The Loeb-Leopold case - The Clarence Darrow Collection

The Loeb-Leopold Case
have the decency or the heart to put a handkerchief
over that little dead face as he heaped the coal
upon it.
The law says in extreme cases death shall be the
penalty. If I were in the legislature I might vote
against such a law. I don't know. But as a judge
I have no right to set aside that law. I have no right
to defeat the will of the people, as expressed by the
legislature of Illinois. I have no right to be a
judicial anarchist, even if Clarence Darrow is an
anarchistic advocate. He says that hanging does
not stop murder. I think he is mistaken. From the
time Thomas Fitzgerald expiated his crime upon the
gallows, I have not heard of any little tot in Chicago
who met a like fate to that which Janet Wilkinson
met.
I will direct your Honor's attention to the year
1920, when Judge Kavanagh, Judge Brentano,
Judge Barrett and Judge Scanlan came over here at
my request and from the fifth day of May until the
first day of July tried nothing l?ut murder cases.
In addition to the many men that they sent to the
penitentiary for manslaughter, or a term of years
for murder, in that brief period of less than sixty
days, fifteen men were sentenced to death in the
Criminal Court of Cook County. The records of
the Police Department, the records of the Chicago
Crime Commission show that as the result of that,,
murder fell 51 per cent in Cook County during the
year 1920.
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