Jérôme Carrein, (1939 - June 23, 1977, Douai (France)), was the second-last convicted criminal to be executed by decapitation in France.

On October 27 1975 in Arleux, Northern France, Jérôme Carrein, father of five children, often of no fixed abode, alcoholic and a tuberculosis sufferer, met an eight-year-old local girl, the daughter of the owner of a bar he was known to frequent. He was to entice her to follow him into the nearby marshlands to search for fish bait. He would there attempt to rape the child before strangling and drowning her.

He was arrested the next day and confessed his crime. He was tried before the Pas-de-Calais criminal court at Saint Omer, found guilty and sentenced to death on July 12 1976. Christian Ranucci, also sentenced to death for a child murder, would be guillotined at Marseille's Baumettes prison twelve days later.

Carrein appealed against his sentence and was retried on February 1, 1977 at the criminal court in Douai. Two weeks before the second trial began, Patrick Henry, another child murderer, had narrowly escaped a death sentence at the criminal court in Troyes thanks to the skill of his lawyer, Robert Badinter, and public outrage in France was particularly strong. Carrein was sentenced to death a second time.

Carrein's final appeal in mid-June 1977 was turned down by President Valéry Giscard d'Estaing. Carrein was guillotined at 4.30 a.m. on June 23 1977 in the yard of Douai prison; the executioner was Marcel Chevalier. Only one more convicted criminal - Hamida Djandoubi - would suffer death upon the guillotine in France

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