The Loeb-Leopold case - The Clarence Darrow Collection

The Loeb-Leopold Case
consecutively and he is insane, I am going to have
a pretty good suspicion of it, and I believe if your
Honor watches a man for thirty days, day in and
day out, and he is a lunatic, you are going to have
a well defined suspicion of it.
When the learned doctor who had been employed
to find out just how crazy these two fellows were got
on the stand, he was probably instructed: "Just
make them crazy enough so they won't hang, but
don't make them crazy enough to make it necessary
to put this up to twelve men, because twelve men
are not going to be fooled by your twaddle. Just
make them insane enough so it will make a mitigat-
ing circumstance that we can submit to the court."
One of these wise men was asked:
Q. Doctor, do you know that Leopold has written a
great deal upon the subject of ornithology, that he is one
of the authorities on that subject in the United States,
that he has lectured before the students of Harvard
University upon that subject? A. Yes, sir; I do.
Q. Did you see his work? A. Yes.
Q. Did you read that? A. No.
Q. You were employed to examine that man, weren't
you? A. Yes.
Q. What did you do? A. I examined his urine.
Q. Don't you think you could get a better idea of his
mental condition by reading the things that he wrote,
the product of his brain, than you could by examining
his urine. A. I don't know.
Now, probably he just wanted to find out how
much sugar he could discover to lay a foundation
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