In the 1959 film, "Compulsion" which was adapted from Meyer Levin's 1957 novel, "Compulsion," it is a fictionalized account of the Leopold and Loeb (Franks) murder trial. Attorney Jonathan Wilk, played by Orson Welles (based on Clarence Darrow), makes an impassioned speech to the court in favor of leniency. The court is swayed and the men are spared the rope.

At the real trial, the Loeb's family retained Clarence Darrow as counsel for the defense. The trial (basically a sentencing hearing because of guilty pleas by the defendants) ran for 32 days. Darrow's 12-hour-long summation at the hearing is known for its influential criticism of capital punishment as retributive rather than justice which causes a person's life to change. Both men in the case were sentenced to life imprisonment plus 99 years.

Nathan F. Leopold Jr. (1904 – 1971) and Richard A. Loeb (1905 – 1936), usually referred to collectively as Leopold and Loeb, were two wealthy students at the University of Chicago who in May 1924 kidnapped and murdered 14 year old Robert Franks in Chicago. They committed the murder: "the crime of the century" as a demonstration of their perceived intellectual superiority. They thought that they could commit the "perfect crime" and that their intellectual attitude absolved them of any responsibility for their criminal actions. They were absolutely wrong!

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