The Loeb-Leopold case - The Clarence Darrow Collection

The Loeb-Leopold Case
particular case. If those circumstances lessen the
turpitude of the offender, it is unquestionably the
intent of the Legislature that the court be influenced
by such considerations in assessing the punishment.
We further submit, that a diseased mental condi-
tion in the offender, retarding his social adjustments
and making all the more difficult the problems and
conflicts presented during adolescence, is such a
mitigating circumstance within the meaning and in-
tent of the statute. Moreover, the evidence demon-
strates the existence in Nathan Leopold, Jr., of a
paranoid personality, and in Richard Loeb of a
schizophrenic condition of mind, which in each boy
resulted in diseased mental reactions and made pos-
sible the perpetration, in combination, of the crimes
committed.
We say that it is not the intent of the law in such
a case that the penalty of death shall be paid by the
offender, but that in the light of such mitigating
circumstances, the court, by the exercise of a wise
and humane discretion, should assess punishment at
some point in the field of choice short of death, the
extreme penalty of the law.
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