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/79



What had this boy to do with it? He was not his own father; he was not his own mother; he was not his own grandparents. All of this was handed to him. He did not surround himself with governesses and wealth. He did not make himself. And yet he is to be compelled to pay.

There was a time in England, running down as late as the beginning of the last century, when judges used to convene court and call juries to try a horse, a dog, a pig, for crime. I have in my library a story of a judge and jury and lawyers trying and convicting an old sow for lying down on her ten pigs and killing them.

What does it mean? Animals were tried. Do you mean to tell me that Dickie Loeb had any more to do with his making than any other product of heredity that is born upon the earth?

At this period of life it is not enough to take a boy—your Honor, I wish I knew when to stop talking about this question that always has interested me so much—it is not enough to take a boy filled with his dreams and his phantasies and living in an unreal world, but the age of adolescence comes on him with all the rest.

What does he know? Both these boys are in the adolescent age; both these boys, as every alienist in this case on both sides tells you, are in the most trying period of the life of a child; both these boys, when the call of sex is new and strange; both these boys, at a time seeking to adjust their young lives to the world, moved by the strongest feelings and passions that have ever moved