Le Jeune Case
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| Le Jeune Case | |
|---|---|
 Haitian revolutionary and former slave Jean-Baptiste Belley, who lived in the area of Le Cap where the Le Jeune case was first heard. Portrait by Anne-Louis Girodet De Roucy-Trioson. | |
| Court | Le Cap colonial court; Port-au-Prince superior court. |
| Decided | 1788 |
| Case history | |
| Appealed from | Le Cap colonial court |
| Appealed to | Port-au-Prince superior court |
| Case opinions | |
| Planter Le Jeune acquitted of having tortured and murdered his slaves. | |
The Le Jeune Case (or "Lejeune case") was a suit brought by 14 slaves against torture and murder by their master, Nicolas Le Jeune, in the French colony of Saint-Domingue in 1788.[1] Le Jeune was accused of torturing and murdering six slaves, who he said had planned to poison him. Despite overwhelming evidence of Le Jeune's guilt, courts ruled in favor of the planter, demonstrating the complicity of Saint-Domingue's legal system in the brutalization of slaves.[1][2] The Haitian Revolution ending slavery in Saint-Domingue would begin only three years later.
In 1685, France enacted the Code Noir, regulating the treatment of slaves in its colonies.[3] The code was brutal, and allowed both whipping and exploitation of slaves. Slaves who escaped as Maroons were to be branded, hamstrung or executed.[3] But the code also required that slaves be clothed and fed, and it ostensibly protected them against torture, murder and rape.[3] The codes were rarely enforced,[3] and beginning in 1767, French King Louis XV and his administration began amending the codes to reduce their protections of slaves, free blacks and mulattoes, and white colonists who might form personal relationships with them.[2][3] In 1784 however, in response to abuses from slave-holding planters, France re-imposed more stringent regulations under the Code.[2]
Allegations of murder and torture
In March 1788, 14 slaves left the coffee plantation of Nicolas Le Jeune in Plaisance, Nord, southwest of Le Cap-Haïtien.[1][3] They informed authorities in Le Cap that Le Jeune had murdered four of them, and was torturing two enslaved women at his plantation.[1][3] Judges in Le Cap formed a commission to investigate the case, and its officers visited Le Jeune's plantation, where they found two women who were chained, and dying from wounds of torture.[1][3] Le Jeune, who had burned off portions of their limbs, claimed that they were part of a slave plot to poison him. Investigators found no poison in the women's possessions.[1][4] When both died, the Governor of Saint-Domingue demanded the arrest of Le Jeune,[3] who fled.[1]
Fear of poisoning by slaves was common in Saint-Domingue, and planters often extracted confessions of past or planned poisoning through torture.[3]
