The Loeb-Leopold case - The Clarence Darrow Collection

The Loeb-Leopold Case
January i6, 1923, pleaded guilty to an indictment
upon a charge of murder and to each of them testimony
was heard in part but continued, and on the
17th of January, the next day after the plea, Butler
was sent to the penitentiary for life and Smith was
sentenced to execution.
In the case of People vs. Haensell, 2gj Illinois,
jj, there was an insanity defense. Haensell was
a soldier who had had various adventures. He
had had a blow on the head as a young man, had a
goiter; had syphilis; and presented the defense that
he was insane. He received treatment for three
and a half months in the hospital for goiter and
vertigo, after which he was honorably discharged
from the army as unfit for overseas duty. He re-
turned to Chicago. He complained to the police
that his wife and his mother were entertaining
soldiers at the mother's home. He later killed both.
Conviction on an insanity defense, which may
have had a real basis, for all I know; not phantasies,
not delusions, but something of substance; certainly
the conditions recited give some foundation for the
assumption that there was something there, and yet
over against that, he was not mentally diseased
enough to escape the gallows.
Here is another conviction and execution, People
vs. Laures, 28g Illinois, 4go. He was convicted for
the murder of Celestino Blanco, The defendant was
engaged to marry one Josephina Alvarez, who kept
a boarding house. The deceased boarded at her
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