Under the Penal Code of 1791, punishments were ranked by order of severity as follows: • death; execution was to take the form of decapitation, but was limited to the simple deprivation of life, without torture of the condemned (Title I, Articles 2 and 3); Following these came
banishment, which was considered an infamous but not afflictive punishment. All of these penalties — with the obvious exceptions of death and
deportation — resulted in the loss of all rights associated with the status of active citizen, a form of civic
disenfranchisement that lasted until rehabilitation (Title IV, Art. 1). The Code also introduced the concept of
involuntary manslaughter (Title II, Article 1), which precluded any criminal conviction, while still allowing for the award of civil damages (Title II, Article 2). Similarly, legitimate self-defense exempted a person from any criminal conviction in the case of a homicide. The Code distinguished between murder (
homicide without
premeditation) and assassination (premeditated homicide). Rape was punished by six years of hard labor (Title II, Article 29). Article 32 imposed a sentence of twelve years of hard labor on anyone who had "intentionally destroyed the proof of a person’s civil status". A sentence of 24 years of hard labor was applicable in cases such as violent theft committed under
aggravating circumstances (Title II, Article 5).
Life imprisonment and branding with a hot iron (a
fleur-de-lis under the
Ancien Régime) were both abolished by the Penal Code of 1791, but were later reintroduced in the Penal Code of 1810. The Code made France the first European country to effectively legalize
sodomy by simply ignoring it. Thus, the 1791 Code was the first Western code of law to decriminalize such conduct since
Classical Antiquity. Its sponsor,
Louis-Michel le Peletier, presented it to the Constituent Assembly saying that it only punished 'true crimes', not the artificial offenses condemned by 'superstition'. ==See also==