For the Thrill of It: Leopold, Loeb, and the Murder That Shocked Jazz Age Chicago (53 page)

A handful of editorials pointed out that Caverly, by relying on precedent in reaching his decision, had exercised judicial restraint and resisted popular pressure. “A careful reading of the judge’s opinion,” the
Birmingham Age-Herald
said, “shows that he kept entirely within the law of Illinois in his decision.” It was an admirable demonstration of judicial fortitude, said the
Charleston Gazette
: “The verdict is in, and we hope that the recommendations of the man who was called upon to reach a momentous decision will be accepted with equanimity…. Justice Caverly acted with an eye to justice to all concerned and…his verdict was the result of the evidence submitted to him and the facts as he conceived them.”
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But such opinions, praising Caverly for his independence from public opinion, counted for little when set against the tsunami of criticism that otherwise crashed down on him. The decision had been wrong on many counts, the editorials claimed, and it had been most pernicious in its effect on the public’s perception of the legal system.

Caverly’s inattention to detail—why had he not ordered the sentences to run consecutively?—had allowed the awful possibility that two notorious murderers might yet walk the streets of Chicago. Such a result would strip the law of its dignity and reveal justice as a pretense. According to the Louisville
Courier-Journal
, “The Judge’s refusal to subject these two fiends to the just penalty of the law will intensify general contempt for those whose duty it is to enforce the law and whose weakness in refusing to do their duty has done so much to bring the law itself into contempt. As long as our judges and juries as a rule are actuated by such tenderness to murderers as that of Judge Caverly…murders will multiply.”
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And if the penalty was no more than a few years in the penitentiary, then there would surely no longer be any deterrent to murder. The murder rate in Cook County was already alarmingly high, warned the
Chicago Daily Tribune
, and Caverly’s decision would accelerate the trend upward. “The Franks case decision already has resulted in the commutation of penalties which, without it, would have been exacted without criticism and which accord fully with the law…. Murder has been made a less hazardous crime than ever and it was already one of the least hazardous…. The taking of life has become almost a commonplace. This represents a state of morals alarming to any one who considers the elements of civilized society. It is a condition which cannot be ignored safely and most certainly calls for a restoration rather than a further weakening of the safeguards civilization has had to create and maintain for the security of human life.”
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Robert Crowe, in his closing speech in court, had cautioned Caverly that any sentence less than hanging would be an inducement to others to imitate Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb; and already, it seemed, Crowe’s prediction had found confirmation in the vicious murder of Bessie Gaensslen, an elderly woman living alone in an apartment on the West Side of Chicago. Anna Valanis, eighteen years old, had confessed to the crime: she, along with three other teenagers, had broken into the woman’s apartment looking for money. Bessie Gaennslen had fought back courageously but, predictably, her attackers had overwhelmed her. One of the four had knocked her to the ground; a second had jumped on top of her, holding down her arms to prevent her from struggling. Anna’s brother, Anthony, nineteen years old, had strangled the victim with the telephone wire as his confederates looked on.
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The four teenagers were now in police custody, but they had no fear of the scaffold—they would ask the judge to appoint Clarence Darrow as their attorney; and Darrow would surely save them from execution. “We’ll have the court appoint Mr. Darrow to defend us,” Anna Valanis confided to the reporters. “We know our stuff; if we cannot hire a lawyer the judge must furnish us one and we want Darrow.”
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Why, indeed, should anyone now fear capital punishment? It remained on the books, of course, but in practice it was ineffectual. The sentencing of Leopold and Loeb had created a precedent that would be impossible to overcome, and no prosecutor could any longer have confidence that he would win the death penalty in Illinois. Caverly’s decision had lessened the deterrent to murder.

Yet not everyone was sure that Caverly had been wrong. Lawyers and jurists, reluctant to criticize publicly one of the most prominent judges in Illinois, were more cautious in their opinions. Louis Marshall, a leading member of the Chicago bar and a senior partner in Guggenheimer, Untermyer, & Marshall, believed that Caverly had presided over the courtroom with decorum and had reached a creditable result. “The proceeding adopted by Judge Caverly was proper,” Marshall commented to a reporter from the
Boston Daily Globe
. “The policy of our laws is not vengeance but protection of society from similar offences.” John McIntyre, a judge on the Court of General Sessions, believed that “the judgment is a wise disposition on the part of the court.” One of his colleagues on the Court of General Sessions, Cornelius Collins, stated that “Judge Caverly was in a better position to judge than any other person and that to him the judgment imposed was a solemn duty.”
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Religious sentiment was divided equally between praise and condemnation. Caverly’s decision, predicted Simon Long, the pastor of Wicker Park Lutheran Church, “will do more to make Bolshevists than anything that has happened in a long time. I fear its results upon society. It emphasizes the fact that only the poor may be hanged.” Martin Luther Thomas, a representative of Deerfield Presbyterian Church, agreed that Caverly had fomented resentment against the wealthy in permitting “these men [to] escape the sword of justice because of their money and influence.” But John Thompson, a minister of First Methodist Episcopal Church, disagreed, saying that the life sentence was the consequence of “a well-balanced, finely judicial decision.” Johnston Myers, a spokesman for Immanuel Baptist Church, expressed satisfaction with the result if, of course, “there is to be no pardon and the boys will be treated like ordinary prisoners.”
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Jewish opinion had been conspicuously absent throughout the hearing. No representative of the city’s Jewish cultural institutions had yet allowed himself to be quoted in the newspapers; no rabbi had made any comment on the murder or its aftermath. The killers were scions of two of Chicago’s most prominent Jewish families—it was, no doubt, better to remain silent than to blunder inadvertently into a controversy that might harm the Jewish community still further. Only now, after sentence had been pronounced, did the
Jewish Daily News
express its circumspect belief that the crime was a consequence of the materialistic age. “The fault lies in our entire aspect of life…. The insistence that all that counts is money, the piling up of wealth, the production of things that can be sold in the open market, the self-sufficiency of man that he owes no responsibility but to himself, the virtual dethronement of God—all these are responsible for what is transpiring…. Judge Caverly has not just pronounced sentence upon the ill-starred youths. He has rendered a verdict against our present age. The truth is—and it must be faced—that our civilization is bankrupt.”
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Psychiatrists and child guidance experts were unanimous in praising the judge. Caverly had ignored the psychiatric testimony in reaching his decision, yet prominent members of the medical community viewed the verdict as a victory for science and as an advance for the treatment of the mentally ill. Edward S. Cowles, a neurologist and director of the National Association for the Advancement of Scientific Healing, said, “Judge Caverly has made a great forward step, and this affair should call attention to the need of more careful study of the child’s mind and personality.” A. A. Brill, the author of
Fundamental Conceptions of Psychoanalysis
, believed, from reading the newspaper accounts, that “there is no possibility of curing these youths…. I approve of Judge Caverly’s effort to make sure they will never go free. But they are sick and the whole basis of our civilization is to take care of the sick, not to kill them.” Max Schlapp, a professor of neuropathology at the New York Postgraduate Medical School, contradicted Brill—“it is probable that they could be cured”—yet agreed that Caverly’s decision had been correct.
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The medical experts who had participated in the courtroom hearing—White, Glueck, Healy, Krohn, Church, and the rest—all refrained from commenting on the judge’s decision. The psychiatrists for the defense had expected that their participation in the case would lead to reform of the legal process, but their advocacy for change found few echoes outside the medical journals. A writer for the
San Francisco Chronicle
took up White’s suggestion that psychiatric testimony be given in an impartial manner, and the editor of the Washington
Evening Star
deplored the tainted psychiatric evidence—“neither the defense nor the prosecution should be permitted to becloud the issue and confine the minds of jurymen by offering expert opinions which are shaped by the source of the fees”—but such comments were few and far between.
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W
ILLIAM
A
LANSON
W
HITE, THE MOST
prominent expert witness for the defense, was also the most vulnerable. White had built his public persona through his ability to take the middle ground between the psychiatric community, represented by the membership of such organizations as the American Psychiatric Association, and a general readership curious to learn about the new science of Freudian psychiatry. During the 1920s, White, more than any other American psychiatrist, was responsible for bringing psychiatry before a popular audience.

But his public career rested on his professional accomplishments, which depended in turn on his stewardship of St. Elizabeths Hospital. The Department of the Interior had formal jurisdiction over St. Elizabeths, and both the United States Senate and the House of Representatives had the authority to investigate conditions there. For some members of the House, White made an inviting target. He had been closely identified with Clarence Darrow’s defense of Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb, and, in the public mind at least, he was at least partially responsible for enabling the prisoners to evade justice. Rumors of an investigation into White’s management of St. Elizabeths circulated through Washington during 1925. Not until April 1926, however, when Thomas Lindsay Blanton, a representative from Texas, charged that army veterans suffered from intolerable living conditions at St. Elizabeths, did Congress resolve to empower the comptroller general to investigate the administration of the hospital.
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His report appeared in December 1926. It was harshly critical of White’s administration. There was a lack of recreational facilities for the patients, there was serious overcrowding on the wards, and there were inadequate safety measures in case of fire. White had transformed the hospital into a center of psychiatric research, yet the stated purpose of St. Elizabeths, the report noted, was to treat the mentally ill. Strictly speaking, White had exceeded his mandate as hospital superintendent by enlarging the role of the hospital; Congress had never intended it as a site for medical research. Finally, and most seriously, there was scant regard for the constitutional rights of the patients—they had no access to disinterested legal or financial assistance.
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Despite the severity of the report, White survived. He had as many supporters in Congress as he had enemies, and his allies viewed the criticisms as politically motivated. White continued to win honors and acclaim in the psychiatric profession. In 1926 he was president of the American Psychoanalytic Association, and in 1930 he presided over the First International Congress on Mental Hygiene in Washington, D.C. He remained at St. Elizabeths Hospital until his death in 1937.
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P
REDICTABLY
, C
LARENCE
D
ARROW ALSO RECEIVED
public criticism for his role in saving Leopold and Loeb from the scaffold. Darrow was the villain of the piece—he had organized the defense and by means of the guilty plea had tricked the court into acquiescence. But Darrow, unlike White, could shrug off his enemies with practiced ease—he had become accustomed to such hostility and typically paid no attention to his detractors.

In any case he was too busy to respond. He had begun his campaign against capital punishment in October 1924, just weeks after the end of the hearing, and that fall he had already committed himself to a series of lectures and talks. Thousands turned out to hear him speak, and wherever he went, the crowds followed. In the wake of the Leopold-Loeb hearing, Darrow had regained his stature as a national celebrity. He always preferred to debate with a well-known public official; his opponent served as the foil for his jokes and gave him an opportunity to ridicule those who advocated the death penalty. His appearance at the Manhattan Opera House in New York that October was the highlight of his fall speaking tour. Alfred Talley, a judge on the Court of General Sessions, spoke in favor of a motion in support of capital punishment; Lewis Lawes, the warden of Sing Sing prison and an opponent of the death penalty, chaired the debate; Darrow spoke in opposition. The hall was packed to overflowing with an audience of 3,000 New Yorkers; hundreds more stood outside on 34th Street, hoping to catch a glimpse of Darrow as he left the building, and dozens of journalists were in attendance, ready to write up their reports for the morning newspapers. There was nothing new in Darrow’s talk that evening—he repeated his criticisms of the electric chair and the scaffold, scolded those who believed in free will and moral responsibility, and ended his contribution to the debate with a ringing admonition that the barbarism of capital punishment be no longer a part of the penal code. “There isn’t,” Darrow concluded, “a single admissible argument in favor of capital punishment…. We believe that life should be protected and preserved. The thing that keeps one from killing is the emotion they have against it; and the greater the feeling of sanctity that the State pays to life, the greater the feeling of sanctity the individual has for life.”
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