Page:The plea of Clarence Darrow, August 22nd, 23rd & 25th, MCMXXIII, in defense of Richard Loeb and Nathan Leopold, Jr., on trial for murder.djvu/108

 impossible; both admitted that they needed a better chance to form a reliable opinion.

The most they said was that at this time they saw no evidence of insanity.

Now, your Honor, no experts, and no alienists with any chance to examine, have testified that these boys were normal.

Singer did a thing more marvelous still. He never saw these boys until he came into this court, excepting when they were brought down in violation of their constitutional rights to the office of Judge Crowe, after they had been turned over to the jailer, and there various questions were asked them, and to all of these the boys replied that they respectfully refused to answer on advice of counsel. And yet that was enough for Singer.

Your Honor, if these boys had gone to the office of any one of these eminent gentlemen, had been taken by their parents or gone by themselves, and the doctors had seriously tried to find out whether there was anything wrong about their minds, how would they have done it? They would have taken them patiently and carefully. They would have sought to get their confidence. They would have listened to their story. They would have listened to it in the attitude of a father listening to his child. You know it. Every doctor knows it. In no other way could they find out their mental condition. And the men who are honest with this question have admitted it.

And yet Dr. Krohn will testify that they had the best chance in the world, when his own associates, sitting where they were, said that they did not.

Your Honor, nobody's life or liberty or property should be taken from them upon an examination like that. It was not an examination. It was simply an