Robert Badinter, tireless architect of the abolition of the death penalty, enters the Pantheon this Thursday. Among the highlights of this ceremony, Julien Clerc will perform a song titled The murdered murdererwhich he composed in 1980, a year before the abolition of the death penalty in France, with lyrics by Jean-Loup Dabadie.
The story of this song begins in 1980. In March, Julien Clerc attended the trial of a man in Toulouse, accused of the murder of a young co-worker in Tarn.
“His name was Norbert Garceau and he had strangled a young colleague on his way to work,” explains Julien Clerc to Le Parisien.
Robert Badinter, who defends Norbert Garceau together with lawyer Georges Catala, presents an “impressive” argument, according to the singer.
“A man cut in two is of no use”
“I remember a phrase that he (Robert Badinter) used,” said lawyer Simon Cohen in 2024 at the microphone of France Bleu Toulouse. “He said ‘a man cut in two is of no use’. It was so surprising that there was no need to say more.” The lawyer saves his client from the guillotine. The man is sentenced to life imprisonment.
Julien Clerc shares with Robert Badinter the return trip between Toulouse and Paris, leaving the court through a back staircase to escape popular revenge. The singer and the lawyer take the night train. “We talked a lot during the trip. He told me that he had always welcomed his family during such a difficult process,” Julien Clerc explains to Le Parisien.
“A social song”
It was this experience that decided Julien Clerc to release the song, The murdered murdererwhose lyrics had been given to him by the writer and journalist Jean-Loup Dabadie two years earlier, in 1978. “In 1979, he was bothering me to record it and I was hanging around,” remembers Julien Clerc in Le Parisien.
Jean-Loup Dabadie manages to convince the singer to perform it live on television. “It was a brilliant idea. The telephone exchange exploded. There were many reactions from the spectators,” Julien Clerc told the newspaper. appears on the album without intermissionreleased in October 1980, a year before the death penalty was abolished.
“Your song has appeared in more than 20 conferences and 30 speeches,” Robert Badinter wrote to him. “It was a great honor,” recalls Julien Clerc in Le Parisien, adding that “the singers are not there to do politics, but it is a social song, not a political one.”
Source: BFM TV
