Nicolas Jacques Pelletier

Nicolas Jacques Pelletier (c. 1756 – 25 April 1792) was a French highwayman who was the first person to be executed by guillotine.

Robbery and subsequent sentencing

Pelletier routinely associated with a group of known criminals. On the night of 14 October 1791, with several unknown accomplices, he attacked a passerby in the rue Bourbon-Villeneuve in Paris and stole his wallet and several securities. During the robbery, he also killed the man, though this is disputed in later literature as possibly just having been an assault and robbery or also an assault, robbery and rape. He was apprehended and accused that same night, for the cries for help alerted some in the city, and a nearby guard arrested Pelletier. Judge Jacob Augustin Moreau, the district judge of Sens, was to hear the case.

A legal advisor was given to Pelletier, but despite his efforts and calls for a fairer court hearing, the judge ordered a death sentence for 31 December 1791. On 24 December, the second criminal court confirmed Judge Moreau's sentence. However, the execution was stayed, after the National Assembly made decapitation the only legal method of capital punishment. Pelletier waited in jail for more than three months as a guillotine was built in Strasbourg under the direction of the surgeon Antoine Louis, at a cost of 38 livres. Meanwhile, the public executioner Charles Henri Sanson tested the machine on corpses in the Bicêtre Hospital. Sanson preferred the guillotine over the former decapitation by sword, as the latter reminded him of the nobility's former privileges that the revolutionaries had worked to eliminate.

On 24 January 1792, a third criminal court confirmed the sentence. The execution was delayed due to the ongoing debate on the legal method of execution. Finally, the National Assembly decreed on 23 March 1792 in favour of the guillotine.