The Loeb-Leopold case - The Clarence Darrow Collection

The Loeb-Leopold Case
have been only one crazy man in the court room,
namely, the State's Attorney.
I submit, if your Honor please, that it is safer to
follow the philosophy of Theodore Roosevelt as he
laid it down in this great State paper, when he was
President of the United States, and was only con-
cerned with the enforcement of the law, than it is
to follow the weird and uncanny philosophy of the
paid advocate of the defense, whose business it is
to make murder safe in Cook County.
Now, if your Honor please, Mr. Darrow argued
that the State had advanced the silly argument that
these boys were gamblers, and they gambled for
high stakes; and he said the only evidence we had
to predicate such a charge on was the testimony of
Leon Mandel, who had played one game of bridge
with them and who said that in that game they
played for five or ten cents a point. The trouble
with Mr. Darrow is that he does not know all
the facts in this case; he does not know all the evi-
dence.
I thank God that I am not a great pleader; be-
cause I think sometimes when men are obsessed with
the idea that when they open their mouths words
of wisdom rush out, and that all that is necessary
in the trial of a case is to make a wonderful argu-
ment, a great many of them fail, in my judgment,
for those reasons; because they rely too much upon
their oratory, they pay little attention to the facts
in the case; and, after all, I believe that courts and
301