1812 Penalty for Parricide

The 1812 Penalty for Parricide was a provision of the Penal Code that prescribed an additional bodily punishment before execution for parricide and extended that classification to attacks against the Emperor. It joined a specific mutilation to the death penalty, making the severity and sequence of punishment explicit.

Scope of the Offense

The provision applied to parricides, defined in the text to include both murders and attempts. Its reach therefore did not stop at a completed killing: an attempted parricide was also within the rule's stated scope.

Penalty and Classification

For those offenses, the Code added the severing of the offender's right wrist before the death penalty. It further treated attacks against the Emperor as parricide, placing them under this same severe classification. The rule thus connected violence against a family member with violence against the sovereign in its definition of the offense, while specifying a bodily punishment to precede execution.