The Loeb-Leopold case - The Clarence Darrow Collection

The Loeb-Leopold Case
What is the truth about it? What did Patrick
say? He said that it was not a good opportunity
for examination. What did Church say? I read
from his own book what was necessary for an ex-
amination, and he said that it was not a good oppor-
tunity for an examination. What did Krohn say?
" Fine — a fine opportunity for an examination,"
the best he had ever heard of, or that ever anybody
had, because their souls were stripped naked.
Krohn is not an alienist. He is an orator.
Patrick and Church said that the conditions were
unfavorable for an examination, that they never
would choose it, that their opportunities were poor.
And yet Krohn states the contrary — Krohn, who
for sixteen years has not been a physician, but has
used a license for the sake of haunting these courts,
civil and criminal, and going up and down the land
peddling perjury.
What else did he say, in which the State's alienists
dispute him? Both of them say that these boys
showed no adequate emotion. Krohn said they did.
One boy fainted. They had been in the hands of
the State's Attorney for sixty hours. They had been
in the hands of policemen, lawyers, detectives,
stenographers, inquisitors and newspaper men for
sixty hours, and one of them fainted. Well, the only
person who is entirely without emotion is a dead
man. You cannot live without breathing and some
emotional responses. Krohn says: " Why, Loeb had
emotion; he was pohte; begged our pardon; got up
159