Clarence Darrow

Excerpt from "The Plea of Clarence Darrow"

Reprinted from The Amazing Crime and Trial of Leopold and Loeb, edited by Maureen McKernan

Published in 1996

Richard Loeb and Nathan Leopold were nineteen years old, exceptionally bright students, and from wealthy families. Loeb was a handsome University of Chicago student and Leopold an ornithologist (person who studies birds). The Leopolds were wealthy German Jewish immigrants who made their fortune shipping grains and minerals on the Great Lakes.

Nathan entered college at age sixteen and graduated from University of Chicago in 1923 with high honors. He was taking law classes with plans to attend Harvard Law School. Richard's father was a millionaire executive in charge of the massive Sears-Roebuck mail order business. Richard was a brilliant child, graduating from high school at age fourteen and becoming one of the youngest graduates in University of Michigan history, at age seventeen.

"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."

Their lives, however, would take a dramatic and tragic turn on Wednesday, May 21, 1924. That afternoon Bobby Franks, fourteen years of age, was walking home from school when Richard Loeb and Nathan Leopold pulled up in a rental car and offered him a ride. Bobby knew both the nineteen-year-olds since they all three lived in a wealthy neighborhood of Chicago known as Kenwood, and Loeb was Bobby's neighbor. As soon as Bobby was in the car they hit him over the head with a heavy metal chisel and stuffed a piece of cloth down his throat suffocating him.

While waiting for dark Leopold and Loeb had dinner at a hotdog stand. They then drove to Wolf Lake, took the boy's clothes off, poured hydrochloric acid over him to obscure his identity, and dumped the body in a culvert. On their way back to town, they mailed a ransom note to Franks home demanding $10,000. The note provided instructions on how to deliver the money. They warned about contacting authorities and not following instructions. They went to Loeb's house where they burned bloodstained clothes and tried taking any bloodstains out of their rental car. The two young men then stayed up late that night playing a game.

The special delivery ransom letter arrived the following morning at the Franks' residence. A phone call from Loeb and Leopold to Bobby's father Jacob gave further instructions on how to deliver the money to a particular drugstore address. In the confusion, Jacob forgot the address of the drugstore mentioned and was unable to carry through with the delivery. Later that same day the body of a boy, identified as Bobby, was found in a culvert at Wolf Lake.

Rewards for the capture of the murderer quickly mounted. Police investigators and newspaper reporters searched for clues. It was discovered that a pair of glasses found near the body of Franks had an unusual hinge. Sales records showed that only three had been sold in the Chicago area, one to Leopold. When approached by authorities, however, he explained that he often bird-watched in the area and the glasses had recently fallen out of his pocket there.

On May 29, 1924, both Leopold and Loeb were detained and questioned separately by authorities at the La Salle Hotel. They avoided the police station because of the intense media coverage. Though their stories did not match perfectly, police were unable to build a case and finally let them go. Newspaper investigators discovered much more substantial evidence. The type on the ransom note matched a portable typewriter that Loeb had sometimes used.

Faced with the new evidence, Leopold and Loeb confessed to the murder and kidnapping, and told their story. They
readily revealed the kidnapping had been planned for months as a legal challenge to the two bored students. Through the following days the two young men took police to locations where they found various pieces of evidence including the chisel.

The case was a major story in the newspapers. The public demanded swift trials and executions. To this point, the boys were not represented by lawyers during the questioning. Albert Loeb went to sixty-seven-year-old Clarence Darrow, known for his personal opposition to the death penalty. Loeb sought a life sentence rather than death penalties.

On June 5, 1924, a grand jury indicted Leopold and Loeb for murder and kidnapping. The following day their full confessions were published in the Chicago newspapers. The trial began on July 21. Darrow immediately stunned the court by changing their pleas from not guilty to guilty. Everyone had assumed he would be using a defense of not guilty by reason of insanity. Darrow knew a not guilty plea would lead to a trial by jury; given the confessions and evidence, he figured a jury would be more likely to sentence his clients to death than Judge John R. Caverly. On August 22, 1924, Darrow made his impassioned two hour speech against the death penalty.

Things to remember while reading excerpts from "The Plea of Clarence Darrow":

• The fact that Leopold and Loeb had already confessed and told their stories in detail to the police, including leading them to evidence, already established that they had indeed killed Franks.
• The public and the media were strongly pressing for a quick trial and execution.
• A key reason famed attorney Clarence Darrow accepted the case was because it gave him a unique opportunity to present his arguments against the death penalty before the media.
• The two young men were pampered while in jail awaiting trial. A local restaurant provided catering service including food, cigarettes, and even liquor though this was in the midst of Prohibition when the possession and sale of alcoholic beverages was illegal.
• Hanging was the key means of execution in Illinois where the trial was being held.

Excerpt from "The Plea of Clarence Darrow"

Your Honor, it has been almost three months since the great responsibility of this case was assumed by my associates and myself. Iam willing to confess that it has been three months of great anxiety. . . .

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. . . .

I told your Honor in the beginning that never had there been a case in Chicago, where on a plea of guilty a boy under twenty-one had been sentenced to death. I will raise that age and say, never has there been a case where a human being under the age of twentythree has been sentenced to death. And, I think I am safe in saying, although I have not examined all the records and could not—but I think I am safe in saying—that never has there been such a case in the State of Illinois.

And yet this court is urged, aye, threatened, that [it] must hang two boys contrary to precedents, contrary to the acts of every judge who ever held court in this state.

Why?

Tell me what public necessity there is for this.

Why need the State's Attorney ask for something that never before has been demanded?

Why need a judge be urged by every argument, moderate and immoderate, to hang two boys in the face of every precedent in Illinois, and in the face of the progress of the last fifty years?. . .

You may stand them up on the trap-door of the scaffold, and choke them to death, but that act will be infinitely more cold-blooded whether justified or not, than any act that these boys have committed or can commit.

Cold-blooded!

Let the State, who is so anxious to take these boys' lives, set an example in consideration, kindheartedness and tenderness before they call my clients cold-blooded.

I have heard this crime described; this most distressing and unfortunate homicide, as I would call it—this cold-blooded murder, as the State would call it.

I call it a homicide particularly distressing because I am defending.

They call it a cold-blooded murder because they want to take human lives.

Call it what you will. . . .

They say that this was a cruel murder, the worst that ever happened. I say that very few murders ever occurred that were as free from cruelty as this.

There ought to be some rule to determine whether a murder is exceedingly cruel or not. . . .

But I would say the first thing to consider is the degree of pain to the victim.

Poor little Bobby Franks suffered very little. There is no excuse for his killing. If to hang these two boys would bring him back to life, I would say let them go, and I believe their parents would say so, too. . . .

Robert Franks is dead, and we cannot call him back to life. It was all over in fifteen minutes after he got into the car, and he probably never knew it or thought of it. That does not justify it. It is the last thing I would do. I am sorry for the poor boy. I am sorry for his parents. But, it is done. . . .

This is a senseless, useless, purposeless, motiveless act of two boys. Now, let me see if I can prove it. There was not a particle of hate, there was not a grain of malice, there was no opportunity to be cruel except as death is cruel—and death is cruel. . . .

Three hundred and forty murder cases in ten years with a plea of guilty in this county. All the young who pleaded guilty—every one of them, three hundred and forty in ten years with one hanging on a plea of guilty, and that a man forty years of age. And yet they say we come here with a preposterous plea for mercy. When did any plea for mercy become preposterous in a tribunal in all the universe?. . .

I have faith that this court [the judge] will take this case, with his conscience, and his judgment and his courage and save these boys' lives. . . .

What about this matter of crime and punishment, anyhow? I may know less than the rest, but I have at least tried to find out, and I am fairly familiar with the best literature that has been written on that subject in the last hundred years. The more men study, the more they doubt the effect of severe punishment on crime. And yet Mr. Savage [the prosecutor] 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. . . . You can trace it all down through the history of man. You can trace the burnings, the boiling, the drawings and quarterings, the hanging 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.

You can read the stories of the hangings on a high hill, and the populace for miles around coming out to the scene, that everybody might be awed into goodness. Hanging for picking pockets—and more pockets were picked in the crowd that went to the hanging than had been known before. Hangings for murder—and men were murdered on the way there and on the way home. Hangings for poaching, hangings for everything and hangings in public, not shut up cruelly and brutally in a jail, out of the light of day, wakened in the night time and led forth and killed, but taken to the shire town on a high hill, in the presence of a multitude, so that all might see that the wages of sin were death. . . .

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 willbe 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 feelings—would it make the human heart softer or would it make hearts harder? How many men would be colder and crueler for it? How many men would enjoy the details, and you cannot enjoy human suffering without being affected for better or for worse; those who enjoyed it would be affected for the worse.

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 Dicky 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? And what influence will it have on the psychology of the fathers and mothers yet to come? 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. . . .

We have raised the age of hanging. We have raised it by the humanity of courts, by the understanding of courts, by the progress in science which at last is reaching the law; and in ninety men hanged in Illinois from its beginning, not one single person under twentythree was ever hanged upon a plea of guilty—not one. If your Honor should do this, you will violate every precedent that had been set in Illinois for almost a century. There can be no excuse for it, and no justification for it, because this is the policy of the law which is rooted in the feelings of humanity, which are deep in every human being that thinks and feels. There have been two or three cases where juries have convicted boys younger than this, and where courts on convictions have refused to set aside the sentence because a jury had found it. . . .

I do not know how much salvage there is in these two boys. I hate to say it in their presence, but what is there to look forward to? I do not know but what your Honor would be merciful if you tied a rope around their necks and let them die; merciful to them, but not merciful to civilization, and not merciful to those who would be left behind. To spend the balance of their days in prison is mighty little to look forward to, if anything. Is it anything? They may have the hope that as the years roll around they might be released. I do not know. I do not know. I will be honest with this court as I have tried to be from the beginning. I know that these boys are not fit to be at large. I believe they will not be until they pass through the next stage of life, at forty-five or fifty. Whether they will be then, I cannot tell. I am sure of this; that I will not be here to help them. So far as I am concerned, it is over.

I would not tell the court that I do not hope that some time, when life and age has changed their bodies, as it does, and has changed their emotions, as it does—that they may once more return to life. I would be the last person on earth to close the door of hope to any human being that lives, and least of all to my clients. But what have they to look forward to? Nothing. . . .

I care not, Your Honor, whether the march begins at the gallows or when the gates of Joliet close upon them, there is nothing but the night, and that is little for any human being to expect.

But there are others to be considered. Here are these two families, who have led honest lives, who will hear the name that they bear, and future generations must carry it on.

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; the boy was brilliant and accomplished, he educated him, and he thought that fame and position awaited him, as it should have awaited. It is a hard thing for a father to see his life's hopes crumble into dust.

Should he be considered? Should his brothers be considered? Will it do society any good or make your life safer, or any human being's life safer, if it should be handed down from generation to generation, that this boy, their kin, died upon the scaffold?

And Loeb's, the same. Here is the faithful uncle and brother, who have watched here day by day, while Dickie's father and his mother are too ill to stand this terrific strain, and shall be waiting for a message which means more to them than it can mean to you or me. Shall these be taken into account in this general bereavement ?

Have they any rights? Is there any reason, your Honor, why their proud names and all the future generations that bear them shall have this bar sinister written across them? How many boys and girls, how many unborn children will feel it? It is bad enough as it is, God knows. . . . But it's not yet death on the scaffold. It's not that. And I ask your honor, in addition to all that I have said, to have two honorable families from a disgrace that never ends, and which could be of no avail to help any human being that lives. . . .

I am pleading for life, understanding, charity, kindness, and the infinite mercy that considers all. I am pleading that we overcome cruelty with kindness and hatred with love. I know the future is on my side. Your Honor stands between the past and the future. You may hang these boys; you may hang them by the neck until they are dead. But in doing it you will turn your face toward the past. . . . 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.

What happened next . . .

The small, stuffy courtroom holding some two hundred news media members and another seventy spectators had just witnessed what many historians regarded the finest oration by Clarence Darrow in his career though he had long been noted for his oratory skills. On September 19 Judge Caverly announced his decision. He accepted Darrow's arguments. Based on the young age of the defendants, Caverly sentenced them to life in prison and recommended no possibility of future parole.

In 1932 Leopold and Loeb opened a school for prisoners making use of their educations and talents in a constructive way. On January 28, 1936, Loeb's cellmate attacked him with a razor blade slashing him over fifty times. He died from loss of blood at thirty-two years of age. Leopold dedicated himself to learning. He learned twenty-seven languages, raised canaries, worked in the prison library, and volunteered for medical experiments. In 1953 he was given a parole hearing but was denied. A second time, however, was successful.

Leopold was paroled in March 1958 after thirty-three years in prison. Also during that year he published an autobiography titled Life Plus 99 Years. He moved to Puerto Rico where he obtained a master's degree from the University of Puerto Rico, married, and worked at various jobs. Leopold published a book titled The Birds of Puerto Rico. He died of a heart attack in 1971 at the age of sixty-six.

Despite Darrow's pleas against use of the death penalty, capital punishment continued in the United States even though almost all other developed countries had banned capital punishment by the late twentieth century. Over seven thousand executions occurred in the United States during the twentieth century. Some six hundred took place after 1977 with over 80 percent in southern states and 35 percent in Texas alone.

By 2000 two-thirds of all executions were in three states—Texas, Oklahoma, and Virginia. To guarantee fairness, an extensive system of court reviews is provided making the execution process long and complex. Supporters of the death penalty are as dissatisfied with it as opponents; because of the lengthy process inmates sentenced to die sit for years on death row. For this reason the number of death row inmates grew from 220 in 1960 to 3,500 in 2000.

Did you know . . .

• The effect of the trial to participants was pronounced. Judge Caverly and his wife entered a hospital immediately afterwards to recover from exhaustion and strain. He only heard divorce cases in the future.
• The crime and trial took a huge toll on the families; the fathers of Franks, Loeb, and Leopold all died within a few years time by 1929.
• Two of Nathan Leopold's older brothers changed their names to separate themselves from the crime.
• Clarence Darrow went from the fame of this case to his most famous case of all, the Scopes "Monkey' trial in which he defended a Tennessee schoolteacher charged with teaching evolution (that mankind was descended from ape-creatures rather than created by a supreme being) in the classroom.

Consider the following . . .

• Divide the class into two groups and debate the merits of capital punishment. Does it serve a useful purpose in deterring future crime? Use the Internet in your research, using Web sites to support and oppose the death penalty.
• What organizations in your state or community support the death penalty? Which ones oppose the death penalty?
• What is the perception of the death penalty in other countries? How do Europeans view the death penalty?

Regaled: Amused.

Prejudice: Opinion already established.

Bereavement: The loss of a loved one through death.

Bar sinister: Sense of shame.

For More Information

Books

Higdon, Hal. Crime of the Century: The Leopold & Loeb Case. New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1975.

Leopold, Nathan F., Jr. Life Plus 99 Years. New York: Doubleday, 1958.

McKernan, Maureen. The Amazing Crime and Trial of Leopold and Loeb. Holmes Beach, FL: Gaunt, Inc., 1996.

Tierney, Kevin. Darrow, A Biography. New York: Thomas Y. Crowell, Publishers, 1979.

Web Sites

"Illinois v. Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb." University of Missouri Faculty: Famous Trials.http://www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/leoploeb/leopold.htm (accessed August 19, 2004).