The Plea of Clarence Darrow, August 22nd, 23rd & 25th, MCMXXIII, in Defense of Richard Loeb and Nathan Leopold, Jr., on Trial for Murder

by Clarence Darrow

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136 pages, Paperback

First published March 1, 2007

About the author

in 1857, Clarence Darrow, later dubbed "Attorney for the Damned" and "the Great Defender," was born. For a time he lived in an Ohio home that had served as a stop on the Underground Railroad. His father was known as the "village infidel." Darrow attended the University of Michigan Law School for one year, then passed the bar in 1878 and moved to Chicago. There he joined protests against the trumped-up charges against four radicals accused in the Haymarket Riot case. Darrow became corporate counsel to the City of Chicago, then counsel for the North Western Railway. He quit this lucrative post when he could no longer defend their treatment of injured workers, then went on to defend without pay Socialist striker Eugene V. Debs. In 1907, Darrow successfully defended labor activist "Big Bill" Haywood, charged with assassinating a former governor. His passionate denunciation of the death penalty prompted him to defend the famous killers, Loeb and Leopold, who received life sentences in 1924.

His most celebrated case was the Scopes Trial, defending teacher John Scopes in Dayton, Tenn., who was charged with the crime of teaching evolution in the public schools. Darrow's brilliant cross-examination of prosecuting attorney William Jennings Bryan lives on in legal history. During the trial, Darrow said: "I do not consider it an insult, but rather a compliment to be called an agnostic. I do not pretend to know where many ignorant men are sure—that is all that agnosticism means." Darrow wrote many freethought articles and edited a freethought collection. His two appealing autobiographies are The Story of My Life (1932), containing his plainspoken views on religion, and Farmington (1932). He also wrote Resist Not Evil (1902), An Eye for An Eye (1905), and Crime, Its Causes and Treatments (1925). His freethought writings are collected into Why I Am an Agnostic and Other Essays. He told The New York Times, "Religion is the belief in future life and in God. I don't believe in either" (April 19, 1936). D. 1938.

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http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history...

Reviews

[David Fulmer · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is not the defense of Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb - two notorious thrill killers who confessed to and were convicted of murdering Bobby Franks in Chicago in 1924 - that Clarence Darrow presented in court but rather an edited version that he later published based on the closing argument of his successful defense. It provides a sampling of Darrow’s anti-establishment legal arguments and his bitter but funny sense of humour. It is at times sentimental (“I am pleading that we overcome cruelty with kindness and hatred with love.”) at times philosophical about the law (“Justice must take account of infinite circumstances which a human being can not understand.”) and at times epigrammatic (“I am always suspicious of righteous indignation. Nothing is more cruel than righteous indignation.”).

It is focused on pointing out the “diseased” minds of his clients, the fact of which ought to deter the state from condemning them to death. He brings up his clients’ upbringing, their genetics, their youth, and their wealth, all as possibly contributing to the conditions which made them able to commit such a horrific crime.

Readers of this book will benefit from having some knowledge of the background of the case, as there are numerous references to the events and people from the trial without a lot of information to place them in context, but it may be appreciated for the legal argument that it is, focusing on issues of crime and punishment and the role of the justice system in society.

[Susan Molloy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fascinating.

🖊 Very informative and interesting, and useful for legal research. His defense would have been good to hear in its entirety and in its in original presentation in 1924.

📕Published in 1924.

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