The Indianapolis times. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1922-1965, 1930-09-19
Loeb and LeopoId's Sixth Anniversary

Loeb and Leopold have been in prison at Joliet H..
for six years. They probably will remain in prison
the rest of their natural lives What there about
The case which induced Mr. DaTow to give to 1t many
weeks of the most arduous and nerve-racking work?
Many Immediately will answer that it the
money he got out Of the case but this is not true He
commonly is believed to have charged and been paid
fabulous fee. But in reality he submitted ridicu-
lousy small bill and the families Of the boys with
singular ingratitude refused to pay all of that.
Darows real interest in the case was educational.
What of a permanent value for better understand
ing Of crime and criminals came out of the case?
First and foremost was Darrow's primary aim of
illustrating to the people of the United States the
basic truth that crime is due to natural and quite
understandable causes. This case enabled him to
dramatic on national scale this principle without
an acceptance of which VIC never can handle crime
or criminals in a rational and effective manner.
1t was a daring thing for Darrow to attempt to
buck the mob spirit in this trial and probably only
Darrow could have done it successfully. The judicial
lynching of Hickman in California well illustrates
what would normally have been the end Of the
Loeb-Leopold episode In short the great contribution
of Darrow in this trial was to encourage the American
people to try to understand rather than to act like
q hunting pack
Second in order must be placed the contributions
Of the case to the exposure of the ridiculous position
in which psychatrsts are placed through the rules OF
legal evidence and the methods of lawyers in the
courtroom The public derived the notion from press
accounts of the trial that it battle OF aiensts
who had sold their souls to the defense prosecution
AS an actual matter Of fact, with the exception OF
one well-known shyster the aliensts on both sides
we're agreed and desired before the trial opened to
hand in Joint and unanimous report to the mental
state of the boys Such is what happens to scientific
evidence when subjected to the rules and practices Of
legal evidence.
third the trial exposed the futility Of uniform
punishment for specific crime rather than carefully
differentiated treatment according to the personality
of the criminal 1t would be difficult to imagine two
persons more widely divergent in personality traits
than Loeb and Leopold.
Yet both were given the same sentence because
they were implicated in the same crime. One had
remarkably good prospect Of recovery and could have
rendered great service to society brilliant scien
tist The other gave little promise of ever regainng
normality and would not have made much of a con-
trbution to humanity if he had
The Loeb-Leopold trial was a landmark in the his
tory of the social and scientific view of crime.
Through it Darrow was able to give some popular
insight into the progress of the scientific study of
crime which had been to the abors of such great
experts as he called to aid hm-Healy, Glueck and
White
It's good results will live and bear fruit long after
the personalities Of Loeb and Leopold have been for
gotten.