NCJ Number
175432
Date Published
Unknown
Length
0 pages
Annotation
This video of a television program in the "Criminal Justice Close-Up" series consists of an interview with Gilbert Geiss, Professor emeritus of criminology at the University of California in Irvine, regarding the events of and the lessons learned from three landmark American trials of the 20th century: the Leopold and Loeb case in Chicago, the case of the Scottsboro nine in Alabama, and the O.J. Simpson trial in Los Angeles, California.
Abstract
The Leopold and Loeb trial in 1924 in Chicago involved two young, intelligent, upper-class youths who murdered another youth, for no other reason than to experience what it would be like to kill someone. The two defendants received excellent attorney representation (Clarence Darrow), but because there was overwhelming evidence of the defendants' guilt, Darrow had the defendants plead guilty while he focused on saving them from the death penalty. To achieve this, he had to combat public outrage at the crime, anti-semitism (both defendants were Jewish), and class conflict. Darrow succeeded in his efforts to mitigate the sentence; the death penalty was not imposed. In the case of the "Scottsboro nine," nine young black men traveling through Alabama on a train were accused of raping two girls on the train. The series of five trials that led to convictions were riddled with grounds for appeal, with an incompetent defense being the most prominent. Although the Alabama Supreme Court upheld the convictions, The U.S. Supreme Court reversed this decision and ordered new trials. One successful appeal from the second series of trials was that blacks were not allowed to sit on the jury. After 16 years in prison, the nine boys were eventually released, based on the recantation of one alleged victim and the failure to produce any scientific evidence that the rapes had occurred. The discussion of the O.J. Simpson trial is brief compared to Geiss' discussion of the other two trials. The discussion of the Simpson trial focuses on the differing reactions of whites in general and blacks in general to the issue of Simpson's guilt and the belief that he would receive a fair trial. These differences reflect more on the differing views of whites and blacks regarding the trustworthiness of the police and the reliability of the criminal justice system than on the issue of Simpson's guilt or innocence.