Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb were two wealthy, privileged young men in Chicago who murdered someone. Clarence Darrow was their defense attorney. He claimed that they should not be given the death penalty, because there must be some cause and effect, some relationship between their childhood and environment, and the horrible thing they did.
- How does this relate to the concept of free will and determinism?
- Were their lives determined for them, by their circumstances, before they did the crime?
Clarence Darrow’s defense of the Leopold and Loeb follows a determinist perspective. Specifically, his argument that a causal relationship existed between their childhood or environment and their adult lives leading to the eventual murder stands in accordance with hard determinism. For these defendants not to be held wholly morally responsible for the murder, for them to not get the death penalty, it must be supposed that the influences in their lives were so strong that they determined their path for them, ultimately culminating in the crime. Free will, the prerequisite for morality, would not have factored in.
The supposed reasoning for Leopold and Loeb to have committed the crime, kidnapping and murdering a 14 year old child, was that as consequence of their intellectual superiority, they would be able to demonstrate the perfect crime, and thereby they should be absolved of responsibility. Was this path determined by their circumstances? Certainly, they grew up wealthy, privileged, and well educated. Somehow, these factors led them to develop a heinous sense of superiority. I would contend, however, that these men still both possessed free will and the ability to do otherwise. Their upbringing and environment may have influenced them, but as a soft determinist, I tend to hold that they were still morally responsible, to a degree. Morality, and many aspects of our justice system, simply do not function if we choose to adopt a hard determinist perspective lacking in acknowledgement of free will or moral responsibility.