Robert E. Crowe was a Chicago lawyer and politician, who is best known as the prosecutor in the 1924 Leopold and Loeb

Leopold and Loeb

Nathan Freudenthal Leopold, Jr. and Richard Albert Loeb , more commonly known as "Leopold and Loeb", were two wealthy University of Michigan alumni and University of Chicago students who murdered 14-year-old Robert "Bobby" Franks in 1924 and were sentenced to life imprisonment.The duo were...

 murder case.

A product of Chicago public schools, Crowe graduated from Princeton University

Princeton University

Princeton University is a private research university located in Princeton, New Jersey, United States. The school is one of the eight universities of the Ivy League, and is one of the nine Colonial Colleges founded before the American Revolution....

 with a law degree in 1901. With the help of Big Bill Thompson, he was elected a Circuit Court judge in 1916. Three years later, Crowe achieved a level of fame and notoriety by imposing the death penalty on Thomas Fitzgerald who had plead guilty to the murder of 6 year-old Janet Dolly Fitzgerald. The following year, with Thompson's continued backing, he was elected state's attorney

State's Attorney

In the United States, the State's Attorney is, most commonly, an elected official who represents the State in criminal prosecutions and is often the chief law enforcement officer of their respective county, circuit...

.

In 1924, he prosecuted Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb for the premeditated murder of Bobby Franks, squaring off against defender Clarence Darrow

Clarence Darrow

Clarence Seward Darrow was an American lawyer and leading member of the American Civil Liberties Union, best known for defending teenage thrill killers Leopold and Loeb in their trial for murdering 14-year-old Robert "Bobby" Franks and defending John T...

.