The Loeb-Leopold case - The Clarence Darrow Collection

The Loeb-Leopold Case
was wrong. I am asking your Honor not to visit the
grave and dire and terrible misfortunes of Dickie
Loeb and Nathan Leopold upon these two boys. I
do not know where to place it. I know it is some-
where in the infinite economy of nature, and if I were
wise enough I could find it. I know it is there, and
to say that because they are as they are you should
hang them, is brutaHty and cruelty, and savors of
the fang and claw.
Every one of the alienists on both sides has told
this court, what no doubt this court already knew,
that the emotions furnish the urge and the drive to
life. A man can get along without his intellect, and
most people do, but he cannot get along without his
emotions. He eats and he drinks, he works and
plays and sleeps, in obedience to his emotional sys-
tem. The intellectual part of man acts only as a
judge over his emotions, and then he generally gets
it wrong, and has to rely on his instincts to save
him.
These boys — I do not care what their mentality
— that simply makes it worse — are emotionally de-
fective. Every single alienist who has testified in
this case has said so. The only person who did not
was Dr. Krohn. While I am on that subject, lest
I forget the eminent doctor, I want to refer to one
or two things. In the first place, all these alienists
that the State called came into the State's Attor-
ney's office and heard these boys tell their story of
this crime, and that is all they heard.
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