The Loeb-Leopold case - The Clarence Darrow Collection

The Loeb-Leopold Case
knowledge you could lay your fingers on it, and I
know you would not visit it on Dickie Loeb. I
asked Dr. Church and I asked Dr. Singer whether,
if they were wise enough to know, they could not
find the cause, and both of them said yes.
There are at least two theories of man's respon-
sibility. 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 malig-
nant heart sees fit to do it. And that goes back to
the possession of man by devils. The old indict-
ments 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 any more. Science has been at work, hu-
manity 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, I another, and poor Dickie Loeb another.
Take a normal boy, your Honor. Do you suppose
he could have taken a boy into an automobile with-
out 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
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