In 1924 Chicago, two wealthy, intellectually precocious teenagers (Leopold and Loeb) planned and murdered 14-year-old Bobby Franks largely as an experiment in committing the 'perfect crime,' not for money or revenge. They were caught when a distinctive pair of eyeglasses dropped near the body was traced back to Leopold.
Clarence Darrow conceded guilt and pleaded for life rather than death, using lengthy psychiatric testimony about the defendants' mental and emotional abnormalities to argue mitigation before a judge rather than a jury. The strategy of removing the factual question and contesting only the penalty, before a single decision-maker, resulted in life imprisonment instead of hanging.
Leopold found that constructing a role of concrete service inside prison (reorganizing the library, teaching fellow inmates, volunteering for malaria experiments) made an indefinite sentence endurable. Purpose and demonstrable contribution, rather than the hope of release, became the mechanism that preserved his sanity and identity across decades.