This week in history: Clarence Darrow’s most famous speech

As published in the Chicago Daily News, sister publication of the Chicago Sun-Times:

Defending two of Chicago’s most notorious killers would win anyone a place in the city’s history books, but attorney Clarence Darrow’s place in history goes far beyond the infamous Leopold and Loeb trial of 1924.

Darrow, who was born this week on April 18, 1857, defended Patrick Eugene Prendergast, the man accused of killing Mayor Carter Harrison, Sr. in 1893, and labor activist Eugene Debbs, a major player in the Pullman strike in 1894. Outside the city, the lawyer won a major civil rights criminal trial in Detroit in 1925 and matched toe-to-toe with orator and politician William Jennings Bryan in the Scopes Monkey trial later that same year. Today, he’s remembered as one of the country’s best criminal defense lawyers.

But Darrow’s legacy in Chicago will forever be tied to the Leopold and Loeb trial, in which the great lawyer defended Nathan Leopold Jr. and Richard Loeb. The two had confessed to the killing of 14-year-old Bobby Franks and shocked the city when they admitted that they’d done it for the thrills and the satisfaction of pulling off the perfect crime. The Chicago Daily News covered the case extensively and even assisted in the two boys’ arrest, winning the publication a Pulitzer.

The trial to determine whether the two would hang or go to prison for life (both men entered guilty pleas) lasted for about 30 days during the summer of 1924. The prosecution called roughly 100 witnesses to painstakingly document the heinous crime while Darrow called a number of psychological experts to prove his insanity defense.

Darrow started his speech on Aug. 22 with his “hands in his pocket, quiet, serene,” in front of Judge John R. Caverly, the paper reported. “It has been almost three months since I first assumed the great responsibility that has devolved upon me and my associates in this case, and I am willing to confess that it has been three months of perplexity and great anxiety,” he said. “A trouble which I would have gladly been spared excepting for my feelings of affection toward some of the members of one of these families.”

The defense lawyer explained the decision to plead guilty and go to a bench trial for sentencing had been made not because the defense feared a jury trial. Rather, Darrow argued, the intense media surrounding the murder left little hope of finding 12 fair-minded jurors. “Twelve men can sentence a fellow creature to death without a feeling of responsibility,” he said. “Each can say that the others overpowered him. That he was helpless.

“But if these boys hang,” he asserted, shaking his finger at the judge, “you’ll do it. You won’t be able to say that you were one of many; that others forced you.”

The nature of the crime was not the only aspect influencing public opinion, Darrow said. So was the wealth of the boys’ families. More than that, the state had never executed a person under the age of 21 (consider the age of maturity at the time, which was eventually lowered to 18).

“And yet this court is urged, aye, threatened, that he must hang two boys contrary to the precedents, contrary to the acts of every judge who ever held court in this state,” the lawyer said.

Darrow never made excuses for the defendants or their terrible crime, but he argued that for all the planning and scheming the two did to kill Franks, the state had done just as much “to fan this community into a frenzy of hate with all of that, who for months have been planning and scheming and contriving, and working to take these two boys’ lives.”

“Let the state, who is so anxious to take these boys’ lives, set an example in consideration, kindheartedness and tenderness before they call my clients cold-blooded,” Darrow proclaimed.

Darrow’s remarkable speech saved the lives of the two men. The judge sentenced them both to life in prison plus 99 years, sparing them from the death penalty. Later that month, the famous speech appeared in booklet form and “caused a flurry in local book circles.” Today it remains one of the most influential trial speeches ever delivered in a court of law.