When Baditor died last week at the age of 95, he was hailed as a hero and visionary, a model of republican enlightenment in this country. But during the long struggle to end France’s trademark state-sponsored barbarism, he was widely condemned, frequently threatened, heavily guarded, and on at least one occasion had a bomb fired on the doorstep of his apartment. When it exploded, it became the target of an assassination attempt.
Several countries, including Britain, had previously abolished the death penalty for most crimes except treason, but France’s move marks a turning point. Over the next 40 years, more than 90 countries, roughly half the world, followed suit. In dozens more, the death penalty remains on the books but is no longer used.
However, in very few countries such decisions were inevitable as a result of the sheer will and persuasion of one individual. That’s what makes Baditor’s story so special.
A Jew who lost his wealthy family in the Holocaust, he was an excellent student and a brilliant lawyer, whose early career fame earned him star-studded clientele such as Raquel Welch and Brigitte Bardot in civil cases. It fascinated people. But a criminal case in which Vinter represented a man accused of aiding and abetting murder changed his trajectory and that of France.
His client was Roger Bontemus, a prison inmate who had helped a fellow prisoner slit the throats of guards and nurses in the prison infirmary. Bontemus did not wield a knife, but went to the guillotine anyway, and his appeals for mercy were rejected by the courts and President Georges Pompidou in the face of public outrage.
Vinter was a witness to Bontemus’ beheading at dawn, a morbid sight that transformed him from lawyer to crusader. “It’s one thing to have an intellectual conviction and it’s another thing to see injustice,” he told an interviewer in 2005, later adding. I couldn’t accept this idea of justice. That is the exact opposite of justice. And from then on, I became a fighter. ”
His combativeness is principled, and he demonstrated it by continuing to defend the most heinous defendants, including one convicted of murdering a 7-year-old boy. Vinter succeeded in persuading a jury to spare his client’s life, making him one of France’s most vilified public figures.
When he became Minister of Justice in the government of President François Mitterrand in 1981, he made abolishing the death penalty a top priority.
“Thanks to you, tomorrow we will no longer execute all of us secretly at dawn under a black canopy of shame,” he told the French lawmakers who followed his will.
His efforts may have saved the life of the man responsible for transporting Baditel’s own father to a Nazi concentration camp during World War II. It was Klaus Barbie, the notorious SS officer known as the “Butcher of Lyon,” whom Binter, as Minister of Justice, was seeking to have extradited from Bolivia to France.
Barbie was found guilty of crimes against humanity in a landmark 1987 French trial that featured testimony from Holocaust survivors, was sentenced to life in prison, and died in 1991. Barbie was a monster, but Mr. Vinter was glad he escaped the guillotine. He said courts should deliver justice, not revenge.
He also worked to decriminalize homosexuality, improve prison conditions, and abolish national security courts that secretly try terrorists.
In Paris on Wednesday, Baditel’s flag-draped coffin was carried by a guard of honor to Place Vendôme, the government square next to the Justice Ministry he once led. He was praised by President Emmanuel Macron as someone who “sought to make justice more humane and humanity more just.”
However, the debate over the death penalty remains unresolved. Right-wing leader Marine Le Pen, who is leading opinion polls ahead of France’s 2027 presidential election, supports holding a referendum. reinstate the death penalty. If that happens, Baditor’s framework will test whether justice or revenge will prevail.