[HN Gopher] The Leopold and Loeb case, a century Later
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       The Leopold and Loeb case, a century Later
        
       Author : lermontov
       Score  : 14 points
       Date   : 2024-06-27 22:56 UTC (4 days ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (www.smithsonianmag.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (www.smithsonianmag.com)
        
       | dang wrote:
       | Discussed just a bit here:
       | 
       |  _The Leopold and Loeb Case_ -
       | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10669257 - Dec 2015 (1
       | comment)
       | 
       | Others?
        
       | AlbertCory wrote:
       | > but at the time he was just a prominent local lawyer who had
       | worked in labor law.
       | 
       | Dead wrong. He defended Eugene Debs in the Pullman Strike case
       | (1894), which was headline news all over the country. He got him
       | off for the conspiracy charge, too.
       | 
       | (Debs served time for contempt of court, and during World War One
       | for criticizing the war).
       | 
       | Oddly enough, he also visited Fremont Older at his house a few
       | miles from me, which is now part of the Fremont Older Open Space
       | Preserve.
        
         | jhbadger wrote:
         | The point (which the author as making) still stands, which is
         | that Darrow achieved his lasting fame from the Scopes Monkey
         | trial, which both as an event and in its fictionalized form as
         | the play/movie "Inherit the Wind" is still relevant to
         | discourse today as it is is brought up whenever Creationists
         | are in the news.
        
           | AlbertCory wrote:
           | No, the point does not stand. He was not "just a prominent
           | local lawyer." Unless you don't know your history.
        
             | cge wrote:
             | It could be that they were referring to his prominence as a
             | non-labor lawyer, or that he hadn't had as many prominent
             | cases after fallout from the LA Times case, but it is
             | generally a strange statement. No, he wasn't _as_ famous
             | before Leopold and Loeb, and Scopes, or the culturally
             | immortal figure he became, but he had certainly been a
             | prominent lawyer at a national level, not a local one.
             | 
             | He had, as you point out, represented Debs, in federal
             | trials over a major national strike, up to the Supreme
             | Court. He had represented labor leaders in Idaho charged
             | with conspiracy over the assassination of a former
             | governor. He represented defendants accused of the LA Times
             | bombing in California. For Leopold and Loeb, a question in
             | the media was about wealthy families hiring such a
             | prominent, high-priced lawyer. And the Scopes was
             | essentially an organized publicity stunt that chose lawyers
             | for both the prosecution and defense _because_ they were
             | famous and would attract attention.
        
             | lupire wrote:
             | I can't believe you are arguing about the precise
             | gradations of informal descriptions of exactly how famous
             | he was.
             | 
             | There are many current legal cases about major national
             | issues, where the _lawyers_ aren 't famous.
        
               | AlbertCory wrote:
               | Well, I can't believe you are bothering to comment here.
               | 
               | The author said something egregiously wrong. It's not
               | "precise gradations of informal descriptions." And cge
               | got it exactly right. What do you think you're adding
               | here?
        
       | FlamingMoe wrote:
       | I was just recently reading about Leopold and Loeb after watching
       | Hitchcock's Rope, which is based on a play inspired by the case:
       | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rope_(film)
       | 
       | One of my favorite Hitchcock films.
        
         | daseiner1 wrote:
         | Its particular genius, for my money, is that it's functionally
         | a psychosexual drama about two closeted homosexuals. In 1948!
        
         | chasil wrote:
         | There is also a two-man musical.
         | 
         | It is explicit.
         | 
         | https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thrill_Me
        
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