The Loeb-Leopold case - The Clarence Darrow Collection

The Loeb-Leopold Case
becomes older, as time goes on, he finds that some of
the things he phantasied about as a child, things
that he wanted to have, what he wished to be, are
incapable of fulfillment. And he, therefore, uses his
phantasy life to satisfy this craving, these unsatis-
fied wishes which he has, and he lives out in his
phantasy the kind of a life which is denied to him
in this world. Those things, of course, are normal.
In the case of Richard Loeb, we find he starts
in as a child of four and a half or five years of age
and has abnormal phantasies, which have not
changed as his position in life has changed, and as
he has become older, but these abnormal phantasies
have continued until he is in jail at the age of nineteen,
charged with a kidnaping and murder. And
he has the same abnormal phantasies even now in
jail.
Were Singer, Krohn and Patrick looking for any-
thing like that? Of course, they were not. Their
position was: " Prima facie you are sane. Prima
facie you are mentally healthy. We must be
shown." Therefore, they took the position that if
evidence was not produced before them on one after-
noon, on the first of June, that the boys were men-
tally diseased, then there was a conclusive presump-
tion to be drawn against the presence of such
disease.
On page 765 of the Ninth Edition of Church and
Peterson on Nervous and Mental Diseases, appears
the following:
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