Darrow, Clarence

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Clarence Darrow

Born April 18, 1857 (Kinsman, Ohio) Died March 13, 1938 (Chicago, Illinois)

Defense attorney

Clarence Darrow was an attorney who championed the fundamental principle that everyone is entitled to a fair trial in a court of law. He promoted radical political and social causes and secured his place in history by opposing governmental and religious limits on individual freedom. Darrow helped sway public opinion toward tolerance of organized labor with the right of working people to unionize.

A lifelong opponent of the death penalty, he was an active member of the Amnesty Association, an organization formed to seek death row pardons (release from prison or legal responsibility for a convicted offense) for inmates who had not yet been executed for capital crimes. The Clarence Darrow Death Penalty Defense College is part of the University of Michigan Law School in Ann Arbor in the early twenty-first century. The college teaches the skills needed for attorneys representing those who face the death penalty.

"I am pleading for a time when hatred and cruelty will not control the hearts of men. When we can learn by reason and judgment and a understanding and faith that all life is worth saving, and that mercy is the highest attribute of man."

As a courtroom speaker, Darrow was one of the first to favor plain words over the rhetoric, or flowery speech, used by most lawyers of the time. His realist style of public speaking was widely imitated by attorneys who admired his innovative
techniques of selecting jurors, interrogating hostile witnesses, and making closing arguments. Darrow's presentation skills have rarely been equaled. Building his legal practice with high-paying criminal cases and high-visibility causes, he was America's most famous trial attorney of the 1920s.

Early life and law career

Clarence Seward Darrow was born in 1857 in the small, rural village of Kinsman, Ohio. Born just before the American Civil War (1861–65; war in the United States between the Union [North], who was opposed to slavery, and the Confederacy [South], who was in favor of slavery), he was the fifth of eight children of Amirus and Emily Eddy Darrow. In the community where Clarence was raised, most people opposed slavery. The "underground railroad" (a secret system to help slaves escape from the South) ran directly through the area where the Darrow family lived. This early experience had a lifelong influence on Clarence and his career, making him sensitive to the problems of minorities and the oppressed.

The Darrows were hardworking but poor and Clarence attended local public schools. He went on to attend Allegheny College in Meadville, Pennsylvania, and then taught school for a short time. He studied at the University of Michigan Law School for one year and became a member of the Ohio bar (legal profession) in 1878 at the age of twenty-one. Darrow married Jessie Ohl in April 1880. The young couple moved ten miles from Kinsman to Andover, Ohio, where Clarence set up a law practice. The couple's only child, Paul Edward, was born in 1883.

Clarence and Jessie divorced in 1897 and Darrow married a journalist, Ruby Hammerstrom, in 1903. Ruby and Clarence had no children together but Darrow maintained a relationship with his son Paul throughout his life. Darrow did not like either of his given names and was not called Clarence or Seward in his adult life. Known to his friends simply as "Darrow," he was called "Dee" by his wife.

In Andover, Darrow gained a reputation as a public speaker but opportunities for law were limited. Darrow and Ruby moved to Ashtabula, Ohio, a railroad town and a Great Lakes port. In 1885 Darrow was elected to the part-time position of borough city solicitor (the chief law officer of the town). This position gave him financial security while also allowing him time to build his private practice.

During his time in Ashtabula, Darrow discovered the political writings of John Peter Altgeld (1847–1902), which would redefine his life both personally and professionally. Altgeld was a strong supporter of workers' rights and their efforts to gain better working conditions from big business. Altgeld was a superior court judge in Cook County, Illinois, who became Illinois governor in 1892. Altgeld eventually joined Darrow's law practice in 1896.

Defending organized labor in Chicago

In 1887 Darrow made the move from Ashtabula to Chicago. He struck up an immediate friendship with Altgeld who guided his new protégé's career until Darrow became the general attorney to the Chicago and Northwestern Railroad in 1891. Darrow resigned his railroad position in 1894 to defend Eugene V. Debs (1855–1926), a labor leader charged with crimes related to a strike against the Pullman Company.

The trial marked the beginning of a series of criminal cases in which Darrow defended organized labor throughout the United States. This phase of his career ended in 1911 when Darrow himself was prosecuted for jury tampering in a Los Angeles, California, murder case. After two trials against him, the prosecution ended with a hung jury (a jury unable to reach a verdict). Though Darrow was not convicted, he was not acquitted either and his reputation was severely damaged. He never worked on behalf of organized labor again. He returned to Chicago with his finances in ruin, trying to make a living in criminal defense work and rebuild his law practice.

Recovering his reputation

Through hard work, Darrow improved his reputation and took on two of his most famous cases. Both trials ran at a fever pitch in public opinion and guaranteed his place in history as a defense attorney.

The first was the Leopold and Loeb murder trial in Chicago. Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb were two eighteen-year-old college students from wealthy families who were charged with the murder of fourteen-year-old Bobby Franks. Darrow's summation (the final part of an argument) before the jury seemed as much an attempt to change public attitudes concerning the criminal justice system and the death penalty as it was an attempt to keep his clients from hanging. Darrow would save over one hundred accused murderers from execution throughout his career.

The second was the 1925 Scopes trial that debated academic freedom versus legislative control over public education (see sidebar). In the Scopes trial, Darrow defended a science teacher, John Scopes, who was charged with violating Tennessee's Anti-Evolution Law, which prohibited teaching the theory of evolution (theory introduced by Charles Darwin [1809–1882] that all life is related and has descended from a common ancestor) in the state's public schools.

Although Darrow often defended wealthy or privileged individuals, he is most remembered for defending those accused of crimes tied to their race or to their political beliefs, such as radical labor union leader William "Big Bill" Haywood. Darrow's beliefs were rooted in populism (representing the common person), not socialism (an economic and political system in which the government controls all production).

Darrow's emphasis on individualism (belief that the rights of individuals outweigh the needs of the state), however, often put him at odds with government programs. The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) kept a file on Darrow. A memorandum written on June 24, 1936, which can be found at the Department of Justice's Freedom of Information Act Web site, noted that Darrow was a fine example of how "unscrupulous [without moral integrity] criminal lawyers stimulate disrespect for law and influence crime conditions."

The Scopes Trial

In 1925 John T. Scopes, a twenty-four-year-old general science teacher and part-time football coach, faced charges brought by the state of Tennessee for violating its Anti-Evolution Law. William Jennings Bryan (1860–1925) was a Tennessee politician who guided the law through the state's legislature. The 1925 law made teaching the theory of human evolution in the state's public schools a misdemeanor, punishable by a maximum penalty of $500.

Although retired, Bryan joined the prosecution team to support the state's authority to control public school curriculum in the famous Scopes Trial. Clarence Darrow led a team of nationally prominent attorneys to defend Scopes's right to academic freedom in the public school system.

The lawsuit originated in the town of Dayton, Tennessee, when a copy of a newspaper arrived at the local drugstore with an American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) advertisement. The ACLU announced it was offering its services free of charge to anyone who was willing to challenge the new Tennessee anti-evolution statute. Town leaders, including the school superintendent, became convinced the publicity generated by a controversial trial might help their dwindling population, which had fallen from a high of three thousand to only eighteen hundred by 1925.

They decided to use Scopes as their test case. Two local Dayton attorneys, also friends of Scopes, agreed to prosecute. The ACLU was contacted and began their selection of a high-profile defense team for the case. The Scopes case was headline news all over America for months before it finally came to trial. Because of the controversy, public feelings ran high and the trial captured the nation's attention.

A thousand people jammed the sweltering Rhea County Courthouse on July 10,1925 for the first day of trial. Hundreds of reporters covered the eight-day event, which was broadcast live over the radio to millions of homes and filmed for newsreels. It was the first live radio broadcast from a trial courtroom.

A carnival atmosphere pervaded the town with street banners, lemonade stands, and even chimpanzees performing in a sideshow. The court itself was moved outside to a tent in the courthouse square. Two thousand people crowded in by the final day of proceedings. The highlight of the battle within the trial was the sparring between Bryan and Darrow, the two famous attorneys. Darrow had been trying to engage Bryan in a public debate over science and religion for years and welcomed the chance at the Scopes trial.

The climax of events came when Darrow cross-examined Bryan, his longtime foe, after he called him to the witness stand as an expert on religion. The dramatic cross-examination by Darrow led to a furious argument until the judge finally called a halt.

The court narrowed the legal issue to whether Scopes ever taught the theory that humans were descended from other species and not from Adam and Eve as written in the Bible. The defense agreed to this fact; they asked jurors for a conviction so they could appeal the law. The jury convicted Scopes and he was fined $100.00. William Jennings Bryan died five days after the trial ended.

Ruling in 1927, the Tennessee Supreme Court upheld the statute but overturned Scopes's conviction on a technicality and directed prosecutors not to retry him. The Scopes trial had a profound cultural impact despite its legal insignificance. It was the focus of a popular Hollywood movie Inherit the Wind (1960). In 1968 the U.S. Supreme Court, in Eppersonv. Arkansas, declared antievolution statutes to be unconstitutional as well as in violation of the constitutional separation of church and state expressed in the First Amendment.

Critic of the New Deal

Increasingly skeptical of government power, Darrow concluded his public career as a critic of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt's (1882–1945; served 1933–45) federal government programs introduced during the 1930s. Roosevelt had campaigned for president in 1932 promising a "New Deal" for the American people. The New Deal offered an unprecedented number of reforms addressing the catastrophic effects of the Great Depression (1929–41; the period, following the stock market crash in 1929, of depressed world economies and high unemployment). Congress was passing bills to relieve poverty, reduce unemployment, and speed economic recovery.

Although retired from his law practice, Darrow made national headlines when he received a presidential appointment. He was chair on a commission to study and review the operation of the National Recovery Administration (NRA) in 1934. The NRA was designed to address unemployment by regulating the number of hours worked per week and banning child labor. Despite his declining health, Darrow accepted the position because of financial difficulties.

Final days

By the 1930s Darrow still ran a small law practice when the legal profession as a whole was moving more toward the establishment of larger firms. Even though other attorneys admired his innovative techniques, Darrow was known for being unwilling to collaborate with other lawyers. Darrow became an outdated figure, respected by younger generations who had no interest in actually adopting his theories.

In failing health, Darrow was unable to find a lawyer to carry on his legal practice. His final years were spent as an invalid. He died in the Chicago apartment he and Ruby had rented for over thirty years. Darrow's career and triumphs went on to inspire many articles, books, plays, and films.