to persuade the judge that the death penalty was an inappropriate sentence to an inappropriate crime. Of course, the prosecution thought otherwise about the views of the defense on capital punishment, and criticized Darrow’s emotional and persuasive interference with the facts of the case. The prosecution attacked the authority of Darrow’s remarks regarding the morality and decency of the death penalty. The state’s attorney, Robert E. Crowe, stated that, “The trouble with Mr. Darrow is that he does not know all the facts in this case; he does not know all the evidence”(UMKC). Crowe would make it his duty to forbid Darrow from unethically influencing the judge with non-pertinent information regarding the death sentence. “Crowe’s choicest remarks were left for Darrow. The real defense in the case, he contended, was Darrow’s philosophy in life, a dangerous softness”(Grant 191). To the prosecution, the death sentence seemed necessary and proper without a doubt. Crowe’s coercive response to the brutal crime committed by Leopold and Loeb was sympathetic toward the Franks family. He told the judge: “Robert Franks had the right to live. He had the right to the society of the family and his friends and they had the right to his society. These two young law students of superior intelligence, with more intelligence than they have heart, decided that he must die. He [Bobby Franks] was only fourteen”(UMKC). Crowe was angered by the fact that Darrow tried aimlessly to redirect the initial purpose of the trial. Crowe strongly objected to Darrow’s philosophical defense and, in his opinion, irrelevant material. He saw the case as a murder trial for two cold-blooded killers. Robert Crowe did not view Leopold and Loeb as children who made a one-time mistake or were mentally impaired at the time of the murder but, rather, two privileged young adults who had fu...
