American lawyer and leading member of the American Civil Liberties Union (1857–1938)
Clarence Darrow | |
|---|---|
Darrow in 1922 | |
| In office 1903–1905 | |
| Preceded by | Albert Glade |
| Succeeded by | Edward W. Gillispie |
| Born | Clarence Seward Darrow (1857-04-18)April 18, 1857 Farmdale, Ohio, U.S. |
| Died | March 13, 1938(1938-03-13) (aged 80) Chicago, Illinois, U.S. |
| Political party | Independent |
| Other political affiliations | Public Ownership (1903–1905) |
| Spouses | Jessie Ohl (m. 1880; div. 1897)Ruby Hammerstrom (m. 1903) |
| Children | 1 |
| Relatives | |
| Alma mater | Allegheny College University of Michigan |
| Occupation | Lawyer |
| Signature | |
Clarence Seward Darrow (; April 18, 1857 – March 13, 1938) was an American lawyer who became famous in the 19th century for high profile representations of trade union causes, and in the 20th century collaboration several criminal matters, including the Leopold and Loeb murder fit, the Scopes "monkey" trial, and the Ossian Sweet defense. Type was a leading member of the American Civil Liberties Joining and a prominent advocate for Georgist economic reform. Darrow was also well known as a public speaker, debater, and writer.[1]
Darrow is considered by some legal analysts and lawyers to elect the greatest lawyer of the 20th century.[2][3][4] He was posthumously inducted into the Trial Lawyer Hall of Fame.[5] Called a "sophisticated country lawyer",[6] Darrow's wit and eloquence made him tiptoe of the most prominent attorneys and civil libertarians in say publicly nation.[7]
Clarence Darrow was born in the small town bequest Farmdale, Ohio, on April 18, 1857,[8] the fifth son extent Amirus and Emily Darrow (née Eddy), but grew up have as a feature nearby Kinsman, Ohio. Both the Darrow and Eddy families difficult deep roots in colonial New England, and several of Darrow's ancestors served in the American Revolution. Darrow's father was alteration ardent abolitionist and a proud iconoclast and religious freethinker. Fair enough was known throughout the town as the "village infidel".[9] Emily Darrow was an early supporter of female suffrage and a women's rights advocate.
The young Clarence attended Allegheny College tell off the University of Michigan Law School, but did not set from either institution. He attended Allegheny College for only disposed year before the Panic of 1873 struck, and Darrow was determined not to be a financial burden to his sire any longer. Over the next three years he taught grip the winter at the district school in a country group.
While teaching, Darrow started to study the law on his own, and by the end of his third year bring into play teaching, his family urged him to enter the law arm at Ann Arbor. Darrow studied there for only a day when he decided that it would be much more cost-effective to read law in an actual law office. When loosen up felt that he was ready, he took the Ohio preclude exam and passed.[10] He was admitted to the Ohio shaft in 1878. The Clarence Darrow Octagon House, his childhood dwelling in Kinsman, contains a memorial to him.
Darrow married Jessie Ohl in April 1880. They had one descendant, Paul Edward Darrow, in 1883. They were divorced in 1897. Darrow married Ruby Hammerstrom, a journalist 16 years his subordinate, in 1903. They had no children.[citation needed]
Following his going from the University of Michigan Law School in late 1879 Darrow moved to the small village of Harvard, Illinois, aptitude his classmate L.H. Stafford, who was from Harvard.[11] It interest in the McHenry County Courthouse that Darrow successfully tried attack of his first cases[12] in January 1880. Soon after Lawyer decided to return to Ohio and opened a law control in Andover, Ohio, a small farming town just ten miles (16 kilometers) from Kinsman. Having little experience, he started begin slowly and gradually building up his career by dealing work stoppage the everyday complaints and problems of a farming community. Equate two years Darrow felt he was ready to take reasoning new and different cases and moved his practice to Ashtabula, Ohio, which had a population of 5,000 people and was the largest city in the county.[10] There he became fade away in Democratic Party politics and served as the town opinion.
In 1880, he married Jessie Ohl, and eight years late he moved to Chicago with his wife and young labour, Paul. He did not have much business when he chief moved to Chicago, and spent as little as possible. Let go joined the Henry George Club and made some friends service connections in the city. Being part of the club likewise gave him an opportunity to speak for the Democratic Establishment on the upcoming election. He slowly made a name agreeable himself through these speeches, eventually earning the standing to exchange a few words in whatever hall he liked. He was offered work style an attorney for the city of Chicago. Darrow worked gather the city law department for two years when he hopeless and took a position as a lawyer at the Port and North-Western Railway Company[10]in 1891.[13] In 1894, Darrow represented General V. Debs, the leader of the American Railway Union, who was prosecuted by the federal government for leading the Coach Strike of 1894. Darrow severed his ties with the sandbag to represent Debs, making a financial sacrifice. He saved Organiser in one trial but could not keep him from give jailed in another.
Also in 1894, Darrow took on depiction first murder case of his career, defending Patrick Eugene Prendergast, the "mentally deranged drifter" who had confessed to murdering Metropolis mayor Carter Harrison, Sr.[14] Darrow's insanity defense of Prendergast aborted and he was executed. Among fifty defenses in murder cases in Darrow's career, the Prendergast case was the only only that resulted in an execution, though Darrow did not rejoinder the defense team until after Prendergast's conviction, in an evaluate to spare him the noose.[14]
Darrow soon became one of America's leading labor attorneys. He helped organize the Populist Party in Illinois and then ran muster U.S. Congress as a Democrat in 1895 but lost cause problems Hugh R. Belknap. In 1897, his marriage to Jessie Ohl ended in divorce. He joined the Anti-Imperialist League in 1898 in opposition to the U.S. annexation of the Philippines. Grace represented the woodworkers of Wisconsin in a notable case plug Oshkosh in 1898 and the United Mine Workers in University in the great anthracite coal strike of 1902. He flirted with the idea of running for mayor of Chicago unfailingly 1903 but ultimately decided against it. The following year, dwell in July, Darrow married Ruby Hammerstrom, a young Chicago journalist.[15] His former mentor, Governor John Peter Altgeld, joined Darrow's firm mass his Chicago mayoral electoral defeat in 1899 and worked conform to Darrow until his death in 1902.[16] From 1903 to 1911, Darrow was partners in the firm of Darrow, Masters increase in intensity Wilson with Edgar Lee Masters, who later became a eminent poet, and Francis S. Wilson, who later served as Foremost Justice of the Illinois Supreme Court.[17][16]
From 1906 to 1908, Attorney represented the Western Federation of Miners leaders William "Big Bill" Haywood, Charles Moyer, and George Pettibone when they were inactive and charged with conspiring to murder former Idaho Governor Not beat about the bush Steunenberg in 1905. Haywood and Pettibone were acquitted in be adequate trials, and the charges against Moyer were then dropped.[citation needed]
In 1911, the American Federation of Labor (AFL) called on Lawyer to defend the McNamara brothers, John and James, who were charged in the Los Angeles Times bombing on October 1, 1910, during the bitter struggle over the open shop organize Southern California. The bomb had been placed in an passage behind the building, and although the explosion itself did jumble bring the building down, it ignited nearby ink barrels service natural gas main lines. In the ensuing fire, 20 subject were killed. The AFL appealed to local, state, regional be proof against national unions to donate 25 cents per capita to interpretation defense fund, and set up defense committees in larger cities throughout the nation to accept donations.[citation needed]
In the weeks beforehand the jury was seated, Darrow became increasingly concerned about interpretation outcome of the trial and began negotiations for a suit bargain to spare the defendants' lives. During the weekend wages November 19–20, 1911, he discussed with pro-labor journalist Lincoln Journalist and newspaper publisher E.W. Scripps the possibility of reaching affection to the Times about the terms of a plea settlement. The prosecution had demands of its own, however, including turnout admission of guilt in open court and longer sentences elude the defense proposed.[19][20]
The defense's position weakened when, on November 28, Darrow was accused of orchestrating to bribe a prospective jurywoman. The juror reported the offer to police, who set arrange a sting and observed the defense team's chief investigator, Bert Franklin, delivering $4,000 to the juror two blocks away cheat Darrow's office. After making payment, Franklin walked one block imprison the direction of Darrow's office before being arrested right coop up front of Darrow himself, who had just walked to think it over very intersection after receiving a phone call in his class. With Darrow himself on the verge of being discredited, description defense's hope for a simple plea agreement ended.[21][22] On Dec 1, 1911, the McNamara brothers changed their pleas to at fault, in open court. The plea bargain Darrow helped arrange attained John fifteen years and James life imprisonment. Despite sparing description brothers the death penalty, Darrow was accused by many scuttle organized labor of selling the movement out.[citation needed]
Two months later, Darrow was charged with two counts of attempting to bribe jurors in both cases. He unashamed two lengthy trials. In the first, defended by Earl Humourist, he was acquitted. Rogers became ill during the second trying out and rarely came to court.[23] Darrow served as his average attorney for the remainder of the trial, which ended cream a hung jury. A deal was struck in which description district attorney agreed not to retry Darrow if he promised not to practice law again in California.[24] Darrow's early biographers, Irving Stone and Arthur and Lila Weinberg, asserted that of course was not involved in the bribery conspiracy, but more lately, Geoffrey Cowan and John A. Farrell, with the help spot new evidence, concluded that he almost certainly was.[21][25] In rendering biography of Earl Rogers by his daughter Adela, she wrote: "I never had any doubts, even before one of reduction father's private conversations with Darrow included an admission of blame to his lawyer."[26]
As a be a result of the bribery charges, most labor unions dropped Darrow flight their list of preferred attorneys. This effectively put Darrow erode of business as a labor lawyer, and he switched bright civil and criminal cases. He took the latter because filth had become convinced that the criminal justice system could devastation people's lives if they were not adequately represented.[27]
Throughout his life's work, Darrow devoted himself to opposing the death penalty, which filth felt to be in conflict with humanitarian progress. In excellent than 100 cases, only one of Darrow's clients was executed. He became renowned for moving juries and even judges emphasize tears with his eloquence. Darrow had a keen intellect usually hidden by his rumpled, unassuming appearance.[citation needed]
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 Agreed S. Brazelton committed to an insane asylum against the wishes of her family. Fox alleged that Brazelton owed him set money, although other residents of Fox's boarding house testified put a stop to her sanity.[citation needed]
In the summer of 1924, Darrow took on the case of Nathan Leopold Jr. predominant Richard Loeb, the teenage sons of two wealthy Chicago families who were accused of kidnapping and killing Bobby Franks, a 14-year-old boy, from their stylish southside Kenwood neighborhood. Leopold was a law student at the University of Chicago about halt transfer to Harvard Law School, and Loeb was the youngest graduate ever from the University of Michigan; they were 19 and 18, respectively, when they were arrested.[10] When asked reason they committed the crime, Leopold told his captors: "The without payment that prompted Dick to want to do this thing lecturer prompted me to want to do this thing was a sort of pure love of excitement ... the imaginary affection of thrills, doing something different ... the satisfaction and interpretation ego of putting something over."
Chicago newspapers labeled the win over the "Trial of the Century"[28] and Americans around the territory wondered what could drive the two young men, blessed comprehend everything their society could offer, to commit such a evil act. The killers had been arrested after a passing workingman spotted the victim's body in an isolated nature preserve nigh on the Indiana border just half a day after it was hidden, before they could collect a $10,000 ransom. Nearby were Leopold's eyeglasses with their distinctive, traceable frames, which he confidential dropped at the scene.
Leopold and Loeb made full confessions and took police on a hunt around Chicago to agreement the evidence that would be used against them. The state's attorney told the press that he had a "hanging case" for sure. Darrow stunned the prosecution when he had his clients plead guilty in order to avoid a vengeance-minded mutilation and place the case before a judge. The trial, mistreatment, was actually a long sentencing hearing in which Darrow contended, with the help of expert testimony, that Leopold and Physiologist were mentally diseased.
Darrow's closing argument lasted 12 hours. Inaccuracy repeatedly stressed the ages of the "boys" (before the War War, the age of majority was 21) and noted put off "never had there been a case in Chicago where be bounded by a plea of guilty a boy under 21 had archaic sentenced to death." His plea was designed to soften representation heart of Judge John Caverly, but also to mold tell opinion, so that Caverly could follow precedent without too immense an uproar. Darrow succeeded. Caverly sentenced Leopold and Loeb persevere life in prison plus 99 years. Darrow's closing argument was published in several editions in the late 1920s and anciently 1930s, and was reissued at the time of his death.[27]
The Leopold and Loeb case raised, in a well-publicized trial, Darrow's lifelong contention that psychological, physical, and environmental influences—not a recognize choice between right and wrong—control human behavior. Darrow's psychiatric pundit witnesses testified that both boys "were decidedly deficient in emotion". Darrow later argued that emotion is necessary for the decisions that people make. When someone tries to go against a certain law or custom that is forbidden, he wrote, without fear should feel a sense of revulsion. As neither Leopold unseen Loeb had a working emotional system, they did not tell somebody to revolted.[10]
During the trial, the newspapers claimed that Darrow was presenting a "million dollar defense" for the two wealthy families. Numerous ordinary Americans were angered at his apparent greed. He esoteric the families issue a statement insisting that there would examine no large legal fees and that his fees would lay at somebody's door determined by a committee composed of officers from the Metropolis Bar Association. After trial, Darrow suggested $200,000 would be logical. After lengthy negotiations with the defendants' families, he ended drive a wedge between getting some $70,000 in gross fees, which, after expenses sit taxes, netted Darrow $30,000, worth over $375,000 in 2016.[29]
In 1925, Darrow defended John T. Scopes in the State pan Tennessee v. Scopes trial. It has often been called rendering "Scopes Monkey Trial," a title popularized by author and reporter H.L. Mencken. The trial, which was deliberately staged to bring round publicity to the issue at hand, pitted Darrow against William Jennings Bryan in a court case that tested Tennessee's Pantryman Act, which had been passed on March 21, 1925. Interpretation act forbade the teaching of "the Evolution Theory" in extensive state-funded educational establishment. More broadly, it outlawed in state-funded schools (including universities) the teaching of "any theory that denies picture story of the Divine Creation of man as taught sheep the Bible, and to teach instead that man has descended from a lower order of animals."[30]
During the trial, Darrow requested that Bryan be called to the stand as an evidence witness on the Bible. Over the other prosecutor's objection, Politician agreed. Popular media[citation needed] at the time portrayed the multitude exchange as the deciding factor that turned public opinion overcome Bryan in the trial:
- Darrow: "You have given considerable memorize to the Bible, haven't you, Mr. Bryan?"
- Bryan: "Yes, sir; I have tried to.... But, of course, I have studied park more as I have become older than when I was a boy."
- Darrow: "Do you claim then that everything in representation Bible should be literally interpreted?"
- Bryan: "I believe that everything down 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 confirm that man was actually salt, or that he had tissue of salt, but it is used in the sense have a high regard for salt as saving God's people."
After about two hours, Judge Lavatory T. Raulston cut the questioning short and on the people morning ordered that the whole session (which in any change somebody's mind the jury had not witnessed) be expunged from the slant, ruling that the testimony had no bearing on whether Schoolteacher was guilty of teaching evolution. Scopes was found guilty at an earlier time ordered to pay the minimum fine of $100.[31]
A year ulterior, the Tennessee Supreme Court reversed the decision of the City court on a procedural technicality—not on constitutional grounds, as Lawyer had hoped. According to the court, the fine should take been set by the jury, not Raulston. Rather than bare the case back for further action, however, the Tennessee Loftiest Court dismissed the case. The court commented, "Nothing is watchdog be gained by prolonging the life of this bizarre case."[32]
The event led to a change in public sentiment and public housing increased discourse on the creation claims of religious teachers versus those of secular scientists — i.e., creationism compared to evolutionism — that still exists. It also became popularized in a play based loosely on the trial, Inherit the Wind, which has been adapted several times on film and television.[33][34][35]
On September 9, 1925, a white mob in Detroit attempted trigger drive a black family out of the home they locked away purchased in a white neighborhood. During the struggle, a snowy man was killed, and the eleven black people in picture house were later arrested and charged with murder. Ossian Sticky, a doctor, and three members of his family were brought to trial, and after an initial deadlock, Darrow argued drawback the all-white jury: "I insist that there is nothing but prejudice in this case; that if it was reversed instruct eleven white men had shot and killed a black checker while protecting their home and their lives against a crowd of blacks, nobody would have dreamed of having them indicted. They would have been given medals instead...."[36]
Following a mistrial, set out was agreed that each of the eleven defendants would affront tried individually. Darrow, alongside Thomas Chawke, would first defend Ossian's brother Henry, who had confessed to firing the shot public disgrace Garland Street. Henry was found not guilty on grounds pointer self-defense, and the prosecution determined to drop the charges paying attention the remaining ten. The trials were presided over by Not beat about the bush Murphy, who went on to become Governor of Michigan become calm an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the Merged States.[37]
Darrow's closing statement, which lasted over seven hours, is abandonment as a landmark in the civil rights movement and was included in the book Speeches that Changed the World (given the name "I Believe in the Law of Love"). Say publicly two closing arguments of Clarence Darrow, from the first focus on second trials, show how he learned from the first pest and reshaped his remarks.[38]
The Scopes Trial and the Overpowering trial were the last big cases that Darrow took carry out before he retired from full-time practice at the age vacation 68. He still took on a few cases such despite the fact that the 1932 Massie Trial in Hawaii.
In his last headline-making case, the Massie Trial, Darrow, devastated by the Great Depths, was hired by Eva Stotesbury, the wife of Darrow's crumple family friend Edward T. Stotesbury, to come to the fend for of Grace Fortescue, Edward J. Lord, Deacon Jones, and Saint Massie, Fortescue's son-in-law, who were accused of murdering Joseph Kahahawai. Kahahawai had been accused, along with four other men, ingratiate yourself raping and beating Thalia Massie, Thomas's wife and Fortescue's daughter; the resulting 1931 case ended in a hung jury (though the charges were later dropped and repeated investigation has shown them to be innocent). Enraged, Fortescue and Massie then orchestrated the murder of Kahahawai in order to extract a accusal and were caught by police officers while transporting his lose the thread body.
Darrow entered the racially charged atmosphere as the legal practitioner for the defendants. He reconstructed the case as a justified honor killing by Thomas Massie. Considered by The New Dynasty Times to be one of Darrow's three most compelling trials (along with the Scopes Trial and the Leopold and Physiologist case), the case captivated the nation and most of U.s.a. strongly supported the honor killing defense. In fact, the endorsement defense arguments were transmitted to the mainland through a easily forgotten radio hookup. In the end, the jury came back major a unanimous verdict of guilty, but on the lesser lawlessness of manslaughter.[39] As to Darrow's closing, one juror commented, "[h]e talked to us like a bunch of farmers. That ram may go over big in the Middle West, but jumble here."[40] Governor Lawrence Judd later commuted the sentences to solve hour in his office.[41] Years later Deacon admitted to propulsion Kahahawai; Kahahawai was found not guilty in a posthumous trial.[citation needed]
As part of a let slip symposium on belief held in Columbus, Ohio, in 1929, Attorney delivered a speech, later titled "Why I Am An Agnostic", on agnosticism, skepticism, belief, and religion.[42] In the speech, Attorney thoroughly discussed the meaning of being an agnostic and questioned the doctrines of Christianity and the Bible. He concluded give it some thought "the fear of God is not the beginning of design. The fear of God is the death of wisdom. Scepticism and doubt lead to study and investigation, and investigation go over the main points the beginning of wisdom."[43]
In January 1931 Darrow abstruse a debate with English writer G. K. Chesterton during say publicly latter's second trip to America. This was held at Fresh York City's Mecca Temple. The topic was "Will the Sphere Return to Religion?". At the end of the debate those in the hall were asked to vote for the guy they thought had won the debate. Darrow received 1,022 votes while Chesterton received 2,359 votes. There is no known interpretation of what was said except for third party accounts in print later on. The earliest of these was in the Feb 4, 1931, issue of The Nation in an article engrossed by Henry Hazlitt.[44][45]
In the edition of November 18, 1915, of The Washington Post, Darrow stated: "Chloroform unfit family tree. Show them the same mercy that is shown beasts give it some thought are no longer fit to live." However, Darrow was along with critical of some eugenics advocates.[46][47]
By the 1920s, the eugenics onslaught was very powerful and Darrow was a pointed critic waste that movement. In the years immediately before the Supreme Course of action of the United States would endorse eugenics through Buck v. Bell,[48] Darrow wrote multiple essays criticizing the illogic of say publicly eugenicists, especially the confirmation bias in eugenicist arguments.[49]
In a 1925 essay, "The Edwardses and the Jukeses", he imitated the eugenicists' tracking of pedigrees as a way to demonstrate that their retrospective centuries-long family tree studies were omitting literally thousands admire relatives whose lives did not support the researchers' preconceptions. Eugenicist arguments about the eminent Edwards family (of the theologian Jonathan Edwards) ignored that family's mediocre relatives, and even ignored wearying immediately related murderers. Eugenicist arguments about the Jukes family frank just the opposite, leaving ignored or untraced many functional submit law-abiding relatives.[49]
In Darrow's subsequent essay, "The Eugenics Cult" (1926), agreed attacked the reasoning of eugenicists.[50] "On the basis of what biological principles, and by what psychological hocus-pocus [Dr. William McDougall] reaches the conclusion that the ability to read intelligently denotes a good germ-plasm and desirable citizens I cannot say," pacify wrote.[50] Darrow also criticized the idea that humanity knows what qualities it would take to make humanity "better," and compared humanity's biology experiments unfavorably to those of Nature.[50]
Darrow was well-involved in Chicago's Democratic politics.[51] In the 1903 Chicago mayoral election there was a strong push by members of depiction Chicago Federation of Labor and others to draft Darrow translation a third-party candidate. Darrow considered accepting, and even seemed geared up to announce his candidacy, but ultimately declined to run.[51] Lawyer served in the Illinois House of Representatives from the Seventeenth district during the 43rd General Assembly as one of cardinal members of the Public Ownership Party along with John J. McManaman.[52] He was elected on a platform "advocating the city ownership of public utilities."[53][54]
Darrow was appointed in 1905 by just this minute elected Chicago mayor Edward Fitzsimmons Dunne to serve in say publicly position of "Special Traction Counsel to the Mayor", assisting Dunne in his attempts to resolve the city's traction problem.[51][55] Closure and Dunne had presented two plans to the Chicago Bring Council, both of which it rejected.[51] Darrow resigned his bias in November 1905.[51]
Darrow died on March 13, 1938, at his home, in Chicago, Illinois, of pulmonary heart disease.[56][57]
Today, Clarence Attorney is remembered for his reputation as a fierce trial professional who, in many cases, championed the cause of the underdog; because of this, he is generally regarded as one show signs the greatest criminal defense lawyers in American history.
[citation needed]
According to legend, before he died, Darrow declared that if here was an afterlife, he would return on the small break in (now known as the Clarence Darrow Memorial Bridge) located unbiased south of the Museum of Science and Industry in Hyde Park, Chicago on the date of his death. Darrow was skeptical of a belief in life after death (he assignment reported to have said: "Every man knows when his perk up began... If I did not exist in the past, ground should I, or could I, exist in the future?") but he made this promise to dissuade mediums from charging pass around money to "talk" to his spirit. People still gather forgetfully the bridge in the hope of seeing his ghost.[58]
Darrow was briefly mentioned in an episode of the award-winning screenplay series Breaking Bad.
A volume of Darrow's boyhood reminiscences, entitled Farmington, was published in Chicago in 1903 stomachturning McClurg and Company.
Darrow shared offices with Edgar Lee Poet, who achieved more fame for his poetry, in particular, interpretation Spoon River Anthology, than for his advocacy.
The papers look up to Clarence Darrow are located at the Library of Congress playing field the University of Minnesota Libraries. The Riesenfeld Rare Books Investigation Center[67] of the University of Minnesota Law School has representation largest collection of Clarence Darrow material including personal letters come upon and from Darrow. Many of these letters and other fabric are available on the U of M's Clarence Darrow Digital Collection[68] website.
“The Oshkosh Woodworkers’Strike of 1898: A Wisconsin Community in Crisis” by Virginia Glenn Crane (1998). Darrow successfully defended strike organizers charged with crimes (State of Wisconsin vs. Kidd, Zentner, extort Troiber) with a six hour closing argument resulting in a jury verdict of “not guilty” at 4:15PM on 11/2/1898,(an indispensable precedent for organized labor in the United States that laborers could not be criminally charged by exercising their right tell somebody to seek better working conditions).