The Loeb-Leopold case - The Clarence Darrow Collection

The Loeb-Leopold Case
in aggravation and mitigation of the offense as a
basis for the assessment of the punishment.
It is as though there were before your Honor a
sort of sHding scale with imprisonment in the pen-
itentiary for fourteen years at one end and punishment
by death at the other, and as though it were
your Honor's duty to set the indicator at some point
upon this scale. The whole subject matter being
discussed here and upon which the evidence is being
introduced and the witnesses heard, relates directly
and solely to the question at what point upon that
sliding scale your Honor should fix the indicator and
thereby determine the punishment to be imposed
upon the defendants for the crime to which they
have pleaded guilty.
It is our position that the defendants are suffer-
ing and were suffering at the time of the commis-
sion of the crimes with which they are charged from
a diseased condition of the mind, and that such dis-
eased mental condition of each defendant is a cir-
cumstance which should be considered by this court
in the determination of the proper sentence to be
imposed upon them.
The consequences — the objective anti-social con-
sequences — of murder are precisely the same in
every case. In a case where a victim is struck upon
the head four times, the anti-social consequences of
that murder are just the same as if that person had
been struck but once. If the act is done with malice,
so far as society is concerned, it is murder.
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