The Loeb-Leopold case - The Clarence Darrow Collection

The Loeb-Leopold Case
are no grades or .degrees. One is either responsible
or not responsible, and in this case the responsibil-
ity is admitted by the pleas of guilty. It is proved
by the confessions and by the evidence in the case
and it is repeatedly insisted upon by the assertions
and arguments of the defendants' counsel.
Now, if Loeb and Leopold are responsible enough
to receive a sentence to the penitentiary, they are
responsible enough for the extreme penalty. The
measure of responsibility is the same in either case.
I wish to read the following extract from the
Wireback case, igo Pennsylvania, 138:
He continues to be a legitimate subject of punishment,
although he may be laboring under a moral obliquity of
perception as much as if he were merely laboring under
an obliquity of vision. There is no middle ground which
the law recognizes, nor does a doubt of sanity reduce
the grade of the crime to murder in the second degree.
From the very nature of mental disease there can be
no grading of it by degrees so as to accord with the
degree of the crime.
That is the law in every jurisdiction. We have
the same responsibility here, legal responsibility,
whether the punishment be fourteen years in the
penitentiary, or life, or the extreme penalty of death
on the gallows.
In Hogue vs. State, 65 Texas Criminal, jjq, it
was said
This court has never recognized the doctrine that a
person with a mind below the normal should not be
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