
In the 1920s two murderers were defended by science - dnetesn
http://nautil.us/issue/17/big-bangs/the-original-natural-born-killers
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weinzierl
This is about the case that Scott Aaronson mentioned in this Democritus
lecture on Free Will:

    
    
      The misconception committed by the free will camp is the one I alluded to before: 
      if there's no free will, then none of us are responsible for our actions, and 
      hence (for example) the legal system would collapse. Well, I know of only one 
      trial where the determinism of the laws of physics was actually invoked as a legal 
      defense. It's the Leopold and Loeb trial in 1926. Have you heard of this? It was 
      one of the most famous trials in American history, next to the OJ trial. So,   
      Leopold and Loeb were these brilliant students at the University of Chicago (one 
      of them had just finished his undergrad at 18), and they wanted to prove that they 
      were Nietzschean supermen who were so smart that they could commit the perfect 
      murder and get away with it. So they kidnapped this 14-year-old boy and bludgeoned 
      him to death. And they got caught---Leopold dropped his glasses at the crime scene.
    
    
      They were defended by Clarence Darrow---the same defense lawyer from the Scopes 
      monkey trial, considered by some to be the greatest defense lawyer in American 
      history. In his famous closing address, he actually made an argument appealing to 
      the determinism of the universe. "Who are we to say what could have influenced 
      these boys to do this? What kind of genetic or environmental influences could've 
      caused them to commit the crime?" (Maybe Darrow thought he had nothing to lose.) 
      Anyway, they got life in prison instead of the death penalty, but apparently it 
      was because of their age, and not because of the determinism of the laws of 
      physics. [1]
    

[1]
[http://www.scottaaronson.com/democritus/lec18.html](http://www.scottaaronson.com/democritus/lec18.html)

