Jean-Marie Bastien-Thiry was a French Air Force lieutenant colonel, military air-weaponry engineer and the creator of the Nord SS.10/SS.11 missiles. Bastien-Thiry attempted to assassinate French president Charles de Gaulle on 22 August 1962 in retaliation for de Gaulle's decision to accept Algerian independence. Bastien-Thiry was the last person to be executed by firing squad in France.

Capital punishment in France is banned by Article 66-1 of the Constitution of the French Republic, voted as a constitutional amendment by the Congress of the French Parliament on 19 February 2007 and simply stating "No one can be sentenced to the death penalty". The death penalty was already declared illegal on 9 October 1981 when President François Mitterrand signed a law prohibiting the judicial system from using it and commuting the sentences of the seven people on death row to life imprisonment. The last execution took place by guillotine, being the main legal method since the French Revolution; Hamida Djandoubi, a Tunisian citizen convicted of torture and murder on French soil, was put to death in September 1977 in Marseille.