The Loeb-Leopold case - The Clarence Darrow Collection

The Loeb-Leopold Case
dition of mind can mitigate. I can sum up their
argument in a minute: cruel; dastardly; premeditated;
fiendish; abandoned and malignant heart —
sounds like a cancer — cowardly; cold-blooded!
Now, that is what we have been listening to
against two minors, two children, who have no right
to sign a note or make 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.
Eighteen and nineteen years old at the time of the
homicide. Here are three officers watching them.
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
particularly 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,
with all the influence of the press to fan this com-
munity into a frenzy of hate, who for months have
been planning, scheming, contriving, working to
take these two boys' lives. You may stand them up
on the trapdoor of the scaffold, and choke them to
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