Murder Among Friends by Candace Fleming

Author:Candace Fleming [Fleming, Candace]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Random House Children's Books
Published: 2022-03-29T00:00:00+00:00

SURPRISE STRATEGY

Jacob Loeb strode into the elevator and pressed the button for the eleventh floor. It was past ten p.m. on Thursday, July 17, and the office building felt eerily empty. Everyone had gone home long ago—except for those in Clarence Darrow’s office. The attorney had something urgent to discuss, and secrecy was essential. That was the reason he’d called a meeting at such a late hour.

The elevator doors glided open and Loeb made his way down the hall to Darrow’s office. Walter and Benjamin Bachrach were already there. So was Nathan Sr., his face tight with worry.

Darrow put his hands in his pockets and leaned back on his heels. He’d been thinking and thinking. Even though the boys had entered a plea of not guilty, there was no way he could prove their innocence. The state’s attorney had an airtight case. There was no hope for acquittal. Their only defense was to plead not guilty by reason of insanity.

But in Illinois, by law, an insanity defense meant an automatic jury trial. The case would have to be heard before twelve jurors. And so Darrow had come to a hard truth. Despite their psychiatrists’ opinions, he didn’t believe a jury would ever accept an insanity defense. After all, the boys had lived seemingly normal lives before the crime. They’d studied for exams, made summer travel plans, socialized with friends. In addition, they’d planned the crime meticulously. He believed a jury would not only find Nathan and Richard guilty but also recommend the death penalty.

Jacob Loeb couldn’t disguise his shock. There had to be some way to save the boys’ lives.

Darrow had been pondering that. And, he told them, he had a plan—a risky one. He wanted to change the teenagers’ pleas to guilty, which meant there would be no jury. Nor would there be a trial. Instead, proceedings would go straight to the sentencing stage. And the sentencing hearing was solely the responsibility of the judge. It was, Darrow believed, their only chance.

Nathan Sr. pointed to the overwhelming evidence against the boys. Why wouldn’t the judge just sentence them to death?

Darrow explained that in a case involving the death penalty, prosecutors were allowed to argue “aggravating circumstances”—that is, circumstances surrounding the crime that made it even worse, such as killing a police officer or, in this case, a child. The defense was allowed to argue “mitigating circumstances”—that is, circumstances that diminished the seriousness of the crime, such as the offender acting under duress or being elderly or a juvenile.

Darrow planned to use the teens’ mental illness as a mitigating circumstance. He would rely on the expert testimony of their psychiatrists to build a case for life imprisonment rather than death.

It was, Walter Bachrach pointed out, easier to convince one judge than twelve people on a jury. It also helped that the sentencing judge would be John Caverly.

A liberal Democrat, sixty-three-year-old Caverly was “clean.” In all his years on the bench, there had never been a whiff of scandal about him—despite his friendships with corrupt politicians and gangsters.

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