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LEFT TO RIGHT: LOEB, DARROW, AND
LEOPOLD - CHICAGO 1924
The Book of Love
Go here for more about
Clarence Darrow.
Go here for more about
Clarence Darrow's closing argument.
It follows the full text transcript of
Clarence Darrow's closing argument in the case
Illinois versus Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb, delivered at
Chicago, Illinois - August 22, 1924.
This is page 1 of 2. Go here for
page 2 of this speech.
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Your Honor, it has
been almost three months since the great
responsibility of this case was assumed by my
associates and myself. |
It has been three
months of great anxiety. A burden which I gladly
would have been spared excepting for my feelings
of affection toward some of the members of one
of these unfortunate families.
Our anxiety over this case has not been due to
the facts that are connected with this most
unfortunate affair, but to the almost unheard of
publicity it has received; to the fact that
newspapers all over this country have been
giving it space such as they have almost never
before given to any case. The fact that day
after day the people of Chicago have been
regaled with stories of all sorts about it,
until almost every person has formed an opinion.
And when the public is interested and demands a
punishment, no matter what the offense, great or
small, it thinks of only one punishment, and
that is death. It may not be a question that
involves the taking of human life; it may be a
question of pure prejudice alone; but when the
public speaks as one man, it thinks only of
killing.
It was announced that there were millions of
dollars to be spent on this case. Wild and
extravagant stories were freely published as
though they were facts. Here was to be an effort
to save the lives of two boys by the use of
money in fabulous amounts. We announced to the
public that no excessive use of money would be
made in this case, neither for lawyers nor for
psychiatrists, or in any other way. We have
faithfully kept that promise. The psychiatrists
are receiving a per diem, and only a per diem,
which is the same as is paid by the state. The
attorneys, at their own request, have agreed to
take such amount as the officers of the Chicago
Bar Association may think proper in this case.
If we fail in this defense it will not be for
lack of money. It will be on account of money.
Money has been the most serious handicap that we
have met. There are times when poverty is
fortunate.
I insist, Your Honor, that had this been the
case of two boys of these defendants' age,
unconnected with families of great wealth, there
is not a state's attorney in Illinois who could
not have consented at once to a plea of guilty
and a punishment in the penitentiary for life.
Not one. No lawyer could have justified any
other attitude. No prosecution could have
justified it.
We are here with the lives of two boys
imperiled, with the public aroused. For what?
Because, unfortunately, the parents have money.
Nothing else.
I have heard in the last six weeks nothing but
the cry for blood. I have heard from the office
of the state's attorney only ugly hate. I have
heard precedents quoted which would be a
disgrace to a savage race. I have seen a court
urged almost to the point of threats to hang two
boys, in the face of science, in the face of
philosophy, in the face of humanity, in the face
of experience, in the face of all the better and
more humane thought of the age.
Why, Mr. Savage [one of the prosecutors] says
age makes no difference, and that if this court
should do what every other court in Illinois has
done since its foundation, and refuse to
sentence these boys to death, none else would
ever be hanged in Illinois.
Well, I can imagine some results worse than
that. So long as this terrible tool is to be
used for a plaything, without thought or
consideration, we ought to get rid of it for the
protection of human life.
Now, Your Honor, Mr. Savage, in as cruel a
speech as he knew how to make, said to this
court that we pled guilty because we are afraid
to do anything else.
Your Honor, that is true.
It was not correct that we would have defended
these boys in this court; we believe we have
been fair to the public. Anyhow, we have tried,
and we have tried under terribly hard
conditions.
We have said to the public and to this court
that neither the parents, nor the friends, nor
the attorneys would want these boys released.
Unfortunate though it be, it is true, and those
the closest to them know perfectly well that
they should not be released, and that they
should be permanently isolated from society. We
are asking this court to save their lives, which
is the least and the most that a judge can do.
We did plead guilty before Your Honor because we
were afraid to submit our cause to a jury.
I can tell Your Honor why. I have found that
years and experience with life tempers one's
emotions and makes him more understanding of his
fellowman. When my friend Savage is my age, or
even yours, he will read his address to this
court with horror. I am aware that as one grows
older he is less critical. He is not so sure. He
is inclined to make some allowance for his
fellowman. I am aware that a court has more
experience, more judgment, and more kindliness
than a jury.
Your Honor, it may be hardly fair to the court,
I am aware that I have helped to place a serious
burden upon your shoulders. And at that, I have
always meant to be your friend, but this was not
an act of friendship. I know perfectly well that
where responsibility is divided by twelve, it is
easy to say: "Away with him."
But, Your Honor, if these boys hang, you must do
it. There can be no division of responsibility
here. You can never explain that the rest
overpowered you. It must be by your deliberate,
cool, premeditated act, without a chance to
shift responsibility. It was not a kindness to
you. We placed this responsibility on your
shoulders because we were mindful of the rights
of our clients, and we were mindful of the
unhappy families who have done no wrong.
Your Honor will never thank me for unloading
this responsibility upon you, but you know that
I would have been untrue to my clients if had
not concluded to take this chance before court,
instead of submitting it to a poisoned jury in
the city of Chicago. I did it knowing that it
would be an unheard of thing for any court, no
matter who, to sentence these boys to death.
Your Honor, I must for a moment criticize the
arguments that have preceded me. I can sum up
the prosecutor's arguments in a minute: cruelly,
dastardly, premeditated, fiendish, abandoned,
and malignant heart.
Now, that is what I have listened to for three
days against two minors, two children, who have
no right to sign a note or take a deed.
Cowardly? Well, I don't know. Let me tell you
something that I think is cowardly, whether
their acts were or not. Here is Dickie Loeb, and
Nathan Leopold, and the state objects to anybody
calling one "Dickie" and the other "Babe"
although everybody does, but they think they can
hang them easier if their names are Richard and
Nathan, so, we will call them Richard and
Nathan. Eighteen and nineteen years old at the
time of the homicide. Here are three officers
watching them. They are led out and in [to] this
jail and across the bridge waiting to be hanged.
Not a chance to get away. Handcuffed when they
get out of this room. Not a chance. Penned like
rats in a trap; and for a lawyer with
physiological eloquence to wave his fist in
front of their faces and shout "Cowardly!" does
not appeal to me as a brave act.
Cold-blooded? Why? Because they planned, and
schemed. Yes. But here are the officers of
justice, so-called, with all the power of the
state, and he said they played for five cents a
point. Now, I trust Your Honor knows better than
I do how much of a game that would be. At poker
I might guess, but I know little about bridge.
But what else? He said that in a game one of
them lost $90 to the other one. They were
playing again each other, and one of them lost
$90? Ninety dollars! Their joint money was just
the same; and there is not another word of
evidence in this case to sustain the statement
of Mr. Crowe, who pleads to hang these boys.
Your Honor, is it not trifling?
It would be trifling, excepting, Your Honor,
that we are dealing in human life. And we are
dealing in more than that; we are dealing in the
future fate of two families. We are talking of
placing a blot upon two houses that do not
deserve it. And all that they can get out of
their imagination is that there was a game of
bridge and one lost $90 to the other, and
therefore they went out and committed murder.
Your Honor knows that it is utterly absurd. The
evidence was absolutely worthless. The statement
was made out of whole cloth, and Mr. Crowe felt
like that policeman who came in here and
perjured himself, as I will show you later on,
who said that when he was talking with Nathan
Leopold Jr., he told him the public was not
satisfied with the motive. I wonder if the
public is satisfied with the motive? If there is
any person in Chicago who; under the evidence in
this case would believe that this was the
motive, then he is stupid. That is all I have to
say for him, just plain stupid.
But let us go further than that. Who were these
two boys? And how did it happen?
On a certain day they killed poor little Robert
Franks. They were not to get $10,000; they were
to get $5,000 if it worked; that is, $5,000
each. Neither one could get more than five, and
either one was risking his; neck in the job. So
each one of my clients was risking his neck for
$5,000, if it had anything to do with it, which
it did not.
Did they need the money? Why at this very time,
and a few months before, Dickie Loeb had $3,000
[in his] checking account in the bank. Your
Honor, I would be ashamed to talk about this
except that in all apparent seriousness they are
asking to kill these two boys on the strength of
this flimsy foolishness. At that time, Richard
Loeb had a three-thousand-dollar checking
account in the bank. He had three Liberty Bonds,
one of which was past due, and the interest on
each of them had not been collected for three
years. And yet they would ask to hang him on the
theory that he committed this murder because he
needed money.
How about Leopold? Leopold was in regular
receipt of $125 a month; he had an automobile;
paid nothing for board and clothes, and
expenses; he got money whenever he wanted it,
and he had arranged to go to Europe and had
bought his ticket and was going to leave about
the time he was arrested in this case. He passed
his examination for the Harvard Law School, and
was going to take a short trip to Europe before
it was time for him to attend the fall term. His
ticket had been bought, and his father was to
give him $3,000 to make the trip. Your Honor,
jurors sometimes make mistakes, and courts do,
too. If on this evidence the court is to
construe a motive out of this case, then I
insist that a motive could be construed out of
any set of circumstances and facts that might be
imagined.
The boys had been reared in luxury, they had
never been denied anything; no want or desire
left unsatisfied; no debts; no need of money;
nothing. And yet they murdered a little boy,
against whom they had nothing in the world,
without malice, without reason, to get $5,000
each. All right. All right, Your Honor, if the
court believes it, if anyone believes it, I
can't help it. That is what this case rests on.
It could not stand up a minute without motive.
without it, it was the senseless act of immature
and diseased children, as it was; a senseless
act of children, wandering around in the dark
and moved by some motion, that we still perhaps
have not the knowledge or the insight into life
to thoroughly understand.
Now, let me go on with it. What else do they
claim?
It has been argued to this court that you can do
no such thing as to grant the almost divine
favor of saving the lives of two boys, that it
is against the law, that the penalty for murder
is death; and this court, who, in the fiction of
the lawyers and the judges, forgets that he is a
human being and becomes a court, pulseless,
emotionless, devoid of those common feelings
which alone make men; that this court as a human
machine must hang them because they killed.
Now, let us see. I do not need to ask mercy from
this court for these clients, nor for anybody
else, nor for myself; though I have never yet
found a person who did not need it. But I do not
ask mercy for these boys. Your Honor may be as
strict in the enforcement of the law as you
please and you cannot hang these boys. You can
only hang them because back of the law and back
of justice and back of the common instincts of
man, and back of the human feeling for the
young, is the hoarse voice of the mob which
says, "Kill." I need ask nothing. What is the
law of Illinois? If one is found guilty of
murder in the first degree by a jury, or if he
pleads guilty before a court, the court or jury
may do one of three things: he may hang, he may
imprison for life, or he may imprison for a term
of not less than fourteen years. Now, why is
that the law? Does it follow from the statute
that a court is bound to ascertain the
impossible, and must necessarily measure the
degrees of guilt? Not at all. He may not be able
to do it. A court may act from any reason or ,
from no reason. A jury may fix anyone of these
penalties as they separate. Why was this law
passed? Undoubtedly in recognition of the
growing feeling in all the forward-thinking
people of the United States against capital
punishment. Undoubtedly, through the deep
reluctance of courts and juries to take human
life.
Without any reason whatever, without any facts
whatever, Your Honor must make the choice, and
you have the same right to make one choice as
another. It is Your Honor's province; you may do
it, and I need ask nothing in order to have you
do it. There is the statute. But there is more
than that in this case.
We have sought to tell this court why he should
not hang these boys. We have sought to tell this
court, and to make this court believe, that they
were diseased of mind, and that they were of
tender age. However, before I discuss that, I
ought to say another word in reference to the
question of motive in this case. If there was no
motive, except the senseless act of immature
boys, then of course there is taken from this
case all of the feeling of deep guilt upon the
part of these defendants.
There was neither cruelty to the deceased,
beyond taking his life, nor was there any depth
of guilt and depravity on the part of the
defendants, for it was a truly motiveless act,
without the slightest feeling of hatred or
revenge, done by a couple of children for no
sane reason.
But, Your Honor, we have gone further than that,
and we have sought to show you, as I think we
have, the condition of these boys' minds. Of
course it is not an easy task to find out the
condition of another person's mind. Now, I was
about to say that it needs no expert, it needs
nothing but a bare recitation of these facts,
and a fair consideration of them, to convince
any human being that this was the act of
diseased brains.
But let's get to something stronger than that.
Were these boys in their right minds? Here were
two boys with good intellect, one eighteen and
one nineteen. They had all the prospects that
life could hold out for any of the young; one a
graduate of Chicago and another of Ann Arbor;
one who had passed his examination for the
Harvard Law School and was about to take a trip
in Europe, another who had passed at Ann Arbor,
the youngest in his class, with $3,000 in the
bank. Boys who never knew what it was to want a
dollar; boys who could reach any position that
was given to boys of that kind to reach; boys of
distinguished and honorable families, families
of wealth and position, with all the world
before them. And they gave it all up for
nothing, for nothing! They took a little
companion of one of them, on a crowded street,
and killed him, for nothing, and sacrificed
everything that could be of value in human life
upon the crazy scheme of a couple of immature
lads.
Now, Your Honor, you have been a boy; I have
been a boy. And we have known other boys. The
best way to understand somebody else is to put
yourself in his place. Is it within the realm of
your imagination that a boy who was right, with
all the prospects of life before him, who could
choose what he wanted, without the slightest
reason in the world would lure a young companion
to his death, and take his place in the shadow
of the gallows?
How insane they are I care not, whether
medically or legally. They did not reason; they
could not reason; they committed the most
foolish, most unprovoked, most purposeless, most
causeless act that any two boys ever committed,
and they put themselves where the rope is
dangling above their heads.
There are not physicians enough in the world to
convince any thoughtful, fair-minded man that
these boys are right. Was their act one of
deliberation, of intellect, or were they driven
by some force such as Dr. White and Dr. Glueck
and Dr. Healy have told this court?
There are only two theories; one is that their
diseased brains drove them to it; the other is
the old theory of possession by devils, and my
friend Marshall could have read you books on
that, too, but it has been pretty well given up
in Illinois. That they were intelligent, sane,
sound, and reasoning is unthinkable. Let me call
Your Honor's attention to another thing.
Why did they kill little Bobby Franks? Not for
money, not for spite; not for hate. They killed
him as they might kill a spider or a fly, for
the experience. They killed him because they
were made that way. Because somewhere in the
infinite processes that go to the making up of
the boy or the man something slipped, and those
unfortunate lads sit here hated, despised,
outcasts, with the community shouting for their
blood. Mr. Savage, with the immaturity of youth
and inexperience, says that if we hang them
there will be no more killing. This world has
been one long slaughterhouse from the beginning
until today, and killing goes on and on and on,
and will forever. Why not read something, why
not study something, why not think instead of
blindly shouting for death?
Kill them. Will that prevent other senseless
boys or other vicious men or vicious women from
killing? No! It will simply call upon every
weak-minded person to do as they have done. I
know how easy it is to I talk about mothers when
you want to do something cruel. But I am
thinking of the others, too. I know that any
mother might be the mother of little Bobby
Franks, who left his home and went to his
school, and who never came back. I know that any
mother might be the mother of Richard Loeb and
Nathan Leopold, just the same. The trouble is
this, that if she is the mother of a Nathan
Leopold or of a Richard Loeb, she has to ask
herself the question: "How come my children came
to be what they are? From what ancestry did they
get this strain? How far removed was the poison
that destroyed their lives? Was I the bearer of
the seed that brings them to death?" Any mother
might be the mother of any of them. But these
two are the victims.
No one knows what will be the fate of the child
he gets or the child she bears; the fate of the
child is the last thing they consider.
I am sorry for the fathers as well as the
mothers, for the fathers who give their strength
and their lives for educating and protecting and
creating a fortune for the boys that they love;
for the mothers who go down into the shadow of
death for their children, who nourish them and
care for them, and risk their lives, that they
may live, who watch them with tenderness and
fondness and longing, and who go down into
dishonor and disgrace for the children that they
love.
All of these are helpless. We are all helpless.
But when you are pitying the father and the
mother of poor Bobby Franks, what about the
fathers and mothers of these two unfortunate
boys, and what about the, unfortunate boys
themselves, and what about all the fathers and
all the mothers and all the boys and all the
girls who tread a dangerous maze in darkness
from birth to death?
Do you think you can cure the hatreds and the
maladjustments of the world by hanging them? You
simply show your ignorance and your hate when
you say it. You may here and there cure hatred
with love and understanding, but you can only
add fuel to the flames by cruelty and hate.
Your Honor, that no human being could have done
what these boys did, excepting through the
operation of a diseased brain. I do not propose
to go through each step of the terrible deed, it
would take too long. But I do want to call the
attention of this court to some of the other
acts of these two boys, in this distressing and
weird homicide; acts which show conclusively
that there could be no reason for their conduct.
I want to come down now to the actions on the
afternoon of the tragedy.
Without any excuse, without the slightest
motive, not moved by money, not moved by passion
or hatred, by nothing except the vague
wanderings of children, about four o'clock in
the afternoon they started out to find somebody
to kill. For nothing.
They went over to the Harvard School. Dick's
little brother was there, on the playground.
Dick went there himself in open daylight, known
by all of them; he had been a pupil there
himself, the school was near his home, and he
looked over the little boys. They first picked
out a little boy named Levinson, and Dick
trailed him around. Now, of course, that is a
hard story. It is a story that shocks one. A boy
bent on killing, not knowing where he would go
or who he would get, but seeking some victim.
Here is a little boy, but the circumstances are
not opportune, and so he fails to get him. Dick
abandons that lead; Dick and Nathan are in the
car, and they see Bobby Franks on the street,
and they call to him to get into the car. It is
about five o'clock in the afternoon, in the long
summer days, on a thickly settled street, built
up with homes, the houses of their friends and
their companions known to everybody, automobiles
appearing and disappearing, and they take him in
the car.
If there had been a question of revenge, yes; if
there had been a question of hate, where no one
cares for his own fate, intent only on
accomplishing his end, yes. But without any
motive or any reason they picked up this little
boy right in sight of their own homes, and
surrounded by their neighbors. They hit him over
the head with a chisel and killed him, and go on
about their business, driving this car within
half a block of Loeb's home, within the same
distance of the Franks's home, drive it past the
neighbors that they knew, in the open highway,
in broad daylight. And still men will say that
they have a bright intellect.
I say again, whatever madness and hate and
frenzy may do to the human mind, there is not a
single person who reasons who can believe that
one of these acts was the act of men, of brains
that were not diseased. There is no other
explanation for it. And had it not been for the
wealth and the weirdness and the notoriety, they
would have been sent to the psychopathic
hospital for examination, and been taken care
of, instead of the state demanding that this
court take the last pound of flesh and the last
drop of blood from two irresponsible lads.
They pull the dead boy into the backseat, and
wrap him in a blanket, and this funeral car
starts on its route. If ever any death car went
over the same route or the same kind of a route
driven by sane people, I have never heard of it,
and I fancy no one else has ever heard of it.
This car is driven for twenty miles. The
slightest accident, the slightest misfortune, a
bit of curiosity, an arrest for speeding,
anything would bring destruction. They go down
the Midway, through the park, meeting hundreds
of machines, in sight of thousands of eyes, with
this dead boy. They go down a thickly populated
street through South Chicago, and then for three
miles take the longest street to go through this
city; built solid with business, buildings,
filled with automobiles backed upon the street,
with streetcars on the track, with thousands of
peering eyes; one boy driving and the other on
the backseat, with the corpse of little Bobby
Franks, the blood streaming from him, wetting
everything in the car.
And yet they tell me that this is sanity; they
tell me that the brains of these boys are not
diseased. Their conduct shows exactly what it
was, and shows that this court has before him
two young men who should be examined in a
psychopathic hospital and treated kindly and
with care. They get through South Chicago, and
they take the regular automobile road down
toward Hammond. They stop at the forks of the
road, and leave little Bobby Franks, soaked with
blood, in the machine, and get their dinner, and
eat it without an emotion or a qualm.
I repeat, you may search the annals of crime,
and you can find no parallel. It is utterly at
variance with every motive, and every act and
every part of conduct that influences normal
people in the commission of crime. There is not
a sane thing in all of this from the beginning
to the end. There was not a normal act in any of
it, from its inception in a diseased brain,
until today, when they sit here awaiting their
doom.
But we are told that they planned. Well, what
does that mean? A maniac plans, an idiot plans,
an animal plans; any brain that functions may
plan. But their plans were the diseased plans of
the diseased mind. Is there any man with an air
of intellect and a decent regard for human life,
and the slightest bit of heart that does not
understand this situation? And still, Your
Honor, on account of its weirdness and its
strangeness, and its advertising, we are forced
to fight. For what? Forced to plead to this
court that two boys, one eighteen and the other
nineteen, may be permitted to live in silence
and solitude and disgrace and spend all their
days in the penitentiary. Asking this court and
the state's attorney to be merciful enough to
let these two boys be locked up in a prison
until they die.
I sometimes wonder if I am dreaming. If in the
first quarter of the twentieth century there has
come back into the hearts of men the hate and
feeling and the lust for blood which possesses
the primitive savage of barbarous lands. What do
they want? Tell me, is a lifetime for the young
boys spent behind prison bars, is that not
enough for this mad act? And is there any reason
why this great public should be regaled by a
hanging? I cannot understand it, Your Honor. It
would be past belief, excepting that to the four
corners of the earth the news of this weird act
has been carried and men have been stirred, and
the primitive has come back, and the intellect
has been stifled, and men have been controlled
by feelings and passions and hatred which should
have died centuries ago.
My friend Savage pictured to you the putting of
this dead boy in this culvert. Well, no one can
minutely describe any killing and not make it
shocking. It is shocking. It is shocking because
we love life and because we instinctively draw
back from death. It is shocking wherever it is
and however it is, and perhaps all death is
almost equally shocking.
But here is the picture of a dead boy, past
pain, when no harm can come to him, put in a
culvert, after taking off his clothes so that
the evidence would be destroyed; and that is
pictured to this court as a reason for hanging.
Well, Your Honor, that does not appeal to me as
strongly as the hitting over the head of little
Robert Franks with a chisel. The boy was dead.
I could say something about the death penalty
that, for some mysterious reason, the state
wants in this case. Why do they want it? To
vindicate the law? Oh, no. The law can be
vindicated without killing anyone else. It might
shock the fine sensibilities of the state's
counsel that this boy was put into a culvert and
left after he was dead, but, Your Honor, I can
think of a scene that makes this pale into
insignificance. I can think, and only think,
Your Honor, of taking two boys, one eighteen and
the other nineteen, irresponsible, weak,
diseased, penning them in a cell, checking off
the days and the hours and the minutes, until
they will be taken out and hanged. Wouldn't it
be a glorious day for Chicago?
Wouldn't it be a glorious triumph for the
state's attorney? Wouldn't it be a great triumph
for justice in this land? Wouldn't it be a
glorious illustration of Christianity and
kindness and charity? I can picture them,
wakened in the gray light of morning, furnished
[with a] suit of clothes' by the state, led to
the scaffold, their feet tied, black caps drawn
over their heads, stood on a trapdoor, the
hangman pressing a spring, so that it gives way
under them; can see them fall through space and
stopped by the rope around their necks.
I am always suspicious of righteous indignation.
Nothing is more cruel than righteous
indignation. To hear young men talk glibly of
justice.
Who knows what it is? Does Mr. Savage know? Does
Mr. Crowe know? Do I know? Does Your Honor know?
Is there any human machinery for finding it out?
Is there any man can weigh me and say what I
deserve?
Can Your Honor? Let us be honest. Can Your Honor
appraise yourself and say what you deserve? Can
Your Honor appraise these two young men and say
what they deserve? Justice must take account of
infinite circumstances which a human being
cannot understand.
These boys left this body down in the culvert
and they came back telephoned home that they
would be too late for supper. Here, surely, was
an act of consideration on the part of Leopold,
telephoning home that he would be late for
supper. Dr. Krohn says he must be able to think
and act because he could do this. But the boy
who through habit would telephone his home that
he would be late for supper had not a tremor or
a thought or a shudder at taking the life of
little Bobby Franks for nothing, and he has not
had one yet. He was in the habit of doing what
he did when he telephoned, that was all; but in
the presence of life and death, and a cruel
death, he had no tremor, and no thought.
They came back. They got their dinner. They
parked the bloody automobile in front of
Leopold's house. They cleaned it to some extent
that night and left it standing in the street in
front of their home. They took it into the
garage the next day and washed it, and the poor
little Dickie Loeb-I shouldn't call him Dickie,
and I shouldn't call him poor, because that
might be playing for sympathy, and you have no
right to ask for sympathy in this world: you
should ask for justice, whatever that may be;
and only the state's attorneys know.
And then in a day or so we find Dick Loeb with
his pockets stuffed with newspapers telling of
the Franks's tragedy. We find him consulting
with his friends in the club, with the newspaper
reporters; and my experience is that the last
person that a conscious criminal associates with
is a reporter. He even shuns them more than he
does a detective, because they are smarter and
less merciful. But he picks up a reporter, and
he tells him he has read a great many detective
stories, and he knows just how this would happen
and that the fellow who telephoned must have
been down on Sixty-third Street, and the way to
find him is to go down on Sixty-third Street and
visit the drugstores, and he would go with him.
And Dick Loeb pilots reporters around the
drugstores where the telephoning was done, and
he talks about it, and he takes the newspapers,
and takes them with him, and he is having a
glorious time. And yet he is "perfectly
oriented," in the language of Dr. Krohn.
"Perfectly oriented." Is there any question
about the condition of his mind? Why was he
doing it? He liked to hear about it. He had done
something that he could not boast of directly,
but he did want to hear other people talk about
it, and he looked around there, and helped them
find the place where the telephone message was
sent out.
Does not the man who knows what he is doing, who
for some reason has been overpowered and commits
what is called a crime, keep as far away from it
as he can? Does he go to the reporters and help
them hunt it out? There is not a single act in
this case that is not the act of a diseased
mind, not one.
Talk about scheming. Yes, it is the scheme of
disease; it is the scheme of infancy; it is the
scheme of fools; it is the scheme of
irresponsibility from the time it was conceived
until the last act in the tragedy.
Now, Your Honor, let me go a little further with
this. I have gone over some of the high spots in
this tragedy. This tragedy has not claimed all
the attention it has had on account of its
atrocity. There are two reasons, and only two
that I can see. First is the reputed extreme
wealth of these families; not only the Loeb and
Leopold families, but the Franks family, and of
course it is unusual. And next is the fact
[that] it is weird and uncanny and motiveless.
That is what attracted the attention of the
world. Many may say now that they want to hang
these boys. But I know that giving the people
blood is something like giving them their
dinner: when they get it they go to sleep. They
may for the time being have an emotion, but they
will bitterly regret it. And I undertake to say
that if these two boys are sentenced to death,
and are hanged on that day, there will be a pall
settle over the people of this land that will be
dark and deep, and at least cover every humane
and intelligent person with its gloom. I wonder
if it will do good. I marveled when I heard Mr.
Savage talk. Mr. Savage tells this court that if
these boys are hanged, there will be no more
murder. Mr. Savage is an optimist. He says that
if the defendants are hanged there will be no
more boys like these. I could give him a sketch
of punishment, punishment beginning with the
brute which killed something because something
hurt it; the punishment the savage; if a person
is injured in the tribe, they must injure
somebody in the other tribe; it makes no
difference who it is, but somebody. If one is
killed his friends or family must kill in
return.
You can trace it all down through the history of
man. You can trace the burnings, the boilings,
the drawings and quarterings, the hangings of
people in England at the crossroads, carving
them up and hanging them, as examples for all to
see.
We can come down to the last century when nearly
two hundred crimes were punishable by death, and
by death in every form; not only hanging that
was too humane, but burning, boiling, cutting
into pieces, torturing in all conceivable forms.
I know that every step in the progress of
humanity has been met and opposed by
prosecutors, and many times by courts. I know
that when poaching and petty larceny was
punishable by death in England, juries refused
to convict. They were too humane to obey the
law; and judges refused to sentence. I know that
when the delusion of witchcraft was spreading
over Europe, claiming its victims by the
millions, many a judge so shaped his cases that
no crime of witchcraft could be punished in his
court. I know that these trials were stopped in
America because juries would no longer convict.
Gradually the laws have been changed and
modified, and men look back with horror at the
hangings and the killings of the past. What did
they find in England? That as they got rid of
these barbarous statutes, crimes decreased
instead of increased; as the criminal law was
modified and humanized, there was less crime
instead of more. I will undertake to say, Your
Honor, that you can scarcely find a single book
written by a student, and I will include all the
works on criminology of the past, that has not
made the statement over and over again that as
the penal code was made less terrible, crimes
grew less frequent.
If these two boys die on the scaffold, which I
can never bring myself to imagine, If they do
die on the scaffold, the details of this will be
spread over the world. Every newspaper in the
United States will carry a full account. Every
newspaper of Chicago will be filled with the
gruesome details. It will enter every home and
every family. Will it make men better or make
men worse? I would like to put that to the
intelligence of man, at least such intelligence
as they have. I would like to appeal to the
feelings of human beings so far as they have fee
lings-- would it make the human heart softer or
would it make hearts harder?
What influence would it have upon the millions
of men who will read it? What influence would it
have upon the millions of women who will read
it, more sensitive, more impressionable, more
imaginative than men? Would it help them if Your
Honor should do what the state begs you to do?
What influence would it have upon the infinite
number of children who will devour its details
as Dickie Loeb has enjoyed reading detective
stories? Would it make them better or would it
make them worse? The question needs no answer.
You can answer it from the human heart. What
influence, let me ask you, will it have for the
unborn babes still sleeping in their mother's
womb? Do I need to argue to Your Honor that
cruelty only breeds cruelty? That hatred only
causes hatred; that if there is any way to
soften this human heart which is hard enough at
its best, if there is any way to kill evil and
hatred and all that goes with it, it is not
through evil and hatred and cruelty; it is
through charity, and love, and understanding.
I am not pleading so much for these boys as I am
for the infinite number of others to follow,
those who perhaps cannot be as well defended as
these have been, those who may go down in the
storm, and the tempest, without aid. It is of
them I am thinking, and for them I am begging of
this court not to turn backward toward the
barbarous and cruel past.
Now, Your Honor, who are these two boys?
Leopold, with a wonderfully brilliant mind;
Loeb, with an unusual intelligence; both from
their very youth, crowded like hothouse plants,
to learn more and more and more. Dr. Krohn says
that they are intelligent. But it takes
something besides brains to make a human being
who can adjust himself to life.
In fact, as Dr. Church and as Dr. Singer
regretfully admitted, brains are not the chief
essential in human conduct. There is no question
about it. The emotions are the urge that make us
live; the urge that makes us work or play, or
move along the pathways of life. They are the
instinctive things. In fact, intellect is a late
development of life. Long before it was evolved,
the emotional life kept the organism in
existence until death. Whatever our action is,
it comes from the emotions, and nobody is
balanced without them.
The intellect does not count so much. The state
put on three alienists and Dr. Krohn. Two of
them, Dr. Patrick and Dr. Church, are
undoubtedly able men. One of them, Dr. Church,
is a man whom I have known for thirty years, and
for whom I have the highest regard.
On Sunday, June 1, before any of the friends of
these boys or their counsel could see them,
while they were in the care of the state's
attorney's office, they brought them in to be
examined by these alienists. I am not going to
discuss that in detail as I may later on. Dr.
Patrick Sail the only thing unnatural he noted
about it was that they had no emotional
reactions. Dr. Church said the same. These are
their alienists, not ours. These boys could tell
this gruesome story without a change of
countenance, without the slightest feelings.
There were no emotional reactions to it. What
was the reason? I do not know. How can I tell
why? I know what causes the emotional life. I
know it comes from the nerves, the muscles, the
endocrine glands, the vegetative system. I know
it is the most important part of life. I know it
is practically left out of some. I know that
without it men cannot live. I know that without
it they cannot act with the rest. I know they
cannot feel what you feel and what I feel; that
they cannot feel the moral shocks which come to
men who are educated and who have not been
deprived of an emotional system or emotional
feelings. I know it, and every person who has
honestly studied this subject knows it as well.
Is Dickey Loeb to blame because out of the
infinite forces that conspired to form him, the
infinite forces that were at work producing him
ages before he was born, that because out of
these infinite combinations he was born without
it? If he is, then there should be a new
definition for justice. Is he to blame for what
he did not have and never had? Is he to blame
that his machine is imperfect? Who is to blame?
I do not know. I have never in my life been
interested so much in fixing blame as I have in
relieving people from blame. I am not wise
enough to fix it. I know that somewhere in the
past that entered into him something missed. It
may be defective nerves. It may be a defective
heart or liver. It may be defective endocrine
glands. I know it is something. I know that
nothing happens in this world without a cause.
There are at least two theories of man's
responsibility. There may be more. There is the
old theory that if a man does something it is
because he willfully, purposely, maliciously,
and with a malignant heart sees fit to do it.
And that goes back to the possession of man by
devils. The old indictments used to read that a
man being possessed of a devil did so and so.
But why was he possessed with the devil? Did he
invite him in? Could he help it? Very few
half-civilized people believe that doctrine
anymore. Science has been at work, humanity has
been at work, scholarship has been at work, and
intelligent people now know that every human
being is the product of the endless heredity
back of him and the infinite environment around
him. He is made as he is and he is the sport of
all that goes before him and is applied to him,
and under the same stress and storm, you would
act one way and I act another, and poor Dickey
Loeb another.
Dr. Church said so and Dr. Singer said so, and
it is the truth. Take a normal boy, Your Honor.
Do you suppose he could have taken a boy into an
automobile without any reason and hit him over
the head and killed him? I might just as well
ask you whether you thought the sun could shine
at midnight in this latitude. It is not a part
of normality. Something was wrong. I am asking
Your Honor not to visit the grave and dire and
terrible misfortunes of Dickey Loeb and Nathan
Leopold upon these two boys. I do not know where
to place it. I know it is somewhere in the
infinite economy of nature, and if I were wise
enough I could find it. I know it is there, and
to say that because they are as they are you
should hang them, is brutality and cruelty, and
savors of the fang and claw.
Now, Your Honor is familiar with Chicago the
same as I am, and I am willing to admit right
here and now that the two ablest alienists in
Chicago are Dr. Church and Dr. Patrick. There
may be abler ones, but we lawyers do not know
them.
And I will go further: if my friend Crowe had
not got to them first, I would have tried to get
them. There is no question about it at all. And
I say that, Your Honor, without casting the
slightest reflection on either of them, for I
really have a high regard for them, and aside
from that a deep friendship for Dr. Church. And
I have considerable regard for Dr. Singer.
We could not get them, and Mr. Crowe was very
wise, and he deserves a great deal of credit for
the industry, the research, and the thoroughness
that he and his staff have used in detecting
this terrible crime. He worked with intelligence
and rapidity. If here and there he trampled on
the edges of the Constitution I am not going to
talk about it here. If he did it, he is not the
first one in that office and probably will not
be the last who will do it, so let that go. A
great many people in this world believe the end
justifies the means. I don't know but that I do
myself And that is the reason I never want to
take the side of the prosecution, because I
might harm an individual. I am sure the state
will live anyhow.
On that Sunday afternoon before we had a chance,
he got in two alienists, Church and Patrick, and
also called Dr. Krohn, and they around hearing
these boys tell their stories, and that is all.
Your Honor they were not holding an examination.
They were holding an inquest and nothing else.
It has not the slightest reference to, or
earmarks of an examination for sanity. It was
just an inquest; a little premature, but still
an inquest.
What is the truth about it? What did Patrick
say? He said that it was not a good opportunity
for examination. What did Church say? I read
from his own book what was necessary for an
examination, and he said that it was not a good
opportunity for an examination. What did Krohn
say? "It was a fine opportunity for an
examination," the best he had ever heard of, or
that ever anybody had, because their souls were
stripped naked. Krohn is not an alienist. He is
an orator. He said, because their souls were
naked to them. Well, if Krohn's was naked, there
would not be much to show. But Patrick and
Church said that the conditions were unfavorable
for an examination, that they never would choose
it, that their opportunities were poor. And yet
Krohn states the contrary. Krohn, who by his own
admissions, for sixteen years has not been a
physician, but has used a license for the sake
of haunting these courts, civil and criminal,
and going up and down the land peddling perjury.
He has told Your Honor what he has done, and
there is scarcely a child on the street who does
not know it, there is not a judge in the court
who does not know it; there is not a lawyer at
the bar who does not know it; there is not a
physician in Chicago who does not know it; and I
am willing to stake the lives of these two boys
on the court knowing it, and I will throw my own
in for good measure. What else did he say, in
which the state's alienists dispute him?
Both of them say that these boys showed no
adequate emotion. Krohn said they did. One boy
fainted. They had been in the hands of the
state's attorney for sixty hours. They had been
in the hands of policemen, lawyers, detectives,
stenographers, inquisitors, and newspapermen for
sixty hours, and one of them fainted. Well, the
only person who is entirely without emotions is
a dead man. You cannot live without breathing
and some emotional responses. Krohn says, "Why,
Loeb had emotion. He was polite; begged our
pardon; got up from his chair"; even Dr. Krohn
knows better than that. I fancy If Your Honor
goes into an elevator where there is a lady he
takes off his hat. Is that out of emotion for
the lady or is it habit? You say, "Please," and
"thank you," because of habit. Emotions haven't
the slightest thing to do with it. Mr. Leopold
has good manners. Mr. Loeb has good manners.
They have been taught them. They have lived
them. That does not mean that they are
emotional. It means training. That is all it
means. And Dr. Krohn knew it.
Krohn told the story of this interview and he
told almost twice as much as the other two men
who sat there and heard it. And how he told it,
how he told it! When he testified my mind
carried me back to the time when I was a kid,
which was some years ago, and we used to eat
watermelons. I have seen little boys take a rind
of watermelon and cover their whole faces with
water, eat it, devour it, and have the time of
their lives, up to their ears in watermelon. And
when I heard Dr. Krohn testify in this case, to
take the blood of these two boys, I could see
his mouth water with the joy it gave him, and he
showed all the delight and pleasure of myself
and my young companions when we ate watermelon.
I can imagine a psychiatrist, a real one who
knows the mechanism of man, who knows life and
its machinery, who knows the misfortunes of
youth, who knows the stress and the strain of
adolescence which comes to every boy and
overpowers so many, who knows the weird
fantastic world that hedges around the life of a
child; I can imagine a psychiatrist who might
honestly think that under the crude definitions
of the law the defendants were sane and knew the
difference between right and wrong.
Without any consideration of the lives and the
trainings of these boys, without any evidence
from experts, I have tried to make a plain
statement of the facts of this case, and I
believe, as I have said repeatedly, that no one
can honestly study the facts and conclude that
anything but diseased minds was responsible for
this terrible act. Let us see how far we can
account for it, Your Honor.
The mind, of course, is an illusive thing.
Whether it exists or not no one can tell. It
cannot be found as you find the brain. Its
relation to the brain and the nervous system is
uncertain. It simply means the activity of the
body, which is coordinated with the brain. But
when we do find from human conduct that we
believe there is a diseased mind, we naturally
speculate on how it came about. And we wish to
find always, if possible, the reason why it is
so. We may find it, we may not find it; because
the unknown is infinitely wider and larger than
the known, both as to the human mind and as to
almost everything else in the universe.
I have tried to study the lives of these two
most unfortunate boys. Three months ago, if
their friends and the friends of the family had
been asked to pick out the most promising lads
of their acquaintance, they probably would have
picked these two boys. With every opportunity,
with plenty of wealth, they would have said that
those two would succeed. In a day, by an act of
madness, all this is destroyed, until
best they can hope for now is a life of silence
and pain, continuing to end of their years.
How did it happen?
Let us take Dickie Loeb first.
I do not claim to know how it happened; I have
sought to find out; I know that something, or
some combination of things, is responsible for
his mad act. I know that there are no accidents
in nature. I know that effect follows cause. I
know that if I were wise enough, and knew enough
about this case, I could lay my finger on the
cause. I will do the best I can, but it is
largely speculation. The child, of course, is
born without knowledge. Impressions are made
upon its mind as it goes along. Dickie Loeb was
a child of wealth and opportunity. Over and over
in this court Your Honor has been asked, and
other courts have been asked, to consider boys
who have no chance; they have been asked to
consider the poor, whose home had: been the
street, with no education and no opportunity in
life, and they have done it, and done it
rightfully.
But Your Honor, it is just as often a great
misfortune to be the child of the rich as it is
to be the child of the poor. Wealth has its
misfortunes. Too much, too great opportunity and
advantage given to a child has its misfortunes.
Can I find what was wrong? I think I can. Here
was a boy at a tender age, placed in the hands
of a governess, intellectual, vigorous, devoted,
with a strong ambition for the welfare of this
boy. He was, pushed in his studies, as plants
are forced in hothouses. He had no pleasures,
such as a boy should have, except as they were
gained by lying and cheating. Now, I am not
criticizing the nurse. I suggest that some day
Your Honor look at her picture. It explains her
fully. Forceful, brooking no Interference, she
loved the boy, and her ambition was that he
should reach the highest perfection. No time to
pause, no time to stop from one book to another,
no time to have those pleasures which a boy
ought to have to create a normal life. And what
happened?
Your Honor, what would happen? Nothing strange
or unusual. This nurse was with him all the
time, except when he stole out at night, from
two to fourteen years of age, and it is
instructive to read her letter to show her
attitude. It speaks volumes; tells exactly the
relation between these two people. He, scheming
and planning as healthy boys would do, to get
out from under her restraint. She, putting
before him the best books, which children
generally do not want; and he, when she was not
looking, reading detective stories, which he
devoured, story after story, in his young life.
Of all of this there can be no question. What is
the result? Every story he read was a story of
crime. We have a statute in this state, passed
only last year, if I recall it, which forbids
minors reading stories of crime. Why? There is
only one reason. Because the legislature in its
wisdom felt that it would produce criminal
tendencies in the boys who read them. The
legislature of this state has given its opinion,
and forbidden boys to read these books. He read
them day after day. He never stopped. While he
was passing through college at Ann Arbor he was
still reading them. When he was a senior he read
them, and almost nothing else.
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