Page:The plea of Clarence Darrow, August 22nd, 23rd & 25th, MCMXXIII, in defense of Richard Loeb and Nathan Leopold, Jr., on trial for murder.djvu/119

 as I believe you to be, would have disturbed a jury's verdict in this case, but I know that no judge in Cook County ever himself upon a plea of guilty passed judgment of death in a case below the age of twenty-three, and only one at the age of twenty-three was ever hanged on a plea of guilty.

Viani I have looked up, and I don't care who did it or how it was done, it was a shame and disgrace that an eighteen year old boy should be hanged, in 1920, or a nineteen year old boy should be hanged, in 1920, and I am assuming it is all right to hang somebody, which it is not. I have looked up the Viani case because my friend Marshall read a part where it said that Viani pleaded guilty. He did not say it positively, because he is honest, and he knew there might be a reason. Viani was tried and convicted—I don't remember the name of the judge—in 1920.

There were various things working against him. It was in 1920, after the war. Most anything might have happened after the war, which I will speak of later, and not much later, for I am to close tonight. He was convicted in 1920. There was a band of Italian desperadoes, so-called. I don't know. Sam Cardinelli was the leader, a man forty years of age. But their records were very bad.

This boy should have been singled out from the rest. If I had been defending him, and he had not been, I never would have come into court again. But he was not. He was tried with the rest. I have looked up the records, and I find that he was in the position of most of these unfortunates; he did not have a lawyer.

Your Honor, the question of whether a man is convicted or acquitted does not always depend on the evidence or entirely on the judge or entirely on the jury.