Evening Post. THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 11, 1924. THE CHICAGO TRIAL

Evening Post, Volume CVIII, Issue 63, 11 September 1924, Page 4

Evening Post. THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 11, 1924. THE CHICAGO TRIAL

i Some weeks before the trial of j the youthful perpetrators of what I one of them on the eve of sentence J proudly describes as "the greatest crime of the century" had begun, we suggested that the informal trial to which they were being subjected outside the Court savoured very strongly of lynch la.w. If the crime of these two lads of nineteen, .who, after attempting to secure other victims, kidnapped, killed, and mutilated a boy, and after doing.so, endeavoured to extort 10,000 dollars from his father by way of ransom," "whips creation," so also does the manner in which they have been treated since their arrest. Ever since suspicion fell upon them the newspapers have been on their track. They have helped or hindered the detectives in their investigations by detailing reporters for the same purpose, they have published every scrap of evidence they could lay their hands on, they have, usurped the function of counsel in discussing it, they have not even shrunk from anticipating the work of Judge and jury,by returning a verdict and pronouncing sentence. The cable message which reported that the Grand Jury had found true bills against the prisoners added:—

, The Press continues its campaign, favouring tho infliction of the death penalty as -best for all concerned.

Such being the alpha of this disgraceful business, the omega—unless, indeed, there is still worse to come—is what might have been expected. Judge Lynch is out for blood, and if the blood' of Leopold and Loeb is not forthcoming they are1 prepared to make an example of the man who says them nay. In the course of the trial Judge Caverley said that he had been receiving 300 or 400 letters a day about the case, and after the hearing of the evidence had concluded we were told that he would receive special police protection until he had given his decision. As the hour drew near these precautions were strengthened in the manner reported to-day.

.The-chief detective, with two picked nllo-squads in motor-cars, is-guarding Judge Caverley's residence- in Chicago on tho eve of his delivering sentence in the Loeb and Leopold murder case. A large and demonstrative crowd assembled in tho street. The police and the Judge have received many threatening letters including threats to blow up the courthouse if the two prisoners receive a life sentence only.

In Chicago, with its murder a day for a population: of three millions— a rate per head about sixty times that of England and Wales—life is fairly cheap, but they have not yet taken to lynching their Judges for doing their/duty. The extraordinary precautions which were taken for the safety of Judge Oaverley show, however, that the crime of Chicago might have broken another record ,if the success of the Press in inflaming the passions of the mob had not been met in time by a special antidote.

The question, of course, arises why the task of trying a murderer is not left in America, as it is in England and JN Tew Zealand, to a, jury. There is, however, no difference, or no material difference, between American law and our own on this point, and the apparen^departure from the normal practice in this case represents another triumph for Judge Lynch. During the five weeks occupied by the hearing Judge Caverley was not really trying the case; he was merely hearing evidence and argument on the plea of the accused for mitigation of sentence. The great surprise of the case was their plea of guilty. The secret had been kept with a success which would have been remarkable under any conditions, but was peculiarly so in a case where, according to the custom of the country, the hopes, fears, intentions, speculations, and comments of the prisoners;- their families and their friends, and, of course, the police and counsel 'on both sides, had been public property from the first. In his report of the first: day's proceedings the special correspondent of the "New York Times" said:—

With a suddenness and unexpectedness that startled the Court, the prosecutors, and the spectator's, Nathan F. Leopold,, juu., and Richard A. Loeb pleaded guilty to • kidnapping and slaying lloberb Franks. ■ \

In our cabled report of the case th© defence was credited with the astonishing statement in explanation of this plea that "if held with a jury the case would have the air of a circus or a music-hall performance." The remark, however olosely it might fit the facts, disclosed a ludicrously inadequate foundation for a plea which rendered the accused liable to fourteen years' imprisonment as the minimum penalty and hanging as the maximum. It is also clear from the attitude of both the prisoners throughout that the addition of a circus or musichall element to the normal risks of the trial would minister to their craving for notoriety in a very welcome fashion. The fuller reports now to hand show that this aspect of the case was merely the subject of a passing reference, -and that the substantive ground for the plea was the impossibility of getting a fair trial from a jury. In .thirty-seveu years of practice, said Mr. Clarence Barrow, lie had only once applied £or a change of vopue, and that was under peremptory instructions J'rom ki« disul>, lv the pveeeub «uhcs he 1 l'ueoguiseU. tli^t Um-ij vy.tws m clitmu©

of a fair trial in Cook County, which includes Chicago, but as the same remark applied to every other county in the .State it would be futile to ask that the venue should bo changed. As an impartial jury could not be found in the whole State of Illinois, the defence therefore decided to take the case out of the jurisdiction of a jury by pleadiDg guilty.

The plea conceded that the boys were "legally sane on the 21st May" —the date of the murder; "but," said counsel, "we do intend to show that there is in. them a mental deficiency amounting" to a disease, which is itself a mitigating circumstance." The distinction is a subtle one, and might even be called illusory, for of about a him- j dred witnesses called it does • not j appear that a single one would have had to vary his story if the issue had been guilty or not guilty instead of mitigation, except that the words "insanity" and "insane" were barred, and such euphemisms as,"paranoia," "mental disorder," "childish phantasies," and "pathology of the glands of internal -secretion" had to fill the gap.. In law, however, it is not the question of guilty or of-insanity but of mitigation that Judge Caverley has been trying, and as there was no jury to square, Judge Lynch has been driven to intimidation of the Bench.