ll understanding of their actions and the consequences that could result. “The state’s attorney portrayed their crime as a sadistic, perverted act done for money. Leopold and Loeb were the personification of evil. They were conscienceless beings who, sneering and laughing their way through the hearing, reveled in the attention brought to them by their criminal acts”(Higdon 262). In his closing remarks, Attorney Robert Crowe made one final summation of his plea for the death penalty. Crowe simply told the judge that no other sentence was more appropriate for this case than death.In his closing remarks to the court, Darrow focused on the severe consequences of capital punishment for children at such an early stage in life. “He [Darrow] reminded the court that there had never been a case in Illinois in which a person under the age of twenty-three had been sentenced to death after pleading guilty”(David 35). With a bitter tone, Darrow said to the judge, “If your Honor can hang a boy eighteen, some other judge can hang him at seventeen, or sixteen, or fourteen . . .Someday we would look back upon this as a barbarous age which deliberately set itself in the way of progress, humanity and sympathy, and committed an unforgivable act”(UMKC). Furthermore, Darrow explained the significance of the final sentence to the judge himself, as if reminding him to do what is most ethical and appropriate for two young men to endure. Darrow solemnly stated, “ . . .Your honor, if these boys hang, you must do it. There can be no division of responsibility here. It [the sentence] must be by your deliberate, cool, premeditated act, without a chance to shift responsibility” (UMKC). Darrow emphasized that the defense clearly established through psychological testing and analysis that both boys were mentally impaired. If not, he argued, the boys would not have been emotionally or mentally capable of...
