................................... 24 B. Death Sentences ................................................................................................................. 28 C. Bankruptcy ......................................................................................................................... 32 D. Public Discourse ................................................................................................................ 35 VI. Why (and How) Mississippi Is Abolishing the Death Penalty .......................................... 38 VII. Conclusion ......................................................................................................................... 42 3 I. INTRODUCTION Throughout history, there have been no recorded instances of a mass abolition movement led by the public against the death penalty in any country. How then has it come to be abolished in 106 countries?1 This study places that question in the context of two places which both share a common history of using brutal death penalties: France and Mississippi. This thesis seeks to answer the question of what the abolition of the death penalty in France suggests about the likelihood of its abolition in Mississippi, in light of a cultural comparison of their respective attitudes toward crime and punishment. France, the land of beheading, abolished the death penalty in 1981. Mississippi, the land of hanging, has not executed anyone since 2012. At first glance, conservative Mississippi seems to embrace different values than progressive France, indicating divergent approaches to criminal justice. A closer examination of the actual use of the death penalty in both jurisdictions suggests that Mississippi might be following the same trajectory toward abolition, just at a slower pace. In Mississippi, there is a disconnect between what people say and do. Despite the public rhetoric and opinion of Mississippians, their actions (or lack thereof) with respect to the death penalty may suggest a deeper connection to French thoughts and attitudes than one might expect. This thesis compares the two cultures and extrapolates data that informs the question of whether death penalty abolition – de facto or de jure – will become a reality in Mississippi in the near future. In Part II, the thesis begins by providing an overview of the French death penalty and how it came to be abolished. Part III briefly traces the history of the death penalty in the United States and specifically within the state of Mississippi. Part IV surveys current scholars’ analyses 1 Amnesty International, Global Report: Death Sentences and Executions 2017 (London: Amnesty International Ltd, 2018), https://www.amnesty.org/download/Documents/ACT5079552018ENGLISH.PDF. 4 of American retention of the death penalty and addresses an existing gap at the state level that this thesis seeks to fill. Part V of the thesis outlines four key findings used to form its argument that Mississippi is following a trajectory toward de facto abolition of the death penalty. Finally, Part VI provides a discussion of why (and how) Mississippi is abolishing the death penalty. 5 II. ABOLITION IN FRANCE While France first used its most famous form of execution, the guillotine, in 1792, its origins lie in the late 1780s, and they are a result of egalitarian ideals that were emphasized during the French Revolution. Dr. Joseph-Ignace Guillotin proposed the concept as, he believed, a more humane alternative to the tortuous execution methods that were historically used. The State would put all citizens to death in the same way—by decapitation.2 At the time, capital punishment took many forms in the country, each method being dependent upon the offender’s social status and category of crime committed. Hanging was the most commonly used method, although nobles could be decapitated with a sword. Those coming from lower classes might be burned, boiled, dismembered, or executed by wheel.3 Michel Foucault gives a striking anecdote of this process at the opening of his philosophical Surveiller et Punir.4 The opening lines of the book graphically describe the true story of Robert-François Damiens’s execution in 1757 before that shift, when effective punishment needed to be physical and public. His execution was very long; it lasted almost the entire day due to the many elements involved, and the fact that they were botched along the way. Before the main door of the Church of Paris, Damiens had [T]he flesh...torn from his breasts, arms, thighs and calves with red-hot pincers, his right hand, holding the knife with which he committed the said parricide, burnt away with sulphur, and, on those places where the flesh will be torn away, poured molten lead, boiling oil, burning resin, wax and sulphur melted together and then his body drawn and quartered by four horses and his limbs and body consumed by fire, reduced to ashes and his ashes thrown to the winds.5 2 Encyclopaedia Britannica, s.v. “Guillotine,” last modified October 26, 2017, https://www.britannica.com/topic/guillotine. 3 Michael R. Lynn, “Executions, The Guillotine and the French Revolution,” Ultimate History Project, accessed January 29, 2020, http://ultimatehistoryproject.com/executions-the-guillotine-and-the-french-revolution.html. 4 The work, written in 1975, presents a larger theoretical argument about the birth of the prison system. Foucault believes a historical shift occurred around theories of punishment from a focus on the physical body to the inner soul, which is a private and inward thing. 5 Michel Foucault, Surveiller et punir (Paris: Editions Gallimard, 2014), 3. 6 For the physical machine of the guillotine, a doctor named Antoine Louis developed the mechanics, which Tobias Schmidt, a German harpsichord maker, built. At first, it was called a louisette or louison, after Dr. Louis, but it came to be known as the guillotine, an homage to the originator.6 Shortly after its invention came the so-called “Reign of Terror” of the mid-1790s. The French State used the apparatus to execute 17,000 French citizens, sometimes at a rate of three hundred per day.7 In France, the 18th century is known as the Siècle des Lumières, or “Period of Enlightenment.”8 It was an age when philosophical writing and debate flourished. The death penalty became one of the oft-debated topics on which each philosophe was expected to form an opinion. A majority of the French population remained largely illiterate, however, and so these essays were written by social elites with the intention of being circulated among elites. Victor Hugo wrote one of the most influential publications concerning the death penalty in 1829. He anonymously released an epistolary novel entitled Le Dernier Jour d’un Condamné, or The Last Day of a Condemned Man. It described the last twenty-four hours of a man awaiting execution, focusing on the prisoner’s feelings