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Clarence Darrow, Sigmund Freud, and the Leopold and Loeb Trial
Leopold and Loeb
On May 21, 1924, Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb, the teenage sons of two prominent Chicago families, abducted 14-year old Bobby Franks and clubbed him to death with a chisel.1 While the murder victim was chosen at random, Leopold and Loeb had been meticulously planning the "perfect" murder since November, 1923.2 The evidence quickly led investigators to Leopold and Loeb and they confessed. Clarence Darrow agreed to take the case, and Leopold and Loeb pled guilty to first-degree murder.
The Leopold and Loeb trial began in July, 1924. This trial was important not only because of the nature of the crime, but because it was one of the first trials in which psychiatric testimony was allowed as evidence to mitigate (i.e., reduce) punishment (in this case, from the death penalty to life in prison). As Darrow stated on the opening day of trial, "We ask the Court to permit us to offer evidence as to the mental condition of these young men to show the degree of responsibility that they had. We wish to offer this evidence in mitigation of the punishment."3 Prior to this trial, psychiatric testimony had only been allowed in the courtroom to determine sanity.4
Dogmatic Views
Clarence Darrow held a dogmatic deterministic view of human behavior. He wrote: "Man is in no sense the maker of himself and has no more power than any other machine to escape the law of cause and effect."5 Voluntary choices and personal responsibility did not exist because "each act, criminal or otherwise, follows a cause; that given the same conditions the same result will follow forever and ever."6 For example, Darrow did not believe Leopold or Loeb were responsible for the murder, but were themselves victims of circumstance.7 As evidence of his dogmatism, Darrow characterized opposing views as "utterly unscientific, and no longer believed in by thinking men."8 "Every scientific man knows," "no wellinformed person now thinks," and "all psychologists are agreed" are a few of the phrases Darrow used to reinforce his viewpoint and discredit other opinions.9 Darrow viewed the Leopold and Loeb trial as a podium from which to promote his deterministic philosophy.10
Darrow's belief that the philosophical debate...