I am Pierre Rivière, the man who killed his mother, his sister and his brother.
That sentence opens the long account the murderer wrote in custody in 1835. The case matters not simply because of its horror, but because of the debate among the early psychiatrists who examined it—a debate that moved from the courtroom into public life.
For a reader from the developing world, encountering it more than a century and a half later, the care taken over the proceedings, the lawyer’s vigorous defence and the expert arguments are enviable. I chose to write about it following reports of the sentence imposed on the husband of the late Mona Heydari and the debate surrounding it.
There are three reasons to read this book.
Looking beyond the act
First, a murder involving the victim’s decapitation may have many psychological dimensions. Comparing the response to Rivière’s case with public discussion of Heydari’s murder suggests that Iran’s legal and psychiatric communities still approach murder in a thoroughly traditional way. Discussion focused on the offence and whether the punishment fitted it. Little attention was paid to the offender’s psychological makeup. From the available reporting, that aspect does not appear to have been examined in court either.
The point matters regardless of whether one regards the offender as legally insane. Our understanding of insanity remains at its most basic level. Yet widening its definition also provokes public anxiety: will murder go unpunished, and will anyone be able to claim a moment of insanity at the time of the crime?
Opening this discussion among medical professionals and legislators could lead to a more scientific understanding of insanity and a more appropriate approach to sentencing. An offender need not escape punishment entirely for mitigating circumstances to be recognised.
A careful trial under public pressure
Second, the proceedings, correspondence and arguments among the specialists matter because they took place in a society that regarded killing a parent as comparable to killing a king—among the gravest crimes imaginable. Only a few years earlier, mutilation and dismemberment had been removed from French punishments. The French king had also recently survived an attempt on his life and those of his family, in which many members of his entourage were killed.
The murder therefore had immense significance both for public opinion and for the government. Meanwhile, the offender’s account was so precise and reasoned that many readers considered it proof not only of his sanity at the time of the crime but of considerable intelligence.
Even in these circumstances, the judicial system did not abandon careful scrutiny. Amid conflict between public opinion, medical experts and the courts, the convicted man received the benefit of mitigation.
Remember: this happened in a case where everything seemed obvious and the state itself favoured the harshest punishment, against the background of the recent attempt to kill the king, the symbolic father of the nation.
Due process belongs to everyone
Third, the case reminds us that reasoned judicial proceedings must be respected regardless of the crime or the offender. A society’s well-being depends on its commitment to that principle. Absolutely no one, under any circumstances, should be deprived of due process.
A jury, public access to hearings and, above all, full reporting in the press help keep the judicial system from departing from that obligation.
In my view, what distinguishes a state killing from a judicial execution is the process, rather than merely the judgment delivered at its end. Even if a later review finds that a defective trial reached the correct result, that does not absolve the judicial system or the judge of responsibility.
Finally, I want to express my sorrow at the loss of the distinguished jurist and translator Morteza Kalantarian. His absence is felt all the more in these times.
May he rest in peace, and may his memory endure.