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DARROW, CLARENCE 1857-1938

DEFENSE ATTORNEY

A Famous Trial Lawyer

Clarence Darrow represented more than fifty people charged with first-degree murder, and only one of these clients, his first, was executed. His defense of radical union leaders such as Eugene V. Debs and William "Big Bill" Haywood and antiwar activists during World War I earned him a reputation as a champion of labor and the rights of individuals before he gained worldwide renown as a defense lawyer during the 1920s.

Background

Born in Ohio, Clarence Darrow was admitted to the bar in 1878 and spent all his lengthy legal career in Chicago, Illinois. By 1898 he belonged to a busy law firm that included a former Illinois governor, John Peter Altgeld. Darrow's first successes came in civil cases, in which he usually represented major corporate clients such as the Chicago & North Western Railway. In 1894 he took his first major criminal case, serving as an appeals lawyer for a convicted murderer, Robert Prendergast. The appeal was denied, and Prendergast was hanged on schedule.

Labor Lawyer

The widespread economic suffering during a major business depression in the 1890s caused Darrow to doubt the viability of capitalism. He also became interested in labor law. In 1894 he severed his business connections to defend Debs and other union organizers on trial for their roles in the Pullman Strike. By 1903 Darrow had joined the Social Democratic Party, and in 1907 he defended William "Big Bill" Haywood, president of the Western Federation of Miners, against the charge of conspiring to murder Gov. Franklin A. Stennenburg of Idaho. Although matched against the formidable orator Sen. William E. Borah, who served as prosecutor, Darrow gained an acquittal for Heywood.

World War I

In April 1917 Darrow supported the entry of the United States into World War I. Within six months, though, he came to believe that the American military intervention had been a tragic mistake, and he agreed to defend several antiwar dissidents under indictment for violating various state sedition laws.

Fame

Before the 1920s Darrow's renown was confined to the Midwest. Although his oratorical abilities were well known to his colleagues, his skills as a criminal trial lawyer were not widely recognized. That situation changed in 1924, when Darrow's strong opposition to capital punishment led him to take on the case of Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb, who had confessed to the murder of a fourteen-year-old boy. Darrow insisted that his clients plead guilty, and the sensational press coverage of the trial earned him widespread acclaim when he succeed in securing life terms for Leopold and Loeb by using the relatively new defense of insanity. Over the next few years Darrow was transformed into an American icon, enhancing his reputation by his performance in two subsequent cases.

The Scopes "Monkey" Trial

In 1925, motivated by abiding commitments to science and freedom of thought, Darrow readily agreed to defend John T. Scopes, a high-school science teacher who had been arrested for violating a Tennessee law barring the teaching of evolution in the public schools. The eloquent William Jennings Bryan, who was helping the prosecution, was no match for Darrow, and though a conservative Tennessee jury found Scopes guilty, Darrow clearly won the case in the court of public opinion.

The Sweet Trials

In 1925-1926 Darrow represented members of an African American family, the Sweets, who were on trial for murder in connection with their use of force to resist a white mob seeking to drive them from their home in a white neighborhood of Detroit. State prosecutors proved no legal match for Darrow. The Sweet case brought Darrow further renown for his formidable courtroom abilities and publicized his strong support for the civil rights of African Americans.

Later Years

In 1928, at the age of seventy, Darrow formally withdrew from active practice, but he periodically accepted cases that he found challenging. By the 1930s he had long since severed all ties with the Social Democrats, and in 1932 he supported the successful presidential candidacy of Franklin D. Roosevelt. Two years later Roosevelt appointed him chairman of a commission to analyze the effectiveness of the industrial codes established by the National Recovery Administration. This assignment provided Darrow with his final moment in the public spotlight. In March 1938 he died of heart disease at his home in Chicago.