The Loeb-Leopold case - The Clarence Darrow Collection

The Loeb-Leopold Case
violates the law. You have to deal with him as the
law prescribes.
And I want to say to your Honor, in this case,
with the mass of evidence presented by the State, if
a jury were sitting in that box and returned a ver-
dict and did not fix the punishment at death, every
person in this community would feel that that ver-
dict was founded in corruption. And I will tell
you why.
Your Honor, I have taken quite a trip during the
last four or five weeks. I thought I was going to
be kept in Chicago all summer trying this case, and
that most of my time would be spent in the Criminal
Court Building. And I find I have been mistaken.
I did come up to your Honor's court room five weeks
ago, and after I was there a little while Old Doc
Yak — is that his name? — the man from Washington
— oh. Dr. White — took me by the hand and
led me into the nursery of two poor, rich young
boys, and he introduced me to a Teddy bear. Then
he told me some bedtime stories, and after I got
through listening to them, he took me into the
kindergarten and he presented to me little " Dickie "
and " Babe," and he wanted to know if I had any
objection to calling them that, and I said no, if he
had no purpose.
And after we had wandered between the nursery
and the kindergarten for quite a while, I was taken
in hand by the Bachrach brothers and taken to a
psychopathic laboratory, and there I received quite
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