Leopold and Loeb Trial - The Clarence Darrow Collection

Lloyd. 42 William Bross Lloyd and thirty eight members of the Communist Labor party
were indicted by a Cook county grand jury in March, 1920 for conspiracy. Twenty of
them were arrested, tried, and convicted. Darrow and Crowe represented their sides
before the Illinois Supreme Court. Crowe won that battle when the court upheld the
convictions.
In 1923, Crowe was the prosecutor in a large graft and corruption scandal involving the
finances of the Chicago public schools. Fred Lundin, a friend of Mayor Thompson, and
twenty-three others were accused of stealing money from the schools through graft.
Despite what appeared to be overwhelming evidence, Darrow and his co-counsel were
able to persuade the jury so that Lundin was found not guilty.
On January 22, 1924, Darrow and his co-counsel won a victory against Crowe by getting
a conspiracy conviction reversed and remanded. 43 Darrow and Crowe would also face
each other after the Leopold and Loeb case. In a 1925 case, Darrow and his co-counsel
got a bank robbery conviction for two defendants reversed and remanded because of
improper conduct and argument by Robert Crowe as the prosecuting attorney. 44
The Alienists
Part of the intense interest and notoriety of the crime and its aftermath stemmed from the
extensive use of psychiatric evidence, especially by the defense. Both the prosecution and
the defense employed their own “alienists” to examine the defendants. According to the
New Oxford American Dictionary, the term “alienist” is a noun, a “former term for
psychiatrist” and specifically “a psychiatrist who assesses the competence of a defendant
in a court of law.” 45 Black’s Law Dictionary defines an alienist as “[a] psychiatrist, esp.
one who assesses a criminal defendant's sanity or capacity to stand trial.” 46
Prosecutor Robert Crowe knew he had a case so strong there was no conceivable way a
defense team could crack it. Anticipating that insanity or other diminished capacity
defenses would be raised, he employed some of Chicago’s most eminent experts on
mental capacity issues. On May 31, just a few hours after Leopold and Loeb’s confession,
he contacted prominent neurologist Dr. Hugh T. Patrick to examine the now confessed
killers. Among his many achievements, Dr. Patrick was an emeritus professor of nervous
and mental diseases at Northwestern University and in 1907 he was the president of the
American Neurological Society. 47 Crowe also brought in Dr. Archibald Church, a
prominent scholar and head of the department of nervous and mental diseases at
Northwestern. Crowe added to his employ Dr. William O. Krohn, who had a private
practice and wrote on these issues. Finally, Dr. Harold Singer, the state alienist for
42 People v. Lloyd, 136 N.E. 505, 304 Ill. 23 (Ill. 1922).
43 People v. Bither, 231 Ill. App. 301, 1924 WL 3457 (Ill.App. Ct. 1924).
44 People v. Black, 148 N.E. 281,317 Ill. 603 (Ill. 1925).
45 THE NEW OXFORD AMERICAN DICTIONARY (Erin McKean ed., 2nd ed. 2005).
46 BLACK'S LAW DICTIONARY (8th ed. 2004).
47 AMAZING CRIME AND TRIAL OF LEOPOLD AND LOEB, supra note 1, at 168.
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