Guide Semblance of Balance: The Leopold and Loeb Trial Revisited

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The trial of Nathan Leopold and Dickie Loeb is one of America's most tragic events. This intriguing account of the entire story--told from the perspective of an​.
Table of contents

• December 1847 to July 1858
• The Scientific Revolution Revisited, 1550-1700
• Fiction | The Lives and Legends of Richard Loeb and Nathan Leopold

Instead, we had a written Constitution designed to protect citizens from the tyranny of governments and churches. We also introduced more democratic elements into our legal system not only by expanding the powers of the lay jury, but alsofor better or worseby electing prosecutors and judges in some of our states and by permitting extensive and contemporaneous media coverage of our trials. We democratized our legal system beyond anything previously known to the common or civil law. We also proved to be a litigious people whose slogans include so sue me, see you in court, tell it to the judge, and Im taking it to a higher court.

As the French chronicler of the early American experience, Alexis de Tocqueville, observed, nearly every great issue that divides America eventually ends up in a courtroom. Because the American legal system grew out of the British systems and Western culture, I will begin this book with a brief prologue describing some of the historic trials that directly influenced the development of American law.

I will then proceed to the most important trials of the colonial period and the epochs that followed it, culminating in the most significant trials of our current era. Finally, I will end with some informed speculation about what are likely to be the most important trials of the future, particularly in the war against terrorism.

Each of the historical periods will be introduced by a brief overview, placing the trials in their historical setting. The discussion of the trials themselves will begin with an outline of the basic facts time, place, verdict, sentence, and so forth. I will then provide my own observations concerning the case, including an analysis of the trial, the events surrounding it, its historical significance, and other personal reflections. We will hear or at least read voices from the pastthe words of the litigants, the lawyers, and the judges.

The styles and syntax may be strange to the contemporary ear or eye , but the substance will often be familiar, since the catalog of deadly sins and crimes has not changed very much over the centuries. No two lawyers, or even nonlawyers, could ever agree on a de finitive list of the greatest trials in history, though everyones would probably include the trials of Jesus, Socrates, Galileo, and Thomas More.

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Reasonable people would disagree about whether the O. Simpson trials, the Sacco-Vanzetti case, the Rosenberg prosecution, the Scopes trial, and many others belong on the list. In this book I present my own rather idiosyncratic list, based on my personal observations and experiences. For me the basic criterion is passion. Did the trial reflect the passions of the time?

Did it engage the passions of the people? Will contemporary readers still feel passionately about the issues, the personalities, and the verdict? If you disagree with my list, you cant sue me, but you can e-mail me with your own suggested additions or subtractions at alder law. Americas legal system is based largely on the British common law, though much of it was a reaction to the abuses against which the American colonies rebelled.

To understand American law, we must know something about its traditional sources as well as the unique American reactions to these sources. Among the most important roots of what eventually blossomed into American law were the Bible, the Greek and Roman legal systems, the canon law, and the common law. Among the most palpable outrages against which we reacted were the Inquisition, the Star Chamber, and the long train of abuses and usurpations inflicted on the colonists by the king of England and cataloged in our Declaration of Independence.

Most American lawyers, judges, and lawmakers were familiar with the stories of the Bible, with the accounts of famous Greek trials, such as that of Socrates, with the infamous Continental Inquisitions against Joan of Arc and Galileo, with the British prosecution of Thomas More, and with the notorious regicide and treason trials of Europe.

But ours was to be a different kind of legal system, based on a written Constitution, judicial review, and, most important, the separation of church and state. Thomas Jefferson, the primary draftsman of our Declaration of Independence, explained that he intended that document of liberty to be a signal of arousing men to burst the chains under which monkish ignorance and superstition had persuaded them to bind themselves, and assure the blessings and security of self-government. The monkish ignorance to which he referred was the clerical domination that had enslaved European politics and law for so many centuries.

The ancient sources of the common law were viewed by Americans through the prism of their own experiences as religious and political refugees and then as revolutionaries. The historical trials were important not so much as positive precedents, but rather as negative reminders of the regime they had left behind and wanted no part of on their shores. The American colonists were generally familiar with the stories of the Bible.

Some actually regarded the Bible as part of the common law. Sir William Blackstone, the English legal commentator most influential in early American law, believed that all law derived from [t]he revealed or divine law, and they are to be found only in the Scriptures. Jefferson, Adams, and Franklinalong with other Founding Fathersdisagreed with Blackstones rigid formulation, but they, too, recognized the influence of the Bible on the way Americans viewed the law.

The Bible is replete with legal confrontations, some of which can aptly be characterized as trials. The earliest narratives of the book of Genesis include Gods punishment of Adam, Eve, and the snake following Adams attempt to shift responsibility to Eve for violating Gods commandment not to eat of the Tree of Knowledge. There follows the first recorded murder trial, after Cain kills his brother, Abel, and denies knowledge of Abels whereabouts. Shortly thereafter, Abraham becomes the worlds first defense attorney by arguing on behalf of the sinners of Sodom and asking God whether He would sweep away the innocent along with the guilty.

More crimes follow. A sleeping Lot is raped by his daughters. Abraham attempts to sacrifice his son.

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Jacob defrauds both his fa ther and his brother. Joseph is sold into slavery by his brothers and then is falsely accused of sexual improprieties by the wife of his employer. Dina is raped, and her brothers murder in revenge. Tamar becomes a prostitute and is accused of carrying an illegitimate child by her father-in-law, who had impregnated her.

On and on it goes, throughout the five books of Moses, with their. A brief description of this case and a representative quotation from a modern American decision relying on it will illustrate the close relationship between the biblical trials and the trials that took place in our own country.

December 1847 to July 1858

I have discussed the trials that are described in the first book of the Bible in The Genesis of Justice. The people of Israel hear the testimony of the elders and act as both judge and jury, sentencing Susanna to death. Susanna cries out to God at the injustice, and He rouses the spirit of Daniel to stand in her defense. Daniel then demands an opportunity to examine each of the elders separately. The elders are brought before the people and isolated from each other. Daniel then asks each elder one question: Under what type of tree did the alleged adultery take place? Each describes a different type of tree, and on hearing this the people of Israel praise God, acquit Susanna, and sentence the elders to death for bearing false witness.

Susannas case has been cited numerous times by American courts in support of the importance of the rule requiring that witnesses to the same event must be sequestered as other witnesses testify. A Wisconsin case observed that: The Story of Susanna and the Elders was relied upon almost from the beginning of recorded trials as justifying the practice of separating witnesses in order to expose inconsistencies in their testimony.

The rule of exclusion also aims to prevent the possibility of one witness shaping his testimony to match that given by other witnesses at the trial. Such shaping may be an unconscious reaction to suggestion rather than a deliberate attempt at collusion. The rule thus has a two-fold goal: to prevent falsification and to uncover fabrication that has already taken place.

• December 1847 to July 1858!
• When My Ship Comes In?
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The biblical accounts of this trial are sparse, but they agree that witnesses gave false testimony and that the Sanhedrin the Jewish court nonetheless declared Jesuss blasphemy to be worthy of death. The Harvard Divinity School recently invited me to defend Jesus at a moot court conducted before a professor of divinity playing the role of Pontius Pilate and another professor of Bible studies playing the role of prosecutor.

There was an advisory jury of divinity school students. Not surprisingly, the verdict was a hung jury no pun intended. I thought I had done quite a persuasive job in proving the innocence of my client, and so I decided to interview several of the student jurors who had voted to find Jesus guilty.

I asked them to explain their votes. They all provided the same explanation: As believing Christians, we had to vote for Jesus to be convicted and crucified, or else humanity would not have been saved and our religion would not have come into existence. Its hard to argue with that kind of faith.

The point of this anecdote is that everyone writing about the trial and crucifixion of Jesus begins with a point of view. As a lawyer and as a Jew , I find it difficult to credit the statement in Matthew that the Jews admitted not only their guilt but the guilt of their children as well: His blood be on us, and on our chil dren. This does not seem typical of a crowd lusting for blood.

But it provided a theological justification for anti-Jewish attitudes among some Christians over the past two millennia. The ancient laws of the Jews and the laws of the Romans both looked unfavorably upon religious dissidents and blasphemers. Moreover, this was a time of unrest, both politically and religiously.

Indeed, at the time of Jesus, the line between the political and the religious was not nearly as sharply drawn as it is today. There is, in fact, no ancient Hebrew word for religion, since it was an entire way of life. The substantive laws of the Bible punish certain kinds of religious heresy by death, but we know very little about these laws as they were actually applied during that time.

We do know, however, that the Sanhedrin was not empowered to impose the death penalty unless there were two witnesses, advance warning to the defendant, and a variety of other safeguards that made it nearly impossible, in practice, to order anyone executed.

Moreover, confessions could not be relied on, and the burden of proof was daunting. A Sanhedrin that imposed a single death penalty in seventy years was characterized as bloody. The Romans, on the other hand, had far looser standards of proof, particularly for non-Romans in occupied provinces. It should not be surprising, therefore, that Jews who wanted to be rid of a troublemaking preacher who was urging his followers to renounce wealth, family, and other aspects of this world would turn him in to the Roman authorities.

The relationship between the Jewish and Roman authorities, and their relative responsibility for the conviction and crucifixion of Jesus, is among the least trustworthy and most conflicting aspects of the Gospels. During the early days of Christianity, the former Jews who formed the core of the new religion wanted very much to convert their friends and relatives to their faith. It is only natural, therefore, that early accounts may have presented the Jews in a more favorable light.

It is also natural that accounts that followed the Roman acceptance of Christianity would favor the Romans at the expense of the Jews. Now that nearly every branch of Christianity has renounced the anti-Jewish aspects of some of the Gospels, it is easier to read these accounts as an invitation to love thy neighborwhich is a central tenet of both Judaism and Christianityrather than as a justification for hatred.