Part 10 (1/2)

The entry of the United States into World War I confirmed his friends' suspicion that Darrow had drifted away from radical politics and toward the center. Darrow had become an ardent supporter of American involvement and of Woodrow Wilson, on moral grounds: Germany, an aggressively militaristic power, had violated the neutrality of Belgium. Darrow joined the National Security League, the princ.i.p.al group advocating American partic.i.p.ation in the war, and spent several months in 1917 and 1918 traveling around the country speaking in support of the government's foreign policy.

Yet Darrow strongly opposed Wilson's antidemocratic restrictions on free speech at home, and Darrow's efforts on behalf of anarchists, communists, and antiwar protesters helped restore some of his reputation within progressive circles. In 1917 anarchists in Milwaukee fought a gun battle with the police and subsequently received long prison sentences for conspiracy to a.s.sault with intent to murder. Eighteen months later, in March 1919, Darrow presented the appeal to the Wisconsin supreme court and succeeded in overturning the convictions.

Darrow also defended members of the Communist Labor Party on charges of violating the Espionage Act. Twenty members of the party stood trial in 1919 in the Cook County Criminal Court. Despite Darrow's best efforts, including a closing speech that attacked the prosecution for trampling on the const.i.tutional rights of the defendants, the jury found the communists guilty of advocating the overthrow of the government.32 Darrow thus managed to remain in the public eye throughout the 1910s. His p.r.o.nouncements and opinions continued to appear in the Chicago newspapers, of course, and occasionally his court cases would attract attention outside Cook County, in cities such as New York, Boston, Philadelphia, and San Francisco. He had reached-and pa.s.sed-middle age, yet he still retained an uncanny ability as an attorney. He had become a fixture at the Cook County Criminal Court, representing as varied an a.s.sortment of clients as one might expect to find in a metropolis such as Chicago: corrupt politicians; bootleggers and saloon keepers; pimps, prost.i.tutes, and owners of ma.s.sage parlors; embezzlers, gamblers, and gangsters; and, of course, a steady stream of murderers.

NO ASPECT OF D DARROW'S CAREER before the Criminal Court was as significant in transforming his philosophy of crime and criminal justice as his efforts on behalf of Chicagoans indicted for murder. Until around 1915 Darrow clung stubbornly to the belief that all crime was, in one sense or another, economic crime. Criminals broke the law, Darrow believed, because they were impoverished, uneducated, and dest.i.tute; they had been reared in poverty and, deprived of any semblance of education or training, they had no way to make a living by normal means. They had no choice but to engage in criminal activity. before the Criminal Court was as significant in transforming his philosophy of crime and criminal justice as his efforts on behalf of Chicagoans indicted for murder. Until around 1915 Darrow clung stubbornly to the belief that all crime was, in one sense or another, economic crime. Criminals broke the law, Darrow believed, because they were impoverished, uneducated, and dest.i.tute; they had been reared in poverty and, deprived of any semblance of education or training, they had no way to make a living by normal means. They had no choice but to engage in criminal activity.

In June 1914, the warden at Joliet Prison invited Clarence Darrow to speak to the prisoners on crime and punishment. Darrow was well known for his opposition to the prison system, and his visit to Joliet was, according to the warden's critics, ill judged and inappropriate. But Darrow had come in support of the warden's inauguration of a more liberal regime at Joliet, and in his talk he endorsed the relaxation of the disciplinary system and urged the inmates to cooperate with the honor system introduced earlier that year. The prisoners, at least, received Darrow's speech with good grace-Darrow absolved them of blame and attributed their incarceration to the effects of impoverishment. ”Most all the people in here are poor,” Darrow drawled to his captive audience, ”and have always been poor; have never had a chance in the world.... The first great cause of crime is poverty, and we will never cure crime until we get rid of poverty.... Most of the crimes committed, like burglary and robbery and murder, are committed by boys, young people.... And they are boys of a certain cla.s.s; boys who live in a tenement district; boys who are poor, who have no playground but the street; boys [who]...gradually learn crime, the same as we learn to be a lawyer, and, of course, after they get started then it is easy.”33 Yet Darrow's work as a defense attorney in the Cook County Criminal Court often seemed to confound his most fundamental a.s.sumptions about the causes of crime. Some defendants seemed to have acted irrationally or, at the very least, in ways that defied easy explanation. Darrow, in his defense of such prisoners, could not make his appeal to the jury in ways that argued an economic motive, and as he took up alternative explanations for such crimes, his philosophy of criminal justice gradually began to adopt a more subtle mien.

Darrow's philosophy of economic determinism could not, for example, account for those murderers who killed in pa.s.sion and anger. Darrow himself knew that, in order to make an effective appeal to the jury in such cases, he had to abandon his concept of crime as a consequence of economic need.

RUSSELL P PETHICK, A TWENTY-TWO-YEAR-OLD deliveryman, was a case in point. On Thursday, 6 May 1915, at ten o'clock in the morning, Pethick stopped at 7100 Lowe Avenue, the house of John and Ella Coppersmith, to deliver groceries. Ella Coppersmith was in the kitchen when Pethick knocked at the door, and her two-year-old son, Jack, was playing in an adjacent room. Pethick unloaded the groceries from his wagon in the alley adjacent to the Coppersmith house and stepped into the kitchen. Ella Coppersmith, alone in the house with her child, offered a ten-dollar bill in payment. There was a dispute over the change; the dispute escalated into an argument; and, as they faced each other, Pethick suddenly reached for the woman's blouse as though to touch her. She responded by striking him in the face with her fist. There was a butcher knife, with a wooden handle and a sharp, serrated edge, lying on the kitchen table. Pethick suddenly grabbed it and lunged at the woman. She fought back, raising her arms to defend herself from the blows, but Pethick struck at her, slas.h.i.+ng violently at her abdomen and throat. deliveryman, was a case in point. On Thursday, 6 May 1915, at ten o'clock in the morning, Pethick stopped at 7100 Lowe Avenue, the house of John and Ella Coppersmith, to deliver groceries. Ella Coppersmith was in the kitchen when Pethick knocked at the door, and her two-year-old son, Jack, was playing in an adjacent room. Pethick unloaded the groceries from his wagon in the alley adjacent to the Coppersmith house and stepped into the kitchen. Ella Coppersmith, alone in the house with her child, offered a ten-dollar bill in payment. There was a dispute over the change; the dispute escalated into an argument; and, as they faced each other, Pethick suddenly reached for the woman's blouse as though to touch her. She responded by striking him in the face with her fist. There was a butcher knife, with a wooden handle and a sharp, serrated edge, lying on the kitchen table. Pethick suddenly grabbed it and lunged at the woman. She fought back, raising her arms to defend herself from the blows, but Pethick struck at her, slas.h.i.+ng violently at her abdomen and throat.

As Ella Coppersmith lay dying at his feet, her throat cut, blood streaming out across the kitchen floor, the child, hearing his mother's screams, ran into the room crying. Pethick could not afford to leave behind a witness to his crime-the child might identify him to the police, he thought-and so he grabbed Jack by his s.h.i.+rt, pulled the child suddenly toward him, and slit the boy's throat.34 After killing the boy, Pethick ransacked the house, looking for valuables; he then returned to the kitchen, where he s.e.xually abused Ella Coppersmith's body before cleaning his clothes and hands of blood and returning to work.35 There seemed to be no mitigating circ.u.mstances for the brutal murder of a young mother and her innocent child. At the hearing before the grand jury, several witnesses, including Pethick's employer, John McCrea, testified that Pethick had shown no previous signs of insanity and that he could distinguish right from wrong. The state's attorney, Maclay Hoyne, was confident that he had a hanging case, and he announced that he would seek the death penalty for the double murder.36 But according to a diagnosis presented by medical experts, Pethick was mentally ill. Rachel Watkins, a prominent member of the Medical Woman's Club of Chicago, examined him in the Cook County jail. The prisoner, Watkins reported, had ”degeneration of the nerve tracts.... He is very deficient in memory, reason, and judgment.... There is a disturbance throughout the entire emotional field. In general knowledge he is equal to a 5 or 6 year old child; and although he attended public school for eight years, he was unable to pa.s.s the third grade.”37 Psychologists examined Pethick in his prison cell-they agreed with the physicians that Pethick was mentally incompetent. He was unable to perform even elementary tasks, and he had the judgment and intelligence of a young child.38 It was exactly the type of case that appealed to Clarence Darrow's humanitarian instincts. Pethick, a young man from a family of modest means, had committed a crime that was extraordinary in its violence. The murders had been entirely out of character. Pethick, according to everyone who knew him, was a reserved, quiet man who never smoked and rarely drank-he had never run wild or behaved indecently but had worked diligently to support his two aged parents.

Darrow had first learned of the case through the Chicago newspapers, and the more he read, the more incongruous it seemed that Pethick should commit such a brutal murder. The killing of Ella and Jack Coppersmith was inexplicable except as a consequence of mental derangement. Russell Pethick had acted from a compulsion to kill. Defects in his mental apparatus, Darrow believed, had removed his ability to choose his actions freely and had compelled him to murder his victims. Pethick was a suitable case for medical diagnosis, and the state's attorney would be better advised to send him to a mental inst.i.tution than to the gallows.

And if Pethick had not chosen to kill, then what could justify a death sentence? He was not responsible for his actions, Darrow reasoned, and under the circ.u.mstances, capital punishment would serve no purpose except to satisfy the bloodthirsty mob. The execution of Russell Pethick would not bring Ella Coppersmith or her son back to life; it would not deter other murderers; and, of course, it would neither redeem nor rehabilitate the murderer.

That summer, as Pethick awaited his trial in the Cook County Criminal Court, Darrow volunteered his services as defense attorney.

George Pethick, astonished that Chicago's most famous lawyer should take up his son's case, quickly consented; and on 24 September, the opening day of the trial, Darrow and his cocounsel, Alice Thompson, stood in front of George Barrett, judge of the Criminal Court, to plead their client's case.39 Might Darrow have submitted a motion for a change of venue? Even if Darrow could succeed in moving the trial away from Cook County, he would, he believed, be unable to secure a sympathetic jury. Even the most objective jury would find it difficult to look beyond the brutality of the murders and the intimations of s.e.xual depravity.

There was little chance, moreover, that a jury would find the prisoner not guilty by reason of insanity. The defendant may have been mentally disturbed, but in appearance at least, he presented no obvious signs of derangement. Pethick was lucid and coherent, and the state's attorney would no doubt present a surfeit of witnesses to testify to Pethick's ability to perform everyday tasks in a satisfactory manner.

It would be futile, Darrow realized, to use insanity as a defense. He had a better strategy, a strategy so simple that it caught the prosecution entirely by surprise. On the opening day in court, he said that his client pleaded guilty and asked the judge to consider Pethick's mental condition in mitigation of his punishment. Pethick, Darrow stated to the judge, was capable of distinguis.h.i.+ng right from wrong. He did not, therefore, meet the accepted test of insanity. But on the other hand, Darrow insisted, Pethick was suffering from mental illness. This medical condition should be taken into consideration in determining the appropriate punishment.

Pethick, by admitting his guilt, would avoid a jury trial. The judge would first listen to the psychiatric experts present their evidence that Pethick was mentally diseased. On the basis of that evidence, he would then sentence Pethick either to death or to a prison sentence of not less than fourteen years.

Darrow's gamble paid off. H. I. Davis, the former superintendent of the Psychopathic Hospital, testified for the defense that Pethick was subnormal-”His mental capacity is far below par. I wouldn't call him an idiot, but he is feeble-minded”-and that Pethick had a diminished sense of responsibility. Other physicians took the stand to support Davis's a.s.sertion that Pethick was mentally diseased.

James (Jimmy) O'Brien, the a.s.sistant state's attorney, countered the defense testimony with a reading of the defendant's confession and a recital of the numerous stab wounds found on the victims' bodies, but to no avail. Darrow had saved his client from the gallows. The judge handed down a life sentence in the penitentiary for the murders of Ella Coppersmith and her son.40

EVEN WHEN A DEFENDANT CONFESSED that he had acted for the sake of money, Darrow preferred to explain the crime as a consequence of mental derangement. On 5 April 1916, Edward Hettinger, a nineteen-year-old factory worker, had slit the throat of Agnes Middleton after breaking into her apartment looking for money. At his trial later that year, Hettinger denied his guilt and claimed that the police had tortured him to obtain his confession. Hettinger's attorney, Guy Walker, offered a plea of not guilty by reason of insanity, but the jury, after listening to the testimony of the medical experts, found Hettinger guilty of murder and sentenced the prisoner to hang. that he had acted for the sake of money, Darrow preferred to explain the crime as a consequence of mental derangement. On 5 April 1916, Edward Hettinger, a nineteen-year-old factory worker, had slit the throat of Agnes Middleton after breaking into her apartment looking for money. At his trial later that year, Hettinger denied his guilt and claimed that the police had tortured him to obtain his confession. Hettinger's attorney, Guy Walker, offered a plea of not guilty by reason of insanity, but the jury, after listening to the testimony of the medical experts, found Hettinger guilty of murder and sentenced the prisoner to hang.41 Clarence Darrow had played no role in the case. Yet enough had been written about it in the newspapers to convince him that Hettinger was mentally unbalanced. One year before the murder the authorities had committed Hettinger to the Psychopathic Hospital because of his eccentric behavior. The jury had made a mistake, Darrow believed, in sentencing the boy to hang.

Hettinger had a mental ability, according to the medical experts at the Psychopathic Hospital, equivalent to that of a child, and it would be a retrograde step, Darrow protested to the judge, Hugo Pam, to execute a boy with such a low intellectual capacity. ”I don't believe any mental defective should be hanged,” Darrow stated. ”To hang this boy would leave the community cold. It would be a brutal thing to hang him. He is only 19 years old and his mentality is the most important thing to determine what punishment he should get. I believe the jury overlooked those facts.”42 Pam listened to Darrow's words sympathetically, and a few days later, he announced that he would commute the sentence to life imprisonment, but only if the prisoner confessed his guilt. Hettinger was initially reluctant to concede guilt-he had had nothing to do with the killing, he protested. The police had beaten a confession out of him with their truncheons, and he now repudiated it. But Hettinger, after a long talk in his jail cell with Clarence Darrow, eventually agreed to confess in exchange for a life sentence in Joliet Prison.43

THROUGHOUT THE 1910 1910S AND INTO the early 1920s, Darrow defended countless clients on murder charges and avoided the death penalty in every instance. A murder might seem premeditated and deliberate, yet Darrow needed only to bring on the psychiatric experts to explain his client's action for the jury to accept his defense. Most typically the jurymen would accept Darrow's insistence that the defendant was not guilty by reason of insanity. Even on the infrequent occasions when the jurors found the defendant guilty, they refused to hand down a death sentence, specifying instead incarceration in the penitentiary. the early 1920s, Darrow defended countless clients on murder charges and avoided the death penalty in every instance. A murder might seem premeditated and deliberate, yet Darrow needed only to bring on the psychiatric experts to explain his client's action for the jury to accept his defense. Most typically the jurymen would accept Darrow's insistence that the defendant was not guilty by reason of insanity. Even on the infrequent occasions when the jurors found the defendant guilty, they refused to hand down a death sentence, specifying instead incarceration in the penitentiary.44 Emma Simpson, a wealthy socialite charged with the murder of her husband in 1919, looked to Clarence Darrow as her best hope-her only hope-of avoiding the death penalty. Emma had separated from her husband in 1912 after discovering him in bed with another woman. She had refused a request for a divorce-why should she give him the freedom to marry her rival?-but in February 1919 she filed suit in court charging her husband with infidelity and requesting payments for separate maintenance.

Elmer Simpson regarded his wife's demand as preposterous. She was a wealthy woman, from one of Chicago's most affluent families, he told the judge. He was making a modest living as a telegraph operator. The demand for maintenance payments was fueled more by jealousy and rage than by any need for the money. He taunted his wife, sitting directly across from him, with a cutting remark; but the words were the last he ever uttered. In front of a crowd of witnesses, Emma Simpson drew a revolver from the folds of her dress and fired four shots at her husband. Two bullets struck Elmer Simpson in the face, one lodged in his shoulder, and the fourth went wide, narrowly missing the clerk of the court, Gus Wedemaier.45 Emma Simpson had no regrets at killing her husband. As the bailiffs hustled her out of the court, she waved and smiled to a courtroom photographer from the Chicago Daily Tribune Chicago Daily Tribune while he snapped her picture. Later that day, she explained her action to the newspaper reporters as entirely justified: ”I took the gun to court with me, but I didn't expect to shoot. He said something to me-something nasty, indicative of his whole nature. It made me boil-I couldn't stand it any longer.... I will tell my story to the jury and they will free me. I am perfectly confident of that.” while he snapped her picture. Later that day, she explained her action to the newspaper reporters as entirely justified: ”I took the gun to court with me, but I didn't expect to shoot. He said something to me-something nasty, indicative of his whole nature. It made me boil-I couldn't stand it any longer.... I will tell my story to the jury and they will free me. I am perfectly confident of that.”46 Clarence Darrow announced that he would defend Emma Simpson as a victim of partial insanity-his client, he proclaimed to the newspapers, was rational in all aspects save one. Her husband's philandering, his provocative behavior, his cruel taunts and needling remarks, had driven Emma Simpson into a condition of insanity whenever she contemplated his behavior.47 Later that year, at the trial in the Cook County Criminal Court, Darrow produced numerous witnesses to testify to Emma's obsessive neurosis with her husband's infidelity. Ida Will, a close friend of the defendant, related that Emma would talk incessantly about her husband. She had driven all her friends to distraction with her talk. It had caused the dissolution of a card circle-no one could enjoy the card games while Emma complained endlessly about her husband.

Harry McCormick, a business a.s.sociate of Emma's uncle, recalled the physical changes in Emma's appearance after her troubles began. ”She haunted my office asking my aid.... She became insane over the subject of her domestic life. I often found her in the office, her hair disheveled, her eyes staring, using violent language.”48 Medical experts testified also that the defendant suffered from partial insanity. Harold Moyer, a specialist in nervous disorders, believed Emma Simpson to be manic-depressive. She was certainly insane at the time of the killing. Archibald Church, a professor of nervous and mental diseases at Northwestern University, had examined Emma Simpson and found her to display ”egregious egotism and lack of self control,” both of which, Church concluded, suggested insanity.49 In his closing speech, Clarence Darrow focused on Elmer Simpson's raffishly disreputable character. Emma Simpson had married beneath her, Darrow suggested, and she had discovered-too late!-that the man she had wed was an incurable philanderer who cheated on her at every turn. He had married her for her fortune, and just as soon as he had exchanged the matrimonial vows, he had taken up with another woman. No wonder, Darrow continued, appealing to the twelve jurymen, that Emma Simpson had sought to end her misery by shooting her husband-anyone else would have reacted similarly under such provocation! ”Does it seem to you, gentlemen, that a person in his or her right mind would pick out a court, a temple of justice, where a dozen persons are gathered, to do a murder?...A large number of women, under the same conditions as Mrs. Simpson faced, would go insane.”50 Darrow's eloquence worked its customary magic. The jury needed only thirty minutes to agree with his diagnosis of partial insanity. The judge committed Emma Simpson to the Illinois Northern Hospital for the Insane, but her confinement lasted less than a year. A few months after her arrival the hospital psychiatrists decided that Emma Simpson had regained her sanity. She was free to return to Chicago and resume her previous life.51

BY THE EARLY 1920 1920S, Darrow no longer regarded crime as a consequence of economic circ.u.mstances. Darrow now looked to biology-understood in its broadest sense-to explain human behavior. Darrow had an autodidact's awareness of science and scientific theory. His father, Amirus, had an easy familiarity with such nineteenth-century cla.s.sics as Charles Darwin's Darrow no longer regarded crime as a consequence of economic circ.u.mstances. Darrow now looked to biology-understood in its broadest sense-to explain human behavior. Darrow had an autodidact's awareness of science and scientific theory. His father, Amirus, had an easy familiarity with such nineteenth-century cla.s.sics as Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species On the Origin of Species and Charles Lyell's and Charles Lyell's Principles of Geology Principles of Geology and had transmitted some of that familiarity to his son. In middle age, Clarence Darrow had read Herbert Spencer's and had transmitted some of that familiarity to his son. In middle age, Clarence Darrow had read Herbert Spencer's First Principles First Principles and had immediately taken Spencer's evolutionary viewpoint as his own. Darrow was never consistent in his adoption of Spencer's philosophy: he subscribed to the deterministic belief that mind is contingent on matter yet refused to accept the idea that society need make no attempt to ameliorate the lot of the underprivileged. And, although Darrow had never taken courses in science as an undergraduate at Allegheny College, he had, during the 1910s and 1920s, read omnivorously on scientific topics and had kept abreast with the most recent scientific propositions, especially as they touched on criminology. ”I have always leaned strongly toward science,” Darrow wrote in his autobiography, ”and longed to give myself over to its study. I know something of astronomy and geology; I know a good deal of biology and psychology.... In that department of science I have spent a great deal of time and labor, and no one can make much of a success of any subject unless he knows a good deal about man himself.” and had immediately taken Spencer's evolutionary viewpoint as his own. Darrow was never consistent in his adoption of Spencer's philosophy: he subscribed to the deterministic belief that mind is contingent on matter yet refused to accept the idea that society need make no attempt to ameliorate the lot of the underprivileged. And, although Darrow had never taken courses in science as an undergraduate at Allegheny College, he had, during the 1910s and 1920s, read omnivorously on scientific topics and had kept abreast with the most recent scientific propositions, especially as they touched on criminology. ”I have always leaned strongly toward science,” Darrow wrote in his autobiography, ”and longed to give myself over to its study. I know something of astronomy and geology; I know a good deal of biology and psychology.... In that department of science I have spent a great deal of time and labor, and no one can make much of a success of any subject unless he knows a good deal about man himself.”52 In Crime: Its Cause and Treatment Crime: Its Cause and Treatment, a monograph published in 1922, Darrow attributed criminal behavior to biological determinants. He was, Darrow admitted in the preface, no scientific expert-he had no specialized training in biology or psychology. Yet he had, nevertheless, picked up sufficient science, in the course of a long life, to know that crime was a consequence of biomedical circ.u.mstances.53 It was obvious, according to Darrow, that each individual differed from every other in mental and physical makeup. Such differences originated in the embryo and were modified only slightly in the pa.s.sage from childhood to adolescence and into adulthood. The complexity of the nervous system, the capacity of the brain, the strength of the instincts and the emotions-everything found in the adult was potential in the nucleated cell. ”There is no exception,” Darrow wrote, ”to the rule that the whole life, with every tendency, is potential in the original cell.... The child is born with a brain of a certain size and fineness. It is born with a nervous system make up of an infinite number of fine fibers reaching all parts of the body, with fixed stations or receivers like the central stations of a telephone system, and with a grand central exchange to the brain.”54 The metaphor of the body as a telephone system served Darrow's claim that human action was less a consequence of free will and more a result of the effects of external stimuli. Sensory impressions traveled along neural pathways to register their impact on the brain, and knowledge was no more than an acc.u.mulation of sensations. ”The child...feels, tastes, sees, hears or smells some object, and his nerves carry the impression to his brain where a more or less correct registration is made.” Each individual operated as a machine might operate; if the machine was defective, then of course it would operate imperfectly. ”All of these impressions are more or less imperfectly received, imperfectly conveyed and imperfectly registered. However, he is obliged to use the machine he has. Not only does the machine register impressions but it sends out directions immediately following these impressions: directions to the organism as to how to run, to walk, to fight, to hide, to eat, to drink, or to make any other response that the particular situation calls for.”55 Science and scientism const.i.tuted the core of Darrow's philosophy. Admittedly Darrow's view of science might have seemed, in the 1920s, slightly outdated and old-fas.h.i.+oned. Darrow had come under the spell of positivism and had never abandoned his faith in a thoroughly mechanistic and materialistic universe. The natural world, according to Darrow, alone const.i.tuted reality. There was no room within this world for mental processes independent of materialism. The laws of matter and motion governed the world, and nothing, including mankind, could be exempt from their diktat.56 Science and technology provided the metaphor of the machine-the telephone system-that supplied an accurate understanding of the human condition. It had become a truism, Darrow believed, that scientific law could account for all phenomena, and there was now no reason to believe that human beings were exempt from the regulations governing the natural world. ”That man is the product of heredity and environment and that he acts as his machine responds to outside stimuli and nothing else, seem amply proven by the evolution and history of man.... The laws of matter are now coming to be understood. Chance, accident and whim have been banished from the physical world.”57 Science, Darrow believed, had eliminated free agency in human behavior-how could individuals choose their actions if they were susceptible to natural law? Each new scientific fad seemed to confirm Darrow's faith that an individual acted according to the rules governing the natural world. Endocrinology-the study of the glands and hormonal secretions-was a case in point. The hormones that poured into the bloodstream had a demonstrated effect on human behavior: the proper supply of hormonal secretions seemed to regulate the body precisely as though it were a machine. ”Certain secretions,” Darrow wrote in Crime: Its Cause and Treatment Crime: Its Cause and Treatment, ”are instantly emptied from the ductless glands into the blood which, acting like fuel in an engine, generate more power in the machine, fill it with anger or fear and prepare it to respond to the directions to fight or flee, or to any type of action incident to the machine. It is only within a few years that biologists have had any idea of the use of these ductless glands or of their importance in the functions of life. Very often these ductless glands are diseased, and always they are more or less imperfect; but in whatever condition they are, the machine responds to their flow.”

Other sciences also captivated Darrow in the years immediately following World War I. Accounts of the research of Jean-Henri Fabre on instinct and its acquisition by insects and arachnids had recently made their way from France to the United States. Fabre had spent his life in obscurity, patiently observing the insects in the countryside around Serignan, southwest of Montpellier, and publis.h.i.+ng his conclusions in Souvenirs Entomologiques Souvenirs Entomologiques. Fabre's predecessors had endowed insects with the ability to reason; but Fabre had demonstrated that their actions were entirely instinctual. The mason bee, the red ant, the dung beetle, the Sphex Sphex wasp-all caught their prey or provided for their off-spring instinctually. Recognition of Fabre's work arrived just before his death in 1915-he had been solitary, reclusive, and impoverished-and it resulted in an avalanche of popular works that brought his research to a general audience for the first time. The American public had to wait until 1921 for the first account of Fabre's work to reach the United States, but that account provoked a torrent of popular articles in the magazines and newspapers in praise of Fabre's work. wasp-all caught their prey or provided for their off-spring instinctually. Recognition of Fabre's work arrived just before his death in 1915-he had been solitary, reclusive, and impoverished-and it resulted in an avalanche of popular works that brought his research to a general audience for the first time. The American public had to wait until 1921 for the first account of Fabre's work to reach the United States, but that account provoked a torrent of popular articles in the magazines and newspapers in praise of Fabre's work.58 In a lecture before the Rationalist Society of Chicago in 1921, Darrow drew his own conclusions from a reading of Fabre's observations of instinct in insects and arachnids. The importance of instinct in the animal world, Darrow stated, provided a clue to its significance in higher forms of life. Human beings believe that they act rationally, but might they not also be subject to instinctual drives? Fabre's research was grist to Darrow's deterministic mill-human beings were no more capable of free agency than the mason bee or the red ant.59 Darrow's exegesis remained vague on such questions as the relative significance of instincts vis-a-vis the effects of hormonal secretions. Nor was it apparent that instinct explained human actions comprehensively enough to enable Darrow so casually to dismiss agency and free will. No matter that his account was vague: Darrow seized every opportunity to proselytize his opinion that science had made the concept of choice redundant. Instinct was one more way for him to push home his point. ”Human action is governed largely by instinct and emotion.... These instincts and emotions are incident to every living machine and are the motor forces that impel the organism.... Instincts are primal to man. He has inherited them from the animal world.”60 Darrow's philosophy of human behavior was built on the cert.i.tude provided by the sciences. This cert.i.tude pointed to a conclusion that, to Darrow at least, seemed inescapable. Objective forces compelled individuals to act. Crime was not the consequence of choice, and therefore punishment was inappropriate and futile. ”Before any progress can be made in dealing with crime,” Darrow declared, ”the world must fully realize that crime is only a part of conduct; that each act, criminal or otherwise, follows a cause...that however much society may feel the need of confining the criminal, it must first of all understand that the act had an all-sufficient cause for which the individual was in no way responsible, and must find the cause of his conduct, and, so far as possible, remove the cause.”61

FEW OF D DARROW'S CLIENTS CARED one way or the other about his philosophy of behavior. They knew only that he had an extraordinary knack for obtaining the best possible outcome in the courtroom. And so, in May 1924, the parents of Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb sought out Clarence Darrow to save their boys. Darrow had accomplished miracles in the courtroom-it would take a miracle for their sons to escape the scaffold. one way or the other about his philosophy of behavior. They knew only that he had an extraordinary knack for obtaining the best possible outcome in the courtroom. And so, in May 1924, the parents of Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb sought out Clarence Darrow to save their boys. Darrow had accomplished miracles in the courtroom-it would take a miracle for their sons to escape the scaffold.

And Darrow would accept the case, not because the defendants were deserving but because it was the opportunity for which he had been waiting. The trial of Leopold and Loeb would capture the attention of the nation. It would be Darrow's chance to prove to the world that crime was less a consequence of free will and deliberate choice and more a result of forces that had compelled the boys to an act of murder. Both families had promised him unlimited resources in the defense; Clarence Darrow would use those resources to make his philosophy of crime and punishment a reality.

9 ROBERT CROWEIn recent years the American public has been influenced to some extent by an active, persistent and systematic agitation based on an unfortunate and misplaced sympathy for persons accused of crime. This sympathy forgets the life that was blotted out. It forgets the broken hearted left behind. There should be no sentiment about it. Persons whose existence means death and disaster to others who have done no wrong have no claim upon society for anything-not even for life itself. I believe society should have no hesitancy in springing the trap every time the noose can be put around a murderer's neck.1Robert Crowe, 18 February 1928 JANET W WILKINSON SKIPPED UP the main entrance stairs of her apartment building at 112114 East Superior Street. She had golden blond hair, cut in a bob; china-blue eyes, set wide apart; a broad forehead, fair complexion, and firm chin-and she always had a smile on her face. No wonder the six-year-old was the darling of the neighborhood! That Tuesday morning, 22 July 1919, she wore a blue sailor frock with a collar edged with pearl b.u.t.tons and, on her feet, white cotton socks and a pair of black oxfords. Janet had just come from the public playground on Chicago Avenue; she had forgotten to return the metal identification tag issued by the playground and it hung, attached by a clasp, from the edge of her dress. the main entrance stairs of her apartment building at 112114 East Superior Street. She had golden blond hair, cut in a bob; china-blue eyes, set wide apart; a broad forehead, fair complexion, and firm chin-and she always had a smile on her face. No wonder the six-year-old was the darling of the neighborhood! That Tuesday morning, 22 July 1919, she wore a blue sailor frock with a collar edged with pearl b.u.t.tons and, on her feet, white cotton socks and a pair of black oxfords. Janet had just come from the public playground on Chicago Avenue; she had forgotten to return the metal identification tag issued by the playground and it hung, attached by a clasp, from the edge of her dress.2 Halfway up the stairs, Janet suddenly paused. One of her neighbors, a thin, bespectacled, middle-aged man, was leaning over the banister looking down, watching her intently as she climbed the steps. Janet continued to walk up the stairs, more slowly now. She recognized the man. The previous December he had shown her some comic books in his apartment, and after she had told her parents, her mother had insistently forbidden Janet to speak to him a second time.3 Several mothers in the building had complained to the police about Thomas Fitzgerald. He had often befriended children in the neighborhood. On at least three occasions he had exposed himself from the window of his second-floor apartment to girls walking on Superior Street; and a few months earlier, the Morals Court had fined him $100 for indecent behavior.4 [image]

17. ROBERT CROWE. ROBERT CROWE. After studying law at Yale University, Robert Crowe became a.s.sistant state's attorney for Cook County in 1909. He won election as a judge on the Circuit Court in 1916 and served as chief justice of the Cook County Criminal Court in 1919 and 1920. After studying law at Yale University, Robert Crowe became a.s.sistant state's attorney for Cook County in 1909. He won election as a judge on the Circuit Court in 1916 and served as chief justice of the Cook County Criminal Court in 1919 and 1920.

Now he stood on the landing, still staring down at Janet as she walked timidly up the staircase. Fitzgerald wore rimless gla.s.ses over his large brown eyes; he sported a faint mustache under an obtrusive nose, and at that moment his clothes and hair were rumpled and disheveled, as though he had just got out of bed. He was a shy, solitary man with few friends, diffident and awkward in the company of adults. Indeed, everything about his manner expressed a tremulous hesitancy, as though he expected to be contradicted at any moment. Even the few people who knew him well had a disregard for this nervous and vaguely unpleasant man.

Fitzgerald held a box of chocolates in his right hand. Janet looked at the candy, hesitating; Fitzgerald invited her to take one but she silently shook her head. She had remembered her mother's warning-she was not to talk to this strange man.