“The social science logic was straight out of a Berkeley coffee house–Miller.”
It started before that. See Leopold and Lobe at Wikipedia and the excerpts below.
“During the 12-hour hearing on the final day, Darrow gave a speech that has been called the finest of his career[citation needed]. The speech included the following: “This terrible crime was inherent in his organism, and it came from some ancestor… Is any blame attached because somebody took Nietzsche’s philosophy seriously and fashioned his life upon it?… It is hardly fair to hang a 19-year-old boy for the philosophy that was taught him at the university?”[20
The outcome of this trial has had repercussions to this day, as Darrow popularized the notion that a defendant might not be guilty of his crime because of his inherited traits—to use Darrow's term, Leopold and Loeb were "broken machines."[21]
