In 2023, the son of the convicted person submitted a request to the criminal chamber of the Court of Cassation for restoration of his father’s honor.
The decision of the Court of Cassation
For the honor of a condemned person whose sentence has been carried out to be restored, this condemned person must have offered pledges of reform.
These guarantees are assessed with regard to the seriousness of the facts, as well as taking into account the evolution of the personality and behavior of the convicted person, since the day on which they committed the acts.
The Court of Cassation examined the documents produced by the son of the convicted person.
She also examined documents that she herself was able to collect despite the antiquity of the facts (files of the information procedure, the judgment, the appeal for pardon, prison file and press articles published during the trial).
The amendment guarantees which were identified by the Court are:
However, given the seriousness and multiplicity of the crimes committed by the convicted person, the elements analyzed taken as a whole do not constitute sufficient guarantees of amendment. Indeed :
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the reality of compensation for the victims has not been established (whether this compensation came from the convicted person or, on his initiative, from his family);
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the religious approach of the condemned cannot be analyzed in itself as a guarantee of amendment;
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the wide dissemination of the condemned person’s writings and the interest they aroused do not constitute a guarantee of amendment, because they occurred after his death and were independent of his will;
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the circumstances in which the sentence was pronounced and carried out do not enter into account in the assessment of the guarantees of amendment.
The request is therefore rejected.
