Leopold and Leob Trial
By James, Mason, Kyle
The Murders
Leob started as a child who found to be obsessed with the 'Perfect crime'. He was a very smart boy, who finished college as a teenager. He found a very close friend and some say even a lover in Leopold. They both planed for months, and decided to exicute their perfect crime.
How it happened - The Crime
Both Leopold and Leob kidnapped a kid named Bobby, and Leob murdered him in the back seat. They then called the parents, saying that bobby was still alive and that they demanded 10,000$. Leob and Leopold would of gotten away with it, but they left the body out in the open, in the woods, and the police found him. The police then told the parents that they found Bobby, dead. The parents then told them about the ransom, and the police sought out the murders. The police traced the murder back to Leopold and Leob, and placed them in jail. There were no new laws that led to this.
The major people in the trial
Defense
Leopold
Leob
Clarence Darrow
Benjamin Bachrach
These two men represented the defense, Leopold and Leob.
The lawyers ran the plea that these two men were just insane, and shouldn't be tried.
Prosecutors
Bobbys family
Crowe
Crowe called the defense psychiatrists a Jewish diversion.
The judge made the decision if they were guilty - John r Caverly
The defense also decided that they would change their plea to Guilty, after learning they if they were found guilty, they would both be killed.
The Media
Both of these men had been convicted of murder had already been condemed by the public. The media got the word out of all of the things that they had done far and wide, and the Court of Public Opinions had said that they were guilty, and had decided that long before they had even arrived.
Why do we care?
Who won? the defense won by a very large margin. It revels that their judicial branch was slightly weak, by showing that 'Innocent until proven guilty' wasn't quite yet a thing.
Also, this signifies the mindset that the public was in, as it was also widely known that both Leopold and Leob were homosexuals, with that fact swaying many public opinions.
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Source of some information and all of the pictures