Jacques Fesch, the guillotined man who asked for forgiveness: his son’s historic fight to rehabilitate him

It’s the story of a robbery that ends badly, and of a condemned man to whom we would like to restore his honor. Thursday June 6, 2024, the Paris Court of Cassation studied the request for rehabilitation of relatives of Jacques Fesch, guillotined in 1957 for the murder of a police officer committed in Paris. A look back at this affair which is now out of the past.

An idle lifestyle

Born in 1930, Jacques Fesch grew up in a wealthy family, his father being a bank director of Belgian origin. Leading an idle lifestyle, the young man commits a few crimes and has a series of romantic conquests. In 1954, lacking money, he decided to rob a currency exchange counter located rue Viviennein the 2ᵉ arrondissement of the capital.

A completely botched heist

Armed robbery is a terrible fiasco. Jacques Fesch’s accomplice betrayed him as soon as he entered the establishment and ran to notify an agent. While threatening the manager of the exchange agency, Jacques Fesch injures his hand. However, he manages to flee with more than 300,000 old francs.

The amateur robber is pursued by passers-by and the police and finally finds refuge in a building located on Boulevard des Italians. Unfortunately for him, a police officer is after him. As he tries to flee again, Jacques Fesch shoots in the direction of the peace officer, who is fatally shot in the heart and continues his course. After injuring a passerby with a rifle butt, he is arrested near a metro station.

Redemption in religion

For three years, the young man was incarcerated at the health prison, while awaiting his trial. It is between these four walls that Jacques Fesch will begin an intellectual and spiritual journey. Spending his days reading and writing, he converted to the Catholic religion. Having become a mystic, he then began to communicate with ecclesiastics.

These years toward redemption will end with the trial. Despite his regrets, Jacques Fesch is sentenced to death for the murder of the police officer. President René Coty did not grant him pardon, and he was guillotined at the age of 27 in the courtyard of La Santé prison on October 1, 1957.

A request never seen before

This affair of crime, redemption and execution could have found its outcome in the hands of the executioner, but that was without taking into account Jacques Fesch’s son, Gérard. The latter asked the Court of Cassation to be able to rehabilitate his father. An unprecedented hearing, which raises the question of the Republic’s pardon of a condemned man.

For the son of Jacques Fesch, the young robber’s pledges of reform could go in this direction. The public prosecutor did not agree with this, considering that conversion to the Catholic faith was not enough to prove sincere repentance by the condemned. The country’s highest court will deliver its decision next October.

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