Nicolas Jacques Pelletier

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Nicolas-Jacques Pelletier († April 25, 1792 ) was a French mugger whose execution a guillotine was first used .

Pelletier, a criminal known to the judiciary, was charged with ambushing a passerby on the night of October 14, 1791 with an unknown accomplice in Paris' Rue Bourbon-Villeneuve, today's Rue d'Aboukir, robbing him of a wallet with securities and striking him with a stick to have mistreated. The crime he was charged with was therefore a property crime , and not a murder or rape , as it was sometimes portrayed in later literature.

Alarmed by calls for help, the city guard was able to arrest Pelletier at the scene. In the subsequent trial, its judge was Jacob-Augustin Moreau, District Judge of Sens and Judge of the Second Criminal Court in Paris. The defendant was assigned Guyot de Sainte-Hélène as legal counsel, but he stayed away from the trial despite repeated requests, including the pronouncement of the death sentence, which was upheld on December 31, 1791 by the second criminal court. On January 24, 1792, the death sentence was confirmed again in the last instance by the third provisional criminal court.

The execution was delayed because of the ongoing debate about the legal method of execution, which was finally decided in favor of the guillotine by decree of the National Assembly of March 23-25, 1792. On April 25, 1792 at 3:30 p.m., the execution of the executioner Charles Henri Sanson was publicly carried out on the Place de Grève . The Chronique de Paris wrote about it the following day:

“Yesterday, at half past three in the afternoon, the machine was used for the first time, which is intended to cut off the heads of criminals sentenced to death. The person to be executed was a certain Nicolas-Jacques Pelletier, convicted several times by the judiciary and finally convicted of hitting a private person with several blows of the cane and stealing a wallet containing assignats worth 800 livres and other effects .
The novelty of the punishment had led to a considerable swelling of those whom barbaric pity leads to such sad spectacles.
This machine has rightly been preferred to other types of punishment: it does not stain man's hand with murder of his own kind, and the speed with which it hits the guilty is more in keeping with the spirit of the law, which can often be severe, but never may be cruel. "

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Hector Fleischmann: La guillotine en 1793, d'après des documents inédits des Archives nationales . Librairie des Publications Modernes, Paris, 1908, p. 46f.
  2. ^ A b Eugène Hatin: Histoire politique et littéraire de la presse en France . Poulet-Malassis & De Broise, Paris, 1861, p. 53f.
  3. ^ Henri-Clément Sanson: Sept générations d'exécuteurs, 1688–1847. Mémoires des Sansons, mis en ordre, rédigés et publiés , volume 3. Dupray de la Mahérie et Co., Paris, 1862, p. 406: “vol avec violences sur la voie publique”.
  4. ^ Jean Bernard: Histoire anecdotique de la révolution française, avec une préface de Jules Simon, 1792 . Georges Maurice, Paris, 1892, p. 150f .: “un assassin, nommé Nicolas-Jacques Pelletier, condamné à mort pour avoir tué un particulier à coups de couteau et lui avoir volé son portefeuille”. However, that Pelletier was a murderer is also suggested by a letter from his judge Moreau dated April 11, 1792, which, with a likely reference to Pelletier, speaks of a convict who was guilty of the same crime as two before "Coupables d'assassinat": Documens administratifs relatifs à l'adoption de la guillotine . In: Revue rétrospective, ou Bibliothèque historique, seconde série, Volume 1. Fournier Ainé, Paris, 1835, pp. 12f.
  5. ^ Edmond and Jules de Goncourt : Histoire de la société française pendant la Révolution (1854). New edition: Charpentier, Paris, 1880, chap. XVII, p. 432: “un coupable de viol, nommé Pelletier”.
  6. ↑ Alexandre Tuetey: Répertoire général des sources manuscrites de l'histoire de Paris pendant la révolution française . Volume 4, part 4. Imprimerie Nouvelle, Paris, 1905, p. 118, no. 824.
  7. ^ Edmond Seligman: La justice en France pendant la Révolution (1789-1792) . Librairie Plon, Paris, 1901, p. 401.
  8. ↑ Documented by a newspaper article of April 22, 1792, quoted by Théodore G. Lenôtre: La guillotine et les exécuteurs des arrèts criminels pendant la Révolution . Libraire académique Perrin et C ie , Paris, 1910, p. 233.
  9. ^ Edmond Seligman: La justice en France pendant la Révolution (1789-1792). Librairie Plon, Paris, 1901, p. 463.
personal data
SURNAME Pelletier, Nicolas Jacques
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Pelletier, Nicolas-Jacques (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION French murderer, first guillotined
DATE OF BIRTH 18th century
DATE OF DEATH April 25, 1792
Place of death Paris