The Loeb-Leopold case - The Clarence Darrow Collection

The Loeb'Leopold Case
home. This was the cause of strained relations,
and, one day, the defendant shot and killed Blanco.
The turpitude there was sufficient to take the
defendant to the gallows. Parallel that with this
case. There was no kidnaping for ransom, no
$10,000 in old bills to be thrown from a train, no
killing of a small schoolboy, and telling his parents,
in all their anxiety, that the boy was safe and sound,
knowing all the time that the mutilated body was
out in the tile pipe, its face eaten with acid. There
was no planning, no stolen typewriter, no taped
chisel, no preparing and writing over of a ran-
som letter in that case, but it was just a case of
passion.
Your Honor, the books are full of such cases.
But nowhere will you find a case more terrible,
more cunningly planned, more carefully executed,
more dastardly than this case at bar,
I shall give to your Honor a list, if I may, and
serve counsel on the other side with the same, of
these cases, and the others from the list, where the
sentence of death has been affirmed in this State.
And I challenge counsel to point out in any of these
cases a single one that nearly approaches in horror
or atrocity, in fiendish depravity, the case that is
before this court.
I wish now, your Honor, to read from a learned
decision in the case of State vs. Junkins, 147 Iowa,
588, very appropriate here:
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