Charles Guyard // Photo credit: CATHERINE GUGELMANN / AFP 8:43 a.m., February 10, 2024

In 1977, Robert Badinter saved his head. Four decades later, Hugo Lévy released him from prison. Him ? It's Patrick Henry, who died in 2017. His last lawyer remembers this story.

“The nation has lost an immense lawyer, a wise man, a conscience,” said the President of the Republic yesterday, on the sidelines of a trip to Bordeaux devoted to justice and the police. A national tribute will be paid to Robert Badinter, also specified Emmanuel Macron who should say more on this occasion on a probable entry of the politician into the Pantheon.

Robert Badinter is the decriminalization of homosexuality, he is also of course the architect of the abolition of the death penalty in France. In 1977, Robert Badinter, through a memorable plea, saved Patrick Henry from the guillotine, accused of having kidnapped and killed a seven-year-old child. Four decades later, Hugo Lévy, Patrick Henry's last lawyer, remembers.

“It’s a weight of history that has played tricks on him”

“It is a symbolic file of part of the history of French justice.” Symbols are sometimes heavy to bear and Hugo Lévy was a direct witness to this, when in the mid-2010s, this lawyer had to fight hard for his client, suffering from an incurable illness, to obtain the right to finish his life with dignity. life far from prison. But the client in question was Patrick Henry, whose head Robert Badinter had saved four decades earlier. An opportunity for the young man who gradually transformed into a burden, as if justice held a grudge.

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“It’s a weight of history that played tricks on him because we didn’t forget his profile, so it could have had an influence. I remember a decision in 2016 by a judge implementing the sentences which pronounce conditional release. And this decision was affirmed by an appeal court that it returned to very old facts", explains the lawyer.

A weight therefore associated with Robert Badinter who, after having avoided the scaffold for Patrick Henry, worked all his life to improve the fate of prisoners. “He is still someone who fought for more humanity. Even if someone is convicted, the State must provide them with dignified conditions,” says Hugo Lévy. Released in September 2017, Patrick Henry finally died less than three months later from cancer, after spending more than half of his life behind bars.