The Loeb-Leopold case - The Clarence Darrow Collection

The Loeb-Leopold Case
been said, Dr. Krohn is the only one that was well
satisfied with the conditions under which that ex-
amination was made.
Your Honor will remember that the most loqua-
cious of the psychiatrists for the State was Dr.
Krohn. You remember my asking him as to deal-
ing with each of the boys. I call them boys, your
Honor, for they are below twenty-one years of age.
I do not call them boys to deceive your Honor.
Your Honor knows just how old they are, how old
or how young they look.
I asked Krohn questions as to what he discovered
in that examination. He said, first, the senses were
all right; the logical reasoning was all right; the
logical sequence was all right; there was a flowing
stream of thought, a continuity of thought; and a
perfect orientation as to time, place and social re-
lations. It sounds all right, intelligent, and looks as
if we were getting somewhere. But it appears, then,
that all of those things are positively consistent with
a psychopathic personality.
When he found those things there, he had not
been shown any evidence of mental disease.
Neither had any of the other psychiatrists.
And at six-thirty o'clock, may it please your
Honor, on Sunday, June ist, if I may talk figura-
tively, the clerk of the court called mental disease
three times in stentorian tones, and a forfeiture was
declared. They had not shown the alienists of the
State that they had mental disease. Of course, they
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