Clarence Darrow: Attorney for the Damned
So said Clarence Darrow, while he was on trial for bribing a juror. He would escape prison, and go on to become a great folk hero. Even over 70 years after his death, he is still the most renowned trial attorney in U.S. history. John A. Farrell, in his book Clarence Darrow: Attorney for the Damned, has crammed a lot of information into a very lucid, entertaining, and intriguing book.
Farrell corrects a lot of false information that had been floating around, stemming from a purposely evasive autobiography by the man himself, and a biography by Irving Stone that was overseen by Darrow's widow. Farrell's book is warts and all--for example, he is certain that Darrow did have a hand in bribing that juror, believing that he would do anything to save a client's life.
Darrow was born in Ohio, but soon left for the bright lights of Chicago: "Small-town Ohio could not hold him and so he had come to Chicago, to the flickering gaslight, the smoke and cinder, the clamor and hoot and honk of that most American city." But it wasn't a love affair; Darrow wrote, "Chicago is a pocket edition of hell, and if it is not, then hell is a pocket edition of Chicago."
At first he was a corporate lawyer, working for a railroad. But patronage by the governor, Joseph Altgeld, and a rebellious itch, led him to taking controversial clients, such as Patrick Prendergast, who assassinated the mayor of Chicago. Darrow would lose this case, and Prendergast would go to the gallows, but more victories than losses would come along.
Darrow was ahead of his time on most issues. He was a Democrat, but also very forward-thinking when it came to race. He was an atheist, and he believed in free love. He had two wives, but many more mistresses. He could be cantankerous and was hated by many: "Darrow was 'an infidel, a misanthrope, a revolutionist, a hater of the rich, a condemner of the educated and the polite, a hopeless cynic,' said the New York Sun."
Darrow represented radicals like Eugene Debs, labor leader Big Bill Haywood, and the bombers in the Los Angeles Times bombing of 1910 (that was the case in which he was indicted for bribery). He would become the main spokesman for the labor movement, although they were disenchanted when they urged the bombers, the McNamara brothers, to plead guilty in exchange for not having to face the death penalty.
He would represent all sorts of mobsters during the roaring '20s in Chicago, and become quite wealthy, although his son, through imprudent investment, lost most of in the stock market crash. But during the '20s Darrow, then in his 60s, would try some of the most famous cases in U.S. history, each of which has enough story for their own books.
The names still inspire curiosity: Leopold and Loeb, The Scopes Monkey Trial, Ossian Sweet. "Of the infamous villains who Darrow defended, none were so patently evil in the eyes of Americans as the teen-aged killers Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb. They were spoiled geniuses--rich kids who claimed no God but Self and insisted, by virtue of their intellectual primacy, on living free from any moral code. They were homosexuals. They were Jews. They kidnapped and murdered a child...They did it, they said, for the thrill...Leopold and Loeb were truly heartless fiends."
But Darrow took their case, hired by their rich parents. They pleaded guilty, and the fireworks came in the sentencing portion of the trial, when Darrow and the district attorney argued whether the boys would be executed. Darrow used emotion, but also precedent--at that time, they were considered underage (under 21) and never had a minor been executed in Illinois. Darrow saved their lives.
"From its inception, the Scopes trial was conceived and promoted and staged as a circus stunt. No one presumed that a Dayton jury would have the final say on the matter. All agreed that John Scopes, a twenty-four-year-old high school science teacher who was summoned to Robinson's pharmacy from a nearby tennis court and coaxed to stand trial, would be found guilty--giving the ACLU a martyr whose conviction it could take to a higher court." Thus, Farrell says, it was not a case of righteous indignation. But it turned into a circus when William Jennings Bryan, presidential candidate (Darrow supported him in those days) and former Secretary of State, turned Biblical scholar, came to town to work with the prosecution. In blistering heat, Darrow put Bryan on the stand and caught him in several contradictions and errors in the Bible (such as, who was Cain's wife?). Though Scopes lost and was fined a modest sum, later overturned on technicality, Bryan was ruined, and died five days after the trial ended.
The Sweet case is not as famous, but nonetheless important. Ossian Sweet, a black doctor living in Detroit, bought a house in a white-only neighborhood. A mob formed to drive him out, throwing rocks. The Sweet family fired shots in response, and a man was killed. They were put on trial, and Darrow represented them: "I believe the life of the Negro race has been a life of tragedy, of injustice, of oppression. The law had made him equal, but man has not...I know there is a long road ahead of him, before he can take the place which I believe he should take."
Darrow would get the Sweets off. By now he was a folk hero. A line in Ben Hecht's popular play The Front Page has a character in legal trouble shouting, "Get me Darrow!" Crowds gathered to hear his courtroom theatrics. He didn't appear polished--his hair was uncombed, his suit rumpled, his thumbs would flick at his suspenders--but he was a consummate actor, giving closing arguments that could last two days, tears streaming down his face.
His last major case was a smudge on his record, defending people who committed an "honor killing," shooting to death the man accused of raping a white woman. The man killed was Hawaiian, and he was not guilty. Darrow, despite protests, took the case, because "he told himself...he might bring healing to the troubled islands. And because he had always wanted to see Hawaii. But most of all he took the case because he needed the money."
So, in the ultimate analysis, Darrow was a liberal hero, but he was no saint. But despite his faults, his place in the pantheon of legal stars is assured, and Farrell's book is a wonderful document of it.
Comments
Post a Comment