The Loeb-Leopold case - The Clarence Darrow Collection

The Loeb-Leopold Case
fort, and wholesome example and influence on the one
hand, to poverty, misery, and surroundings of the most
unfavorable and corrupting character on the other, but
all are made subject to the same law, and each must
render to it the same measure of obedience. This is so
because such are our human limitations that a finer dis-
crimination and a juster apportionment of responsibility
is apparently impossible, until we have reached a higher
plane of civilization than has yet been achieved.
In conclusion, then, if your Honor please, I want
to call your attention particularly to the language
of the Iowa court where it characterized that mur-
der as a cowardly murder, and I ask this court to
contemplate the record here before you with that
thought in mind.
Could anything be more cowardly, more terribly
cowardly than the crime that was committed here?
A fourteen-year-old helpless schoolboy lured by de-
ceit into the automobile, by two stout, robust young
men, bent upon murder, bent upon kidnaping for
ransom, for ten thousand dollars in old bills; lured
into that car, seated in the front seat to talk about
a tennis racket with his friend, whom he had known
for a long time; and while he is facing forward in
that car, he is beaten upon the head with a steel
chisel, and his life crushed out — a helpless boy.
Cowardly? There is nothing in Illinois jurispru-
dence that compares with it.
And so, upon the whole of the record, compare all
of the Illinois cases I have cited from the beginning
down to this moment, and nowhere in any of them
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