Clarence Darrow

Clarence Seward Darrow (April 18, 1857 – March 13, 1938) was an American lawyer and leading member of the American Civil Liberties Union, best known defending teen-aged thrill killers Leopold and Loeb in their trial for murdering 14 year old Bobby Franks (1924) and defending John T. Scopes in the so-called "Monkey" Trial (1925), in which he opposed the famous prosecutor William Jennings Bryan. He remains notable for his wit, compassion and agnosticism that marked him as one of the most famous American lawyers and civil libertarians.

Life

Clarence Darrow was born in Kinsman, Ohio, on 18th April, 1857 to Amirus and Emily Darrow. Amirus originally was an Unitarian minister, but he lost his faith and became an undertaker. Clarence and his seven siblings were brought up agnostic. Ostracized by the neighbors for the unconventional views, Amirus had the perfect opportunity to become a stop on the underground railroad. Clarence absorbed much of the reformist views of politicians such as Horace Greeley and Samuel Tildenand the radical journalist, Henry George.

After an education at Allegheny College and one year at the University of Michigan Law School, in 1878, Darrow became a member of the Ohio bar . For the next nine years he was a typical small-town lawyer. However, in 1887 Darrow moved to Chicago looking for more interesting work.

Work

From Corporate Lawyer to Labor Lawyer

In Chicago, Illinois, Darrow soon became a corporate lawyer for the railroad company. His next move was to "cross the tracks," when he switched sides to represent Eugene V. Debs, the leader of the American Railway Union in the Pullman Strike of 1894. Darrow had conscientiously resigned his corporate position in order to represent Debs, making a substantial financial sacrifice in order to do this.

Also in 1894, Darrow took on the first murder case of his career, defending Patrick Eugene Prendergast, the "mentally deranged drifter" who had confessed to murdering Chicago mayor Carter H. Harrison, Sr.[1] Darrow's "insanity defense" failed and Prendergast was executed that same year. Among fifty defenses in murder cases throughout the whole of Darrow's career, the Prendergast case would prove to be the only one resulting in an execution.[2]

Darrow next defended Bill Haywood, the leader of the Industrial Workers of the World and the Western Federation of Miners, who was acquitted of charges of being involved in the murder of former Idaho governor Frank Steunenberg in 1905.

His next notable case was the defense of the MacNamara Brothers, who were charged with dynamiting the Los Angeles Times building during the bitter struggle over the open shop in Southern California, resulting in the deaths of 20 employees. When Darrow was seen standing on a street corner within view from the place where an associate of his handed over money to one of the jurors of the case, he was forced to convince them to change their plea to guilty and was able to plea bargain prison sentences instead of the death penalty. After representing the MacNamaras, Darrow was charged with two counts of attempting to bribe jurors, although the brothers' guilty pleas meant that the jurors played no part in the case. After two very lengthy trials — in the first, defended by Earl Rogers, he was acquitted; in the second he struggled defending himself for a hung jury — he agreed never to practice law again in California and not be retried.

From Labor Lawyer to Criminal Lawyer

A further consequence of the bribery charges was that the labor unions dropped Darrow from their list of preferred attorneys. This effectively put Darrow out of business as a labor lawyer, and he switched to acting in criminal cases.

Throughout his career, Darrow devoted himself to opposing the death penalty, which he felt to be in conflict with humanitarian progress. In more than 100 cases, Darrow only lost one murder case in Chicago. He became renowned for moving juries and even judges to tears with his eloquence.

A July 23, 1915 article in the Chicago Tribune describes Darrow's effort on behalf of J.H. Fox — an Evanston, Illinois landlord — to have Mary S. Brazelton committed to an insane asylum against the wishes of her family. Fox alleged that Brazelton owed him rent money although other residents of Fox's boarding house testified to her sanity.

Leopold and Loeb

In 1924 Darrow took on the case of Leopold and Loeb, the teenage sons of two wealthy Chicago families, who were accused of kidnapping and killing Bobby Franks, a 14-year old boy, to see what it would be like to commit the ultimate crime. Darrow convinced them to plead guilty and then argued for his clients to receive life in prison rather than the death penalty.

Darrow based his argument on the claim that his clients weren't completely responsible for their actions, but were the products of the environment they grew up in, and that they could not be held responsible for basing their desire for murder in the philosophy of Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche. In the end, the judge sentenced Leopold and Loeb to life in prison rather than sending them to be executed. During the Leopold-Loeb trial, when Darrow was believed to have accepted "a million-dollar fee", many ordinary Americans were angered at his apparent betrayal. In truth, Darrow and his two co-counsels were given $40,000 to split three ways after being denied payments for months by the young men's families.

The Scopes Trial

In 1925, Darrow defended John Scopes in the famous "Monkey Trial."

The Scopes Trial of 1925 pitted against each other lawyers William Jennings Bryan and Clarence Darrow (the latter representing teacher John T. Scopes) in an American court case that tested a law passed on March 13, 1925, which forbade the teaching, in any state-funded educational establishment in Tennessee, of "any theory that denies the story of the Divine Creation of man as taught in the Bible, and to teach instead that man has descended from a lower order of animals". This is often interpreted as meaning that the law forbade the teaching of any aspect of the theory of evolution. It has often been called the "Scopes Monkey Trial".

During the trial, Darrow made the highly unusual request that Bryan, the prosecuting attorney, be called to the stand as an expert witness on the Bible. Over the other prosecutor's objection, Bryan agreed. Many believe that the following exchange caused the trial to turn against Bryan and for Darrow:

"You have given considerable study to the Bible, haven't you, Mr. Bryan?" "Yes, sir; I have tried to ... But, of course, I have studied it more as I have become older than when I was a boy." "Do you claim then that everything in the Bible should be literally interpreted?" "I believe that everything in the Bible should be accepted as it is given there; some of the Bible is given illustratively. For instance: "Ye are the salt of the earth."  I would not insist that man was actually salt, or that he had flesh of salt, but it is used in the sense of salt as saving God's people."

At this point Darrow had made his point — that each person interprets the Bible according to his or her beliefs, knowledge, etc. Nevertheless he continued to ask Bryan a string of questions, based on his article in the Chicago Tribune in 1923, regarding Jonah and the whale, Joshua's making the sun stand still and the Tower of Babel. By the end of the trial, this string of questions had humiliated Bryan, and also hurt Darrow. Bryan died but six days later.

It is often claimed that Darrow tricked or forced Bryan into admitting that the Creation scribed in Genesis must have taken longer than 6 days of 24 hours. In reality, however, the word usually translated as "day" is also used (in Genesis 2, for example) to indicate an unspecified period of time, and this interpretation had long been accepted by many Christians at the time of the trial, though it did further Darrow's point. Thus Bryan actually volunteered the fact that he believed the passage meant six periods of time rather than 6 literal days as soon as Darrow raised the subject:

Darrow - Would you say that the earth was only 4,000 years old Bryan - Oh, no; I think it is much older than that. Darrow - How much? Bryan - I couldn't. Darrow - Do you say whether the Bible itself says it is older than that? Bryan - I don't think the Bible says itself whether it is older or not. Darrow - Do you think the earth was made in six days? Bryan - Not six days of twenty-four hours.

In the end Darrow's cross examination merely demonstrated that the two men had fundamentally opposing views on religion — Darrow being an agnostic, and Bryan a Biblical absolutist and fundamentalist. After about two hours, by which time both men were on their feet shouting at each other, judge Raulston cut the questioning short, and on the following morning ordered that the whole session (which in any case the jury had not witnessed) be expunged from the record. Scopes was found guilty and ordered to pay the minimum fine of $100.

Dr.Ossian Sweet

This case involved a white mob in Detroit that attempted to drive a black family out of the home they had purchased in a white neighborhood and the subsequent shooting of a white man in the mob.

Sweet was born in Florida,earned his undergraduate degree from Wilberforce University and studied medicine at Howard University. He worked at Detroit's first black hospital, Dunbar. Having saved enough money, he moved his family in 1925 from the lower east side ghetto to 2905 Garland Road, in an all-white neighborhood at Garland and Charlevoix.

Sweet's house was repeatedly surrounded by white mobs several days previous to the shooting. Some of those in the mob called themselves the "Waterworks Improvement Association." Although the law did not interfere with the crowd, there was police protection given to prevent the mob from comming too close to the house. At around 10 p.m. on Thursday, September 9 1925, Leon Breiner, one member of the mob of at least 1,000, was shot dead, and another was injured. The shots were fired from within Sweet's house. All eleven family members in the house were arrested and charged with murder.

All eleven occupants of the house were tried by a jury presided over by young judge Frank Murphy. With assistance from the NAACP, the defense (headed by Clarence Darrow, assisted by Arthur Garfield Hays and Walter M. Nelson) skillful and extensive examined Dr. Sweet successfully allowing the jury to begin to understand what the psychology of terrorism was and how the family felt inside the house under such duress. They asked whether the jury of 12 whites would be able to give a Negro a fair trial. The jury was advised of the historical impact of such a case, and that this was their opportunity to write history. The first jury was unable to form a verdict after 46 hours of deliberations.

Next, they tried Henry Sweet, Ossian's younger brother, who had admitted to actually firing the gun. He was tried and defended again by Darrow with Detroit lawyer Thomas Chawke replacing Hays. After an initial deadlock, Darrow argued to the all-white jury: "I insist that there is nothing but prejudice in this case; that if it was reversed and eleven white men had shot and killed a black while protecting their home and their lives against a mob of blacks, nobody would have dreamed of having them indicted. They would have been given medals instead..." He was found not guilty after a deliberation of less than four hours. The prosecution then dropped the charges against the remaining defendants.

Retirement

Darrow was a very public figure, and although at 68, Darrow had announced his retirement, he still tried two of his most significant cases. He took the Scopes Trial and the Sweet trial that same year. Darrow retired from practice after that, but still was lured to return and try a few cases, such as the 1932 Massie Trial in Hawaii. He died in 1938.

Legacy

Clarence Darrow was a sensation of his times. Some said they had not seen anyone as Christ like while watching him defend those who seemed defenseless. He was not well educated, though very knowledgeable and intelligent. Few could pass the bar and become a lawyer after only one year of formal education. His persuasive powers were well known in his home town, from when he was young and defending positions his ostracized father would champion.

The times were full of questions, and the socialist and Marxists thoughts were often played out in the news, and certainly were at the heart of Darrow's earlier career. He loved Voltaire and Tolstoy, and often used poetry in his summations. His oratory is still studied today, as extremely effective and moving.

Darrow once said, "Inside every lawyer is the wreck of a poet." 2 Edgar Lee Masters, who authored the classic poetry anthology, "Spoon River Anthology" joined Darrow's law firm and was a friend to Darrow, though the friendship was often strained. Masters was moved to write this empathetic poem :

"Clarence Darrow"

This is Darrow, Inadequately scrawled,

with his young, old heart,

And his drawl, his infinite paradox,

And his sadness, and his kindness,

And his artist sense that drives him to shape his life

To something harmonious, even against the schemes of God. 2

In modern times, not only the question of being against the schemes of God is raised, but also questions are raised of being within the schemes of the framers of legislation. In concept, a lawyer is to help the court determine if the actions of people are within the law. Darrow was clearly not entirely concerned with exclusively that. It can be argued that it was not surprising that he was charged with bribing a jury member as he constantly used higher morals than our existing law to justify a judgment in his client's favor. One could not use these arguments in a more modern court that is prescribed within the concerns of legislation and where more power is in the hands of the judge.

Darrow promoted himself as an idealist, yet also truly humiliated another great orator of the day, Williams Jennings Bryant. Bryant and he were both Democrats and both ran for political office. Bryant offered Darrow a position on his ticket, but Darrow refused. Yet, he spared him no quarter. It seemed really more for the glory of Darrow than for the case. When asked if he thought Bryant had died of a broken heart, Darrow replied "No, he died of a busted belly." Hardly the humanitarian he had built himself up to be in hie earlier years.

When Darrow was dropped from the labor unions, he became bitter. He had a big brain, a restless heart and a lazy streak. His enormous talent for rhetoric covered any need for diligent study, as needed today with incredible tax laws and UCC codes. He was able to re-invent himself as a notable criminal lawyer. The phenomena that was Darrow, the celebrity attorney, could not be replicated in a more modern time. He was truly mythologized in an innocent way, the public overlooked his transgressions like no celebrity lawyer in modern times.

Darrow was a signal for America to grow up, out of emotionalism and into proficiency. His passage from "Christ like" to cynical was a mirror of the need within the United States to find deeper ethics. His passage pre-dated the entrance of the United States into World War II, where moral issues were clarified for the American public.

Books By Darrow

• "Farmington," Chicago in 1903 by McClurg and Company. Darrow's boyhood reminiscences
• The papers of Clarence Darrow are located at the Riesenfeld Rare Books Research Center of the University of Minnesota Law School.

Darrow shared offices with Edgar Lee Masters, who achieved more fame for his poetry, in particular the Spoon River Anthology, than for his advocacy. Darrow also took Eugene V. Debs as a partner, following his release from prison.

Works About Darrow

• Inherit the Wind ISBN: 0345466276 Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee, The Scopes Monkey trial, fictionalized
• Darrow ISBN: 0385266898 Irving Stone, a full-length one man play was created post humorously,featuring Darrow's reminiscences about his career. Originated by Henry Fonda, many actors, including Leslie Nielsen, have since taken on the role of Darrow in this play.

References

ISBN links support NWE through referral fees

1 http://info.detnews.com/history/story/index.cfm?id=201&category=events

2 http://www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/DARESY.HTM

• Clarence Darrow biography by Judge Alfred W. Mackey
• "The Story of My Life", Clarence Darrow
• "Clarence Darrow For The Defense". Stone, Irving (1941). Doubleday, Doran & Company, Inc.

External links

• The Clarence Darrow Home Page
• Leopold and Loeb.com
• Attorney for the Damned - or just Another Damned Attorney?
• http://www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/haywood/HAYWOOD.HTM The Trial of Bill Haywood] - detailed account of the Bill Haywood murder trial
• Works by Clarence Darrow. Project Gutenberg

• 'I have to die a man or live a coward'
• Ossian Sweet House
• Key figures in the Sweet trials
• Article at crime library.com on the Sweet trials
• Clarence Darrow (1857-1938) by Doug Linder (2004)

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