TRIALS OF THE CENTURY
Four trials in the 1920s were declared “the trials of the century,”
starting with the Sacco and Vanzetti murder trial, then the
manslaughter trial of Roscoe “Fatty” Arbuckle, the Leopold and
Loeb murder trial, and the Scopes Monkey trial.
Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti were sentenced to death
for first-degree murder on July 14, 1921. The country was in one
of its spells of anti-leftist panic, with a flurry of union-busting,
arresting and deporting of socialists, and fear-mongering politics.
In 1925, a man confessed to the crime and said Sacco and Vanzetti
had nothing to with it; they were still executed in 1927.
Fatty Arbuckle’s trial for manslaughter was part of the new image
of Hollywood as not just the center of glamor but a sink of
depravity. (See Arbuckle)
The story of Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb is well known.
Nineteen- and 20-year-old students at the University of Chicago,
they sought to prove Nietzsche’s theory of the superman true by
committing the perfect crime, murdering 14-year-old Bobby Frank,
a neighbor. Since they had confessed, their attorney, Clarence
Darrow, spent most of the trial constructing an argument against
the death penalty. “It is hardly fair to hang a 19-year-old boy for
the philosophy that was taught him at the university,” he told the
jury. He argued that the two had grown up during World War I,
when 100,000 people were killed in a single day, and were taught
that life was cheap. You can hang these men, he told the judge, but
that would be following the blood lust for revenge that had ruled
our past. “I am pleading for the future; I am pleading for a time
when hatred and cruelty will not control the hearts of men. When
we can learn by reason and judgment and understanding and faith
that all life is worth saving, and that mercy is the highest attribute
of man.” Darrow’s 12-hour oration at the end of the trial in
September 1924 is seen as a milestone in the fight against the death
penalty. Leopold and Loeb were both sentenced to Life plus 99
years. (Darrow would also argue for the defense in the Scopes trial
in 1925; see Scopes.)