Editing Leopold and Loeb (section)

== Trial ==
[[File:Clarence Darrow.jpg|thumb|upright|Defense attorney [[Clarence Darrow]]]]
The trial of Leopold and Loeb at Chicago's [[Courthouse Place|Cook County Criminal Court]] became a media spectacle and the third to be labeled "the [[trial of the century]]," after those of [[Harry Kendall Thaw#Murder of Stanford White|Harry Thaw]] and [[Sacco and Vanzetti]].<ref>{{Cite web |last=Linder |first=Douglas |title=The Trial of Leopold and Loeb |url=http://jurist.law.pitt.edu/trials5.htm |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20101103143040/http://www.jurist.law.pitt.edu/trials5.htm |archive-date=November 3, 2010 |access-date=November 1, 2007 |website=JURIST}}</ref> The Leopold and Loeb families hired the renowned criminal [[defense (law)|defense]] attorney [[Clarence Darrow]] to lead the defense team. It was rumored that Darrow was paid $1 million<ref name="geis">{{Cite book |last1=Geis |first1=Gilbert |title=Crimes of the Century |last2=Bienen |first2=Leigh B. |year=1998 |location=Boston}}</ref> for his services, but he was actually paid $65,000<ref>{{Cite book |title=Attorney for the Damned: Clarence Darrow in the Courtroom |publisher=Simon & Schuster |year=1957 |isbn=0226136507 |editor-last=Weinberg |editor-first=A. |pages=17–18}}</ref> (equivalent to ${{formatprice|{{inflation|US|65000|1925}}}} in {{inflation/year|US}}).{{inflation/fn|US}} Darrow took the case because he was a staunch opponent of [[capital punishment]].

While it was generally assumed that the men's defense would be based on a plea of [[not guilty by reason of insanity]], Darrow concluded that a [[jury trial]] would almost certainly end in conviction and the death penalty.<ref name="geis" /> Thus, he elected to enter a plea of guilty, hoping to convince Cook County Circuit Court Judge John R. Caverly to impose sentences of [[life imprisonment]].<ref>{{Cite web |title=Darrow's plea of guilty |url=http://law2.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/leoploeb/darrowsplea.html |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180101172138/http://law2.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/leoploeb/darrowsplea.html |archive-date=January 1, 2018 |access-date=August 22, 2014 |website=University of Missouri-Kansas City School of Law}}</ref>

The trial, technically an extended sentencing hearing, as their guilty pleas had already been accepted, ran for 32 days. The state's attorney, [[Robert E. Crowe]], presented 88 witnesses, documenting details of the crime. The defense presented extensive psychiatric testimony in an effort to establish mitigating circumstances, including physical abnormalities, an over-abundance of money and, in Leopold's case, [[sexual abuse]] by a governess.<ref name="Linder" /><ref name="AmExper" />

One piece of evidence was a letter written by Leopold claiming that he and Loeb were having a homosexual affair. Both the prosecution and the defense interpreted this information as supportive of their own position.<ref>{{Cite web |last=Hardwick |first=Courtney |date=August 30, 2021 |title=QUEER CRIME: The Not-So-Perfect Partnership of Leopold and Loeb |url=https://inmagazine.ca/2021/08/queer-crime-the-not-so-perfect-partnership-of-leopold-and-loeb/ |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20231225002242/https://inmagazine.ca/2021/08/queer-crime-the-not-so-perfect-partnership-of-leopold-and-loeb/ |archive-date=December 25, 2023 |access-date=September 23, 2022 |website=IN Magazine |language=en}}</ref> Darrow called a series of [[expert witness]]es, who offered a catalog of Leopold's and Loeb's abnormalities. One witness testified to their dysfunctional [[endocrine gland]]s, another to the delusions that had led to their crime.<ref name="AmExper" />

=== Darrow's speech ===
Darrow's impassioned, eight-hour-long "masterful plea"<ref>''Urbana Daily Courier'', September 10, 1924</ref><ref>{{Cite book |last=Rebain |first=Erik |title=Arrested Adolescence: The Secret Life of Nathan Leopold |publisher=Rowman & Littlefield |year=2024 |isbn=978-1538158609 |pages=106}}</ref> at the conclusion of the hearing has been called the finest speech of his career.<ref>{{Cite web |last=Linder |first=Douglas |title=Famous American Trials: Illinois v. Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb |url=http://law2.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/leoploeb/leopold.htm |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20181011050511/http://law2.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/leoploeb/leopold.htm |archive-date=October 11, 2018 |access-date=March 7, 2012 |website=University of Missouri-Kansas City School of Law}}</ref> Its principal arguments were that the methods and punishments of the American justice system were inhumane, and the youth and immaturity of the accused:<ref name="AmExper" /><ref>{{Cite web |title=Darrow's summation for the defense |url=http://law2.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/leoploeb/LEO_SUMD.HTM |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20181006171106/http://law2.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/leoploeb/LEO_SUMD.HTM |archive-date=October 6, 2018 |access-date=August 22, 2014 |website=University of Missouri-Kansas City School of Law}}</ref><ref name="scopes">{{Cite book |last=Scopes |first=John Thomas |title=World's greatest court trial |date=1925 |publisher=National Book Co. |location=Cincinnati, OH |pages=178–179, 182}}</ref>

{{blockquote|We read of killing one hundred thousand men in a day [during [[World War I]]]; probably exaggerated, but what of it?

We read about it and we rejoiced in it; if it was the other fellows who were killed. We were fed on flesh and drank blood.

Even down to the prattling babe, and I need not tell your honor this, because you know, I need not tell you how many upright, honorable young boys have come into this court charged with murder, some saved and some gone to their death, boys who fought in this war and learned how cheap human life was. You know it and I know it.

These boys were brought up in it.

...

It will take fifty years to wipe it out of the human heart, at least, if ever. I know this, for I have studied these things, that after the [[American Civil War|Civil War]] in 1865, crimes of this sort increased, marvelously increased. No one needs to tell me that crime has no cause. It has as definite a cause as any other disease, and I know that out of the hatred and bitterness of the Civil War crime increased as America had never seen before.

...

I know that Europe is going through it today; I know it has followed every war; and I know it has influenced these boys so that blood was not the same blood to them that it would have been if the world had not been bathed in blood.

...

Your Honor knows that in this very court crimes of violence have increased growing out of the war.

Not necessarily by those who fought but by those that learned that blood was cheap and human life was cheap and if the State could take it lightly why not the individual?

...

Has the court any right to consider anything but these two boys?

Yes.

The State says that your Honor has a right to consider the welfare of the community, as you have. If the welfare of the community would be benefited by taking these lives, well and good.

I think it would work evil that no one could measure.

Has your Honor a right to consider the families of these defendants?

I have been sorry, and I am sorry for the bereavement of Mr. and Mrs. Franks and the little sister; for those broken ties that cannot be mended.

All I can hope and wish is that some good may come from it.

But as compared with the families of Leopold and Loeb, they are to be envied. They are to be envied, and everyone knows it.

...

Here is Leopold's father, – and this boy was the pride of his life. He watched him, he cared for him, he worked for him; he was brilliant and accomplished, he educated him, and he thought that fame and position awaited him, as it should have. It is a hard thing for a father to see his life's hopes crumbling into the dust.

...

And Loeb's, the same. The faithful uncle and brother, who have watched here day by day, while his father and his mother are too ill to stand this terrific strain, waiting for a message which means more to them than it can mean to you or me. Have they got any rights?

...

The easy thing and the popular thing to do is to hang my clients. I know it. Men and women who do not think will applaud. The cruel and the thoughtless will approve. It will be easy today, but in Chicago, and reaching out over the length and breadth of the land, more and more fathers and mothers, the humane, the kind and the hopeful, who are gaining an understanding and asking questions not only about these poor boys, but about their own.

These will join in no acclaim at the death of my clients. These would ask that the shedding of blood be stopped, and that the normal feelings of man resume their sway.

...

Your Honor stands between the past and the future. You may hang these boys; you may hang them by the neck 'till they are dead. But in doing it you will turn your face toward the past. In doing it you are making it harder for every other boy.

In doing it you are making it harder for unborn children. You may save them and it makes it easier for every child that some time may sit where these boys sit. It makes it easier for every human being with an aspiration and a vision and a hope and a fate.

I am pleading for the future; I am pleading for a time when hatred and cruelty will not control the hearts of men. When we can learn by reason and judgment and understanding and faith that all life is worth saving, and that mercy is the highest attribute of man.|source=Trial Transcript of The State of Illinois vs. Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb, 4104-4113}}<ref name=":1" />
The judge was persuaded, but he explained in his ruling that his decision was based primarily on precedent and the youth of the accused. On September 10, 1924, he sentenced both Leopold and Loeb to life imprisonment for the murder, and an additional 99 years for the kidnapping.<ref name="AmExper" /><ref name="geis" /> A little over a month later, Loeb's father died of [[heart failure]].<ref>''Daily Illini'', University of Illinois, October 28, 1924</ref>

Darrow's handling of the law as defense counsel has been criticized for hiding psychiatric expert testimony that conflicted with his polemical goals and for relying on an absolute denial of free will, one of the principles legitimizing all criminal punishment.<ref>{{Cite book |last1=King |first1=Greg |title=Nothing but the Night: Leopold and Loeb and the truth behind the murder that rocked 1920s America |last2=Wilson |first2=Penny |publisher=St. Martin's Press |year=2022}}</ref>