BIGAMY IN FRANCE

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 75, Issue 42, 19 February 1932, Page 9

BIGAMY IN FRANCE

SEVERITY OF PUNISHMENT. LESSER PENALTIES PROPOSED. There is a movement on foot in France to reduce the penalty for bigamy. If it succeeds it will probably result in more bigamists being punished. The code, as it stands, provides for sentences up to twenty years’ imprisonment. But, in view of the severity of such a punishment, Assize Court juries often acquit prisoners. In Acquitting a bigamist recently the jury of the Seine Assizes passed a resolution demanding a revision of the law. A commission is considered the revision of the penal code. One of the proposals before it that bigamy should be classified, not as a crime, but as a simple offence, to be dealt with, by correctional tribunals instead of by tho Assizes Courts. Should such a reform be adopted it is certain that fewer bigamists would be acquitted. They would be dealt with by professional Judges, with full power, to inflict such punishment as fits the crime. A prisoner being tried by a jury always stands a good chance of acquittal after eloquent pleading by the defending counsel. In the correctional tribunals, however, transgression is almost invariably followed by punishnfent.