The Curious Case of Leopold and Loeb

In 1924, two young men named Richard Loeb and Nathan Leopold kidnapped and murdered a 14-year-old acquaintance in an attempt to commit "the perfect crime." While the prosecutor demanded the death penalty for the two boys, their lawyer instead got them both to plead guilty and, in a twelve-hour defense, managed to nab life in prison for them instead. How? In the excerpt we were required to read for my philosophy class, he tells of the privileged but restrictive life of Dickie Loeb and the unfortunate circumstances (a demanding nurse, reading forbidden detective novels on the sly; in essence a ruined childhood) that led to the heinous crime he had committed. Doesn't sound too convincing when I say it, does it? However, at the end of his twelve-hour discourse, Darrow had managed to get both the judge and many in the audience in tears, securing the penalty he wanted for the young men. Carefully crafted rhetoric which drew on poetry, the Bible, and an appeal to listeners to recall their own childhoods (to name a few things), was the reason Leopold and Loeb escaped the death penalty. Never underestimate the power of the spoken word.