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THE LEOPOLD AND LOEB CASE AND THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE INSANITY PLEA

The "Perfect Crime."

On 21 May 1924 Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb, teenage scions of wealthy Jewish families in Chicago, lured fourteen-year-old Robert Franks, whom they barely knew, into their automobile, bludgeoned him to death with a hammer, and threw his body into a culvert in a nearby public park. They had randomly selected Franks as the victim of their "perfect crime," thinking that they had planned their "caper" so carefully that they would escape detection. Yet Leopold had inadvertently left his prescription eyeglasses at the scene, and the police had both murderers in custody by the end of the month.

Hiring Clarence Darrow

On 2 June the Leopold and Loeb families retained the well-known attorney Clarence Darrow, believing he could use his influence to "make an arrangement" that would save the youths from the electric chair. From the outset the guilt of Leopold and Loeb was never in question. Both of them had confessed to their roles in the crime and displayed little remorse. The cold calculation of the murder horrified the public, and there was great popular demand that these "spoiled brats" get the death penalty. Major daily newspapers gave this case extensive coverage from the beginning.

A Plea of Insanity

Darrow had no illusions about the difficulty of his task. After extensive interviews, he realized that neither of his clients had any sense of right or wrong. Also, like most other close observers, Darrow knew that Leopold and Loeb had long been sexually intimate, a fact that was never publicly acknowledged by anyone involved in the case. Both these factors helped create the groundwork for a comparatively new legal tactic that Darrow had wanted to demonstrate in court. Darrow took the position that his clients were guilty but insane, hoping that an "insanity plea" would secure sentences of life imprisonment for Leopold and Loeb. While they appeared outwardly normal, he argued, both defendants were seriously deranged individuals. The macabre nature of their crime certainly underscored that reality, and Darrow was prepared to produce a series of psychiatrists as "expert witnesses" to bolster his contention.

A Compassionate Judge

By the mutual agreement of prosecution and defense Leopold and Loeb passed up a jury trial. They and Darrow were fortunate that the presiding jurist in their trial, which began on 21 July 1924, was Chief Justice John Caverly of the Cook County Criminal Court. He was no judicial "grandstander" and had no longterm political ambitions. Unlike the majority of his colleagues, Caverly was likely to be impressed by the insanity argument, and State Attorney Robert E. Crowe proved no oratorical match for Darrow.

Life Sentences

On 10 September 1924 Judge Caverly pronounced both defendants guilty of murder and kidnapping, but he declined to sentence them to death. In essence he accepted Darrow's argument that Leopold and Loeb were insane and sentenced them to serve the "remainder of their days on earth" in prison at hard labor. Various outraged observers, including Crowe, called the decision a "psychiatric pardon," and over the years there were several exposés of preferential treatment given the two in prison. Loeb was killed in a prison brawl in 1936. Leopold, who made enormous strides in reforming his behavior, was paroled in 1958, saying, "I want a chance to find redemption for myself and to help others." He married three years later and died in 1971.