WRFH/Radio Free Hillsdale 101.7 FM - In Media Res: Leopold and Loeb

Episode Date: September 26, 2024

Join Hershey and Stephanie as they discuss the infamous trial of Leopold and Loeb from the 1920s in the very first episode of In Media Res!

The world has been one long slaughterhouse from the beginning until today. And the killing goes on and on and on. Why not read something? Why not think? Kill them. Will that stop other sick boys from killing? What you just heard is a clip from the 1959 movie Compulsion, starring Orson Wells as Clarence Darrow. The U.S. Attorney, whose greatest claim to fame

was his role in defending murderers Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb, in an impassioned protest of the death penalty. Leopold and Loeb's trial of 1924 captured the attention of Americans at the time and went on to influence pop culture for decades after their sentences rang out. We will dive deep into the arguments discussed in this case and more. Up next on a media res. Hello, beautiful people, and welcome to our show on Radio Free Hillsdale, 101.7 FM. My name is Hershey and my name is Stephanie.

And we're your host today for Immediate Res, a show where we examine landmark court cases starting from the middle of the action. Today we're going to take you on a little adventure as we discuss what happened with Leopold and Loeb on that summer's day. And the consequent 32 days spent in a heated courtroom trying to determine their punishment. So, Stephanie, could you give us a brief rundown on what actually happened here? Yeah, so two young college boys named Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb wanted to commit a crime so perfect that they would never be found out. They conspired to kidnap and murder their victim young Bobby Franks in order to collect a large ransom from his parents. Leopold and Loeb were quickly identified as the prime suspects in this case by one single incriminating piece of evidence, namely Leopold's glasses. With the punishment for premeditated murder being the death penalty in Illinois at the time,

the boy's parents hired Clarence Darrow as their defense attorney. In case you've never heard of him, Clarence Darrow was an extremely well-known lawyer who had simply masterful rhetoric, he had unmatched skills in defense, and he also had an adamant distaste for capital punishment. His goal in this trial was to convince the judge to issue a lifetime sentence of imprisonment, utilizing the fact that Richard and Nathan were only 19 years old as a central point in his theory. Can you tell us more about who these characters are? Who were Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb?

Why would they want to commit such a heinous crime? Nathan Leopold, and a fun fact, his middle name was actually Freudenthal. I just thought I would mention that. He was born in Chicago and was considered a child prodigy. He claimed to speak over five languages and graduated from the University of Chicago at the age of 19. Leopold was also an amateur ornithologist, and he had already published several papers from his bird watching before he graduated. Now, his friend Richard Loeb was, by all regards, equally intelligent, and in fact, at the age of 17, Richard became the youngest person to graduate from the University of Michigan at that time. Richard and Nathan were childhood friends, and they grew closer when Loeb returned to the University of Chicago and took graduate courses in history.

So you mentioned that they wanted to commit the person. crime. How did that come about? So Nathan Leopold appears to have been quite obsessed with the philosophy of one Mr. Friedrich Nietzsche, and particularly Nietzsche's idea of the Ubermensch, or Superman. By Nathan's interpretation, the Superman stood outside the law, quote, on account of the superior qualities inherent in him, end quote. I took this from one of Nathan's letters to Richard, and Nathan goes on to explain that the Superman is thus not morally responsible for any crime he may commit because he is superior to all other people. Now, you can imagine that since the boys were both incredibly smart,

they might have fancied themselves to be supermen in their own right. So naturally, when Richard suggested that they kidnap and murder someone, just for the sport of it, Nathan was completely on board. Oh, of course. How natural. Yeah, well, keep in mind that the boys had already committed several crimes together, like stealing vandalism, and they even sprinkled in a little arson just to see what would happen. And unfortunately, these things didn't seem to garner as much attention as they would have thought.

They knew that murdering someone and collecting the victim's ransom would stir up a good deal of drama in their town. So they decided that was the ticket. Wow. That almost makes me wonder if Nathan had never left his glasses behind and the boys were never discovered to be murderers, if they would have continued doing things like this until they were satisfied with this quote-unquote perfect crime. But anyway, how exactly did they end up killing Bobby Franks? Nathan and Richard spent over seven months scheming over their plan. They obviously wanted to murder someone without being discovered,

but the cherry on top of their plan was that they would be paid for carrying it out. They planned to mislead the victim's parents into believing Bobby was still alive by writing a ransom note and demanding $10,000 in cash. To do all of this, they used a typewriter they stole on another occasion to write the note. They bought a chisel to knock the victim unconscious. They rented a car to remain more anonymous, and they even bought a rope so both of them could equally play a role in strangling the boy to death. So that both of them could claim full responsibility for murdering him. Exactly.

And after driving around the suburbs of Chicago for several hours looking for a victim, they settled on 14-year-old Bobby Franks. Bobby was a cousin of Richards, and they knew that Bobby's father was a wealthy businessman who would be able to pay the ransom. So they lured Bobby into the car. they bludgeoned him several times in the head. When Bobby was still conscious after several clubs to the head, they shoved a cloth down his throat to gag him, and Bobby finally stopped struggling. Richard and Nathan then drove far out of Chicago

and dumped the body near Wolf Lake in Hammond, Indiana. And as if this wasn't horrific enough already, they poured hydrochloric acid over the boy's body to make it difficult to identify him. The body was quickly found by a passerby the next morning, and that's when the investigators found the pair of glasses. After that, all it took was a simple trip to the eye doctor, and they were able to trace the prescription back to one Mr. Nathan, Freudenthal, Leopold, Jr. Since Nathan and Richard were practically inseparable, they both then became key suspects in the crime and eventually confessed to their guilt.

Wow, that is just gruesome. So the boys were charged with murder and kidnapping for ransom. Right. Normally, we would go over the elements of each of these charges to make it more clear what the defense has to argue, but, In this situation, Darrow advised the boys to plead guilty to their charges. Why would he want to do that? Doesn't that mean his clients would have to take the death penalty by confessing their guilt? Not necessarily. Actually, this move was quite clever of Darrow because it gave him a juryless trial.

You see, when the defense pleads guilty to their charges, essentially all that remains is deciding the severity of the punishment the plaintiff will receive, which is exclusively determined by the judge in most of the case. states. This gave Darrow a huge advantage. Now, instead of persuading 12 people of his argument, he needed only to persuade one person. Albeit that one person was a very intimidating and legally knowledgeable judge, but it's still a leg up on a 12-person jury. And I will say, even though Darrow made the decision to enter into a guilty plea, he seemed to do it in a rather unique way. This is actually something I learned from reading the judge's decision, which, as a side note for our listeners, reading the judge's decision in a case is a great way to understand a case more

fully, and I find that it almost offers a view into the courtroom. Since the judge was there, literally front and center, and his decision finalizes and summarizes the proceedings. So the judge in this case was Judge John Kaverley of Cook County, and in his opinion he wrote this. Hershey, would you mind reading that for me? Yeah, quote, it is not an uncommon thing that pleas of guilty are entered in criminal cases, but almost without exception. In the past, such pleas have been the result of a virtual agreement between the defendants and the state's attorney, whereby in consideration of the plea, the state's attorney consents to recommend to the court a sentence deemed appropriate by him. And in the absence of special reasons to the contrary, it is the practice of the court to follow

such recommendations. In the present case, the situation is a different one. A plea of guilty has been entered by the defense without a previous understanding with the prosecution and without knowledge whatsoever on its part. Moreover, the plea of guilt did not in this particular case, as it usually does, render the task of the prosecution easier by substituting the admission of guilt for a possibly difficult and uncertain chain of proof. End quote. To translate this into the commoner's tongue, essentially most guilty pleas are entered

into after some thorough consultation with the state's attorney, and the state will recommend a sentence for the defense to accept. But in Leopold and Loeb's situation, Darrow did not consult with the state's attorney at all before entering his clients into their guilty plea. In this situation, I think that decision really added to the tension and drama of the trial, especially between Darrow and the state's attorney. And this is pretty evident in Darrow's closing argument, which I will explain in more detail later on. So how does this guilty plea affect the defense's legal theory. What is Darrow arguing now? If the boys had instead pled innocent, likely the only route the defense could have gone theory-wise would have been the infamous insanity plea, as there was

a lack of physical evidence to prove their innocence. But with a guilty plea, Darrow wanted to use the boys' young age and their questionable mental conditions to negotiate for a live sentence. Remember, Leopold and Loeb were only 19 and 18, respectively at the time of killing Bobby Franks. The legal age for someone to be considered an adult back then was 21, and up to that point, only two people younger than 21 had been sentenced to the death penalty in Illinois. So Darrow basically had legal precedents working in his favor. Exactly, and the judge actually said in his opinion that he based his decision almost entirely on precedent. He said, quote, this determination appears to be in accordance with the progress of

criminal law all over the world and with the dictates of enlightened humanity. More than that, it seems to be in accordance with the precedents hitherto observed in this state. The records of Illinois show only two cases of minors who were put to death by legal process, to which number the court does not feel inclined to make an addition, end quote. In addition to their young age, the defense also wanted to establish the fact that these were not just ordinary 18 and 19-year-olds, but in fact sick boys, as Darrow referred to them, obsessed with a disgusting philosophy.

To do this, he called many. expert witnesses, including several psychiatrists and even an endocrinologist to attest to the fact that these boys were deeply affected by physical and mental abnormalities. So this case is already spicy to begin with, but what moments of this case stood out to you? The answer to that would most definitely have to be the epic closing argument of Clarence Darrow. You already heard a bit of the closing argument at the top of this episode, and the speech only got more explosive from there. sources seem to claim that Darrow's closing argument lasted anywhere from 8 to 12 hours,

but the length of the transcripts we have available don't really seem to justify that claim, though it is quite long. In his speech, Darrow focused on the mental sickness of the two boys and their young age. He also stressed his view that capital punishment was a form of retributive justice, rather than transformative justice. This basically means that Darrow thought capital punishment demands the life of the guilty as retribution or payment for their crime, rather than seeking to understand the cause of their transgressions

and focusing on eliminating and preventing further acts in the future. I think a big part of Darrow's rhetoric is the sheer, raw truth of what he says. Darrow, for instance, made no attempt to hide the wealth of Richard and Nathan's parents. Instead, he addresses it to highlight how this was used by the media to make it seem like they would use their wealth to influence the evidence in the trial. Darrow said at the outset that not a penny more than was necessary was spent on lawyers and psychiatric testing, and he said, We are here with the lives of two boys imperiled, with the public aroused.

For what? Because, unfortunately, the parents have money. Nothing else. You can hear in that how Darrow was not at all afraid to tell it like it was. Another huge factor in his persuasive power was his ability to shift the power to the judge, while still holding onto it firmly himself. And you'll see what I mean if you listen to this quote from the beginning. But, Your Honor, if these boys hang, you must do it. There can be no division of responsibility here.

You can never explain that the rest overpowered you. It must be by your deliberate, cool, premeditated act without a chance to shift responsibility. And later, he adds a more hopeful line. You may save them and make it easier for every child that sometime may stand where these boys stand. You'll make it easier for every human being with an aspiration and a vision and a hope and a fate.

I'm pleading for the future. I'm pleading for a time when hatred and cruelty will not control the hearts of men, when we can learn by reason and judgment and understanding and faith that all life is worth saving, and that mercy is the highest attribute of man. It's really hard to imagine

that that argument wasn't effective. If I was a judge, I probably would have just paused and said, I'll get back to you in three to five business days. Well, it was indeed effective. The boys were sentenced to life imprisonment for the murder and an additional 99 years of imprisonment for the kidnapping. Okay, so what happened after that? Did the boys just rot and die in prison?

Well, yes and no. As he was serving his time, Richard Loeb was attacked by a fellow prisoner with a straight razor, and he died after serving about 12 years. Nathan continued his ornithological research while he was in prison, and he was released on parole in 1958 after serving 33 years. Once free, he left for Puerto Rico, where he lived until his death in 1971. And Clarence Darrow, well, he continued to be a famed figure in the American legal system, and he even served as an expert witness in another infamous case, Tennessee v. John T. Scopes, which you'll probably know better as the Scopes Monkey T.

trial. So do you have any questions, Hershey? So you said that they were sentenced for a lifetime and an additional 99 years in prison. I mean, how does that work? How could someone serve past their lifetime? Now that is a great question. In our legal system, you can be sentenced for years beyond a lifetime sentence or even serve multiple lifetime sentences. In most cases, a person will have a sentence longer than the term of their natural life because they were convicted of multiple crimes, and the sentences for each of their crimes are just added together. Something I find fascinating is that in some states those multiple sentences will be counted as concurrent, meaning that they all happen at the same time.

So if someone was sentenced to five, 20-year sentences, each for a separate crime, he may only serve for 20 years if they are served concurrently, rather than 100 years. These longer sentences also make it more difficult for defendants to be led out early on parole because the sentences are commuted only one at a time. There are a lot more nuances to sentencing, and a great deal that varies by state and even by country. If this interests you or any of our listeners, more information can be found by researching long-life sentences. The results are actually quite fascinating, in my opinion. Wow, this is such a provocative case.

Since this trial was considered the trial of a century, does it have any appeal to to pop culture? Oh, of course. Though trial of the century seems to be a pretty cheap term that people just threw around back then, the sheer drama and moral complexity of this case have elicited countless adaptations in novels, books, documentaries, and some Hollywood films even. You all have already heard this so far in the episode, but a personal favorite of mine and the movie that informed me of this case in the first place was the film Compulsion, starring Orson Welles as Clarence Darrow. Orson Welles' performance in the closing are argument is, I would like to imagine, true to life to how Darrow would have actually delivered it.

And that whole performance can be found online for anyone who wishes to investigate further. No way, I'll definitely check that film out. Oh, for sure. And just a final note I would like to add on this case is its place in the entire capital punishment debate. Though there are few sources out there that even note what significance or influence this case had in that debate, it is worth noting that many states around the country had already started abolishing the death penalty for any crime. by the time this trial was held. Many years later, a landmark Supreme Court case known as Furman v. Georgia,

dealt with the constitutionality of the death penalty, and the final ruling forced states to reevaluate their statutes to ensure capital punishment would not be applied in an arbitrary manner. Now, as a 2023, states are still pretty split on their use of the death penalty, with 24 where it is legal, 23 where it is not, and three states that have a moratorium on the use of the death penalty. The state of Illinois actually made the death penalty illegal in 2011. Well, thank you so much for all of that, Stephanie.

And that's all we have for you today on the infamous trial of Leopold and Loeb. If this interests you, you can investigate all of those books and the movies based on this story, or you can read the judge's opinion and the closing arguments in greater detail online. Thank you for tuning in with us. We're your hosts, Hershey and Stephanie, and you're listening to In Media Res on Radio Free Hill. sale 101.7 FM.