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/23

 First, I put the victim, who ought not to suffer; and next, I would put the attitude of those who kill.

What was the attitude of these two boys?

It may be that the State's Attorney would think that it was particularly cruel to the victim because he was a boy.

Well, my clients are boys, too, and if it would make more serious the offense to kill a boy, it should make less serious the offense of the boys who did the killing.

What was there in the conduct of these two boys which showed a wicked, malignant, and abandoned heart beyond that of anybody else, who ever lived? Your Honor, it is simply foolish.

Everybody who thinks knows the purpose of this. Counsel knows that under all the rules of the courts they have not the slightest right to ask this court to take life. Yet they urge it upon this court by falsely characterizing this as being the crudest act that ever occurred. What about these two boys,—the second thing that would settle whether it was cruel or not?

Mr. Marshall read case after case of murders and he said: "Why, those cases don't compare with yours. Yours is worse." Worse, why? What were those cases? Most of his cases were robbery cases,—where a man went out with a gun to take a person's money and shot him down. Some of them were cases where a man killed from spite and hatred and malice. Some of them were cases of special atrocities, mostly connected with money. A man kills someone to get money, he kills someone through hatred. What is this case?

This is a senseless, useless, purposeless, motiveless act of two boys. Now, let me see if I can prove it. There was not a particle of hate, there was not a grain of