The Crime Book

203

See also: Sadamichi Hirasawa 224–25 ■ Elizabeth Báthory 264–65

■ The Dreyfus Affair 310–11

O

ne October night in 1761,

Marc-Antoine Calas was

found hanged in his father

Jean’s textile shop. Deep in debt,

the Frenchman was believed to

have killed himself. His untimely

death was a personal tragedy for

his family, but as Huguenots

(Protestants) living in a resolute

and unforgiving Roman Catholic

country, their problems had just

begun. Crowds gathered and

suspicion ran rampant: it was said

that Marc-Antoine had been on the

brink of converting to Catholicism,

and that his father must have killed

him to prevent this. Jean Calas was

arrested by the authorities, along

with four other suspects.

A gruesome trial

The Toulouse magistrate asked

witnesses to come forward. Their

testimony was merely hearsay, but

in 18th-century France, that was

accepted as evidence. Calas’s case

went to an appellate court, which

voted to convict and condemn him.

The sentence called for Calas to be

interrogated under torture, in the

hope that he would confess and

implicate his four co-conspirators.

But Calas steadfastly protested his

innocence. He was then broken on

the wheel, strangled, and burned.

Soon after, the philosopher

Voltaire took up Calas’s case,

believing he had been wrongly

executed. In a press campaign,

Voltaire convinced many that the

judiciary had allowed prejudice

against Huguenots to influence the

verdict. After a three-year crusade,

Calas’s conviction was overturned. ■

MURDER CASES

PERPETRATED

WITH THE SWORD

OF JUSTICE

JEAN CALAS, 1761

IN CONTEXT

LOCATION

Toulouse, France

THEME

Wrongful execution

BEFORE

1673 American colonial settler

Rebecca Cornell dies in an

accidental house fire. But her

son Thomas, with whom she

did not get along, is hanged

for her murder after hearsay is

offered as evidence at his trial.

AFTER

1785 Anna Göldi, a Swiss

maidservant to a physician, is

accused of witchcraft by her

employer (and rejected lover)

and executed. In 2007, the

Swiss parliament declares the

case a miscarriage of justice.

1922 In Australia, Colin

Campbell Ross is hanged for

the murder of a 12-year-old girl.

The case is re-examined using

modern forensic techniques,

and Ross is posthumously

pardoned in 2008.

It would seem that fanaticism

is angry at the success of

reason, and combats it ever

more f u r iou sly.

Voltaire

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