Darrow's Closing
from Never The Sinner
by John Logan
Darrow:
Your honor, there has never been a case in Illinois where on a plea of guilty a boy under the age of twenty-one has been sentenced to death. Yet this court is urged to hang two boys contrary to the precedents; contrary to the acts of every judge who ever held court in this state.
Why? Tell me the public necessity for this. Why should a court be urged by every argument, moderate and immoderate to hang two boys in the face of every precedent in Illinois and in the face of the progress of the last fifty years?
In the last six weeks I have heard nothing but a cry for blood. I have heard from the office of the State's Attorney only ugly hate. I have heard precedents quoted that would be a disgrace to a savage race. I have heard a court implored to hang two boys in the face of science, in the face of philosophy in the face of humanity in the face of all the better and humane thoughts of the age; all in the name of justice.
And what is my friend's idea of justice? "Give them the same mercy they gave Bobby Franks!" He says we should strike out, blindly; just like them... drag this court down to their insane level. Is that justice? Is that the law? Is this what a court should do? I say no. The law can be vindicated without killing anyone else. If the state where I live is not more humane, more considerate, more kind and more intelligent than the mad act of these two boys... well, I am sorry I have lived so long.
It might shock the State's Counsel that Bobby Franks was put into a culvert and left after he was dead. But, Your Honor, I can think of an equally shocking scene. I can think of taking two boys and penning them into a cell, checking off the days and hours and minutes until they will be taken out and hanged...
I can picture them wakened in the dim light of morning, furnished with a suit of clothes by the State, led to the scaffold, their feet tied, black hoods drawn over their heads, stood on a trap door, the hangman pressing a spring so that it gives way under them. I can see them falling through space and stopped by the rope around their necks. I can see them swinging back and forth in the gray morning's light.
Wouldn't that be a glorious day for Chicago? Wouldn't that be a glorious triumph for the State's Attorney? Wouldn't it be a glorious triumph for justice in this land???
I ask you, were these boys in their right mind? Here were two boys with good intellect and all the prospect that life can hold out for the young. Boys with all the world before them. And they gave it up for nothing... nothing. That they were reasoning and sane and sound is unthinkable! Why did they kill Bobby Franks? Not for money, not for spite, not for hate. They killed him as they might kill a spider or a fly; for the... experience.
No... no... It's even simpler than that. They killed him because they were made that way. Because somewhere, somehow, in the infinite processes that go into the making of a boy or a man something... slipped.
(pause)
Your Honor, I have stood for three months as one might stand trying to sweep back the tide. I wish to make no false pretenses to this court. The easiest thing and the most popular thing to do would be to hang my clients. I know it. Men and women who do not think will applaud. The cruel and thoughtless will approve. It will be easy, today. But stretching out over this land more and more fathers and mothers, the humane, the kind and the hopeful --- who are gaining an understanding not only of these two boys but of their own as well --- they will join in no acclaim at the deaths of my clients. They would ask that the shedding of blood be stopped!
Your Honor now between the future and the past. I know the future is with me and what I stand for here. I am pleading for life and understanding. I am pleading for the infinite mercy that considers all. 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 that mercy is the highest attribute of man. And it is all that will someday... someday... redeem us.
