For the Thrill of It: Leopold, Loeb, and the Murder That Shocked Jazz Age Chicago (46 page)

Marshall had already spoken for almost two days—his voice was hoarse—and now he had almost finished. “There is nothing in Illinois jurisprudence that compares with it. It cannot be found on the books…. And so upon the whole of the record, compare all of the Illinois cases I have cited from the beginning down to this moment, and nowhere in any of them will you find the premeditation, the deliberate malice, the cunning plans, the months of preparation, the thought, the science, the ability…. There is only one sentence that can be imposed upon these vile culprits…. Any lesser penalty than the extreme penalty of the law under such circumstances and upon the record in this case, would make a mockery of the law itself.”
¹⁴

W
ALTER
B
ACHRACH, IN HIS RESPONSE
for the defense, replied that Thomas Marshall was wrong to say that the defense had advanced mental illness to dilute the responsibility of Nathan and Richard for the murder. Bachrach seemed to have a calming influence on the courtroom; his manner, as he stood before the bench, was thoughtful, even scholarly; his sentences, precise and neat, seemed designed to dissect Marshall’s erroneous logic; and his voice, smooth and silky, drifted through the warm, moist air of the courtroom, lulling his audience into agreement. The defense admitted full responsibility for the crime, Bachrach stated; what other conclusion could one draw from a plea of guilty? And responsibility was not, of course, divisible; one could not be partially responsible for an action.
¹⁵

But the judge, Bachrach continued, had a duty and a right to consider the circumstances of the murder when deliberating on the appropriate punishment. The Illinois legislature had provided the court with discretion in fixing the penalty for the crime. It expected the court to examine the condition of the murderer in sentencing him. A man who had killed the seducer of his wife might, for example, have acted in a jealous rage, out of sudden anger; surely, under those circumstances, the court would take into account the mental condition of the murderer when determining punishment.
¹⁶

Age, also, was a mitigating circumstance; a child had not the same judgment, knowledge, or experience that one would expect to find in an adult. There was not, therefore, the same degree of deliberation in the action of a child as in the action of an adult, and as a consequence the court would determine on a lesser punishment.
¹⁷

Was not an individual suffering from mental illness comparable to a child? Both lacked the ability to comprehend the effect of their actions on others; both lacked knowledge and experience in successful social relations; and both lacked, therefore, awareness and understanding of moral behavior. The defense had demonstrated mental illness in Nathan and Richard, but this was not an attempt to evade responsibility, Bachrach explained. Just as their youth was an aspect of the case that called for a lesser punishment, so their mental condition also mitigated punishment.
¹⁸

And, of course, there was no doubt that both Nathan and Richard were mentally ill. Nathan was a paranoiac. He displayed all the symptoms of someone suffering from a paranoid psychosis: delusions of grandeur, self-satisfied superiority, disregard of others, and exaggerated self-importance. Nathan, in letters to Richard Loeb and in comments to classmates at the University of Chicago, had repeatedly represented himself as a superman who had no need either to behave according to the law or to conform to social convention. His philosophy was an individualistic hedonism that held others in contempt; whatever gave him pleasure or satisfaction determined his daily course of action.

Walter Bachrach paused and glanced briefly across the aisle to look at the cluster of psychiatrists sitting behind the prosecution lawyers. He smiled briefly—almost imperceptibly—as he noticed William Krohn seated directly behind Robert Crowe. Bachrach now leaned forward slightly to pick up a book that had been lying on the table before him. He began, with steady deliberation, as the courtroom waited to hear his words, to leaf through its pages. He resumed speaking. The symptoms of a paranoid psychosis, so conspicuous in Nathan Leopold, were, Bachrach stated, elegantly described by William Krohn and Douglas Singer in their recent book,
Insanity and Law: A Treatise on Forensic Psychiatry
. Bachrach turned to page sixty-eight and started to read: “‘The essence of the paranoid personality is an exaggerated appreciation of self. Everything that happens is considered in relation to the effects it has on the self, and there is a corresponding diminution in the sentiments of altruism and gregariousness…. The man is a dominant aggressive person, anxious to be in the forefront and careless of the feelings and interests of others. He takes life seriously, works hard, and with purpose.’” Was that not an accurate description of Nathan? asked Bachrach. “‘He is always sure of himself, is satisfied with his own views and constantly endeavors to impose them on others…. Naturally, he is not popular and he does not make friends though he may have many acquaintances…. He prides himself on his intelligence and control of emotions, and, as a matter of fact, reasons logically and connectedly.’”
¹⁹

William Krohn, in his testimony for the state, had claimed that Nathan had shown no evidence of mental disease during the examination in the office of the state’s attorney. Nathan had expressed himself in a logical and coherent manner with no long pauses or inappropriate gestures such as one might see in a person suffering from neurological disease. Yet—Bachrach now asked—was such external normality in speech and gesture necessarily a sign of mental health; or could a mentally ill individual nevertheless speak and talk in an apparently normal manner? Bachrach turned to page seventy-four and began to read, again, from Krohn’s description of a paranoid personality: “‘Throughout, the intelligence remains intact; perception is clear and there is no disorientation in the narrower sense of this term. Memory is good, in spite of the falsifications in meaning and context that have been mentioned. The man remains in contact with reality, active, alert and interested and there is no tendency to deterioration or dementia. Hallucinations are unusual, though they may occur during periods of marked excitement.’”
²⁰

Once again Bachrach looked briefly across the courtroom at Krohn. He then turned, with a slightly supercilious expression, to look directly at the judge. “Now there, if your honor please,” Bachrach said, “you have a statement of Drs. Singer and Krohn which in effect destroys their testimony as given here in the court; the testimony of Dr. Krohn that he based his judgment as to the absence of mental disease of Leopold, upon his memory, his logical processes and his orientation, and his senses, are all shown by his own book to be no evidence that a mental disease did not exist at all.”
²¹

The state’s claim that Nathan was normal was contradicted by the diagnosis of paranoid psychosis presented in
Insanity and Law
. And what about Richard Loeb? Was the state’s evidence with regard to Richard also undermined by Krohn’s book?

Richard was a schizophrenic, Bachrach explained. During his puberty and adolescence, Richard had displayed a progressive loss of contact with reality, a failure to function in everyday life, and a disintegration of personality. He believed himself to be a master criminal, capable of leading other criminals in the organization of perfect crimes. The fantasy was deeply rooted in his psyche; it had been a feature of his everyday thoughts for at least six years—perhaps longer—and showed no sign of diminution. On the contrary; Richard had attempted to translate his wish into reality, stealing cars, burning down outhouses, robbing private homes, and finally killing a fourteen-year-old boy. Even now, Bachrach continued, he was obsessed with the image of himself as a criminal, standing alone in a prison cell, while spectators looked on with a mixture of pity and admiration.

William Krohn, testifying as a witness for the state, had denied, of course, that Richard suffered in any degree from mental illness. The boy was intelligent, lucid, and coherent in his manner and expression and could not be mentally diseased. But what, Bachrach asked, as, once again, he picked up the book that lay before him on the defense table, had Krohn written in
Insanity and Law
? “‘The intelligence of schizophrenic persons,’” Bachrach read, “‘is usually good and is often above the average…. Typically, perception and the formation of memories with clear grasp and orientation are fully up to the average…. The trouble lies not in the quality of the intellectual tools, but in the use that is made of them…. In school he often does extremely well so far as scholastic acquisitions are concerned. He is liable to be absorbed in books and especially in topics that are philosophic and abstract rather than those that would bring him into dealing with the real and the concrete. Often the school successes give rise to hopes of a brilliant future, incapable of realization because of the impossibility of effectively meeting reality.’”
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Was that not also, Bachrach asked, an accurate description of Richard Loeb? Richard was outwardly normal; but that, according to Krohn’s own statements in
Insanity and Law
, would be consistent with a diagnosis of schizophrenia.

The failure of the state psychiatrists to discover mental illness in Richard and Nathan was a consequence of the abbreviated examination in the state’s attorney’s office on Sunday, 1 June. Whom should the court believe: the state psychiatrists or the defense psychiatrists? The former had examined the defendants for three hours on a Sunday afternoon in a crowded office; the latter had examined the defendants over several weeks in an isolated, secure room equipped with the necessary scientific equipment. Only one side had presented any credible scientific evidence in this hearing, Bachrach explained, and that evidence led inexorably to the determination of mental illness in Richard Loeb and Nathan Leopold. “Now, how can the testimony,” Bachrach concluded, exasperated that there remained any doubt about the matter, “of men like Drs. Singer, Krohn, Patrick, and Church be mentioned in the same breath with the testimony of the experts of the defense?”
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W
ALTER
B
ACHRACH FINISHED SPEAKING SHORTLY
before noon on Friday, 22 August. During the recess for lunch, hundreds of Chicagoans began to converge on the Criminal Court Building. Clarence Darrow, scheduled to speak directly after Bachrach, had hinted that the Leopold-Loeb hearing would be the last court case of his career. It was the final opportunity to hear Darrow speak in a criminal trial, the last chance to hear the most famous lawyer in the United States!

By two o’clock that afternoon, 2,000 Chicagoans stood before the doors of the Criminal Court Building in the bright sunshine flooding Austin Avenue. They were packed into a tight knot, a semicircle, in front of the narrow entrance. The crowd seemed to get larger every minute; it had brushed past the line of police guarding the street entrance and already it had forced its way into the entrance hall, up the staircase on the left, winding its way up six flights of stairs. A line of bailiffs, stern and imposing in their dark brown uniforms, their nightsticks ready, stood at the top of the stairs, but the crowd smashed its way through, sweeping aside the thin line, and surging forward down the corridor that led to the courtroom of the chief justice.
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A dozen women had fainted in the crush; two persons had been trampled by the crowd; and a bailiff, seriously hurt, had been driven away in an ambulance. Police reinforcements had now arrived in Austin Avenue. Squads of blue-jacketed constables rushed forward, their nightsticks smashing first left, then right, as they fought to regain control of the building. Mounted police charged their horses at the mob, seeking to split it away from the entrance. For ten minutes, Austin Avenue was a battleground as the crowd fought back against the police; but eventually the constables won control of the street. They could now turn their attention to clearing the corridors and stairways of the Criminal Court Building.
²⁵

Inside the courtroom, Clarence Darrow had started speaking. He wore a loose-fitting gray suit, a blue shirt, and a white wash necktie of a kind that had been fashionable twenty years earlier. His hair, thinning and gray, fell over his forehead; his wrinkled face, punctuated by his shining brown eyes, expressed resolve; and his hands moved eloquently, in synchronicity with his words. The courtroom was full to overflowing—it would have been impossible to squeeze even one more person into the room—and all eyes were focused on Darrow standing in the small space in front of the bench. The afternoon heat was almost unbearable—the thermometer had already reached eighty-two degrees—and Darrow, holding a pair of eyeglasses in one hand and a handkerchief in the other, was mopping the perspiration from his forehead as he addressed the court.
²⁶

“It has been almost three months,” Darrow began, “since I first assumed the great reponsibility that has devolved upon me and my associates in this case, and I am willing to confess that it has been three months of perplexity and great anxiety. A trouble which I would have gladly been spared excepting for my feelings of affection toward some of the members of one of these families. It is a responsibility that is almost too great for any one to assume that has devolved upon me. But we lawyers can no more choose than the court can choose.”

The spectators at the rear of the room leaned forward, but it was impossible for them to hear Darrow’s words above the racket coming from the hallway. Outside the courtroom, in the corridor, the crowd pressed forward, pushing and shoving at the sheriffs barring the way; punches were thrown and blows were exchanged. Inside the courtroom, muffled shouts and screams could be heard coming from the other side of the thick oak doors.