The Guillotine Falls

The cold steel blade, sandwiched between two upright wooden shafts, is quietly carted into the prison's exercise yard before dawn. The convict is aroused at 5:30 and offered a cigarette and a glass of rum. Then, bound and blindfolded, he is strapped, face down, neck bared, to the shoulder-high plank. A switch trips and the heavy, razor-sharp blade falls.

Ever since 1789 when Joseph-Ignace Guillotin advocated swift and painless decapitation as a way to put people to death, the guillotine, designed by others, has served as a uniquely French form of capital punishment. During the French Revolution hundreds of heads were lopped off, and the crowds came early to get a good view of such victims as Danton and Robespierre. In all, the guillotine was used some 4,600 times. Public executions were banned in 1939. In the past decade, the blade fell only six times, the most recent in Sept. 1977 when Hamida Djandoubi was dispatched for murder.

When he took office last May, Socialist President Franc,ois Mitterrand vowed to cease all executions, although polls show that 62% of the French people are opposed to the change. Last week, after two days of heated debate, France's National Assembly voted 363 to 117 to approve a bill that abolishes the death penalty.

Once the bill becomes law in early October, Justice Minister Robert Badinter intends to turn over custody of one of the two surviving guillotines to a Paris museum, where, he predicts, "it is going to have the same attraction as the Mona Lisa." An avid collector of memorabilia involving the device, Badinter purchased the document signed by Louis XVI legalizing the guillotine for executions in 1791. The King died under the blade 18 months after approving its use. Reflects Badinter: "I don't think the machine gave him much satisfaction in the end."

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