It’s rare for Italian lawmakers from across the political spectrum to agree on anything. But on Tuesday, the lower house of Parliament unanimously ratified a law introducing the crime of femicide into Italy’s criminal code, punishable by life in prison.
(title from entry in NYT’s The Morning newsletter)
I had Bertrand Cantat in mind when I wrote the comment. The fucker got away (except a very minor prison sentence once) with murdering two of his partners, all in full view of a public spectacle. There’s a Netflix series about him from this year that’s well worth a watch. It’s not that the crime of passion is explicitly used as a legal argument, but there is a romanticized idea that men will sometimes kill their partners out of “loving them too much” and that this is only tragic and not something that we should blame them too harshly for. So it’s not recognized in the law, but French judges have more or less routinely shown themselves to be sympathetic to the argument.
The European Court of Human Rights has recently had a series of rulings in which it calls out France for being particularly shit with regards to women’s rights.
Thanks, I’ll have a look at these.
Edit: so, in the case of Marie Trintignant’s murder by Bertrand Cantat, the whole trial happened in Lithuania under Lithuanian laws. The crime of passion is a legitimate defense in Lithuania but this has nothing to do with French laws.
For the fact that sexual attacks against women are often downplayed by justice in France, this is a real fact. The recent Pelicot trial really brought this to public light.
Yes, this is true - I forgot that the trial happened in Lithuania where crime of passion actually has a formalized role. But the french media nevertheless accepted the narrative and the French public largely followed suit.
As for the second murder/death which happened in France, there has been what is hard to describe as anything else than at best an active neglectance on the side of both the French police and justice system, both leading up to and following the death. I guess this is more symptomatic of the French tendency to simply not take women or their deaths seriously—ascribing the crime of passion to France was probably unfair of me.