Clarence Seward Darrow (April 18, 1857 – March 13, 1938) was an American lawyer and leading member of the American Civil Liberties Union, best known for defending teenage thrill killers Leopold and Loeb in their trial for murdering 14-year-old Bobby Franks (1924) and defending John T. Scopes in the Scopes Trial (1925), in which he opposed William Jennings Bryan (statesman, noted orator, and three time presidential candidate for the Democratic Party). Called a "sophisticated country lawyer", he remains notable for his wit and agnosticism that marked him as one of the most famous American lawyers and civil libertarians.
Biography
Upbringing
Clarence Darrow was the son of Amirus Darrow and Emily (Eddy) Darrow. Both the Darrow and the Eddy families had deep roots in colonial New England, and several of Darrow's ancestors served in the American Revolution. Clarence's father was an ardent abolitionist and a proud iconoclast and religious free-thinker, known in town as the "village infidel." Emily Darrow was an early supporter of female suffrage and a women's rights advocate. Clarence attended Allegheny College and the University of Michigan Law School but did not graduate from either institution. He was admitted to the Ohio bar in 1878. The Clarence Darrow Octagon House, which was his childhood home in the small town of Kinsman, contains a memorial to him.
From corporate lawyer to labor lawyer
Darrow began his career reading law in Youngstown, Ohio, where he was first admitted to the profession by Judge Alfred W. Mackey. He opened his first practice in Andover, Ohio and then moved to Ashtabula, where he became involved in Democratic Party politics and served as the town counsel. In 1880 he married Jessie Ohl, and seven years later he moved to Chicago with his wife and young son, Paul. There, he worked for the city government as a lawyer, and made a mark for himself speaking at Democratic rallies and other speaking engagements. He was a close friend and protege of Illinois Gov. John Altgeld, and helped secure a pardon from the governor for the anarchists who were imprisoned for the Haymarket Square bombing. With Altgeld's help, Darrow became a corporate lawyer for the Chicago & Northwestern Railway Company, a major Midwestern railroad. In 1894 Darrow represented Eugene V. Debs, the leader of the American Railway Union, who was prosecuted by the federal government for leading the Pullman Strike of 1894. Darrow severed his ties with the railroad to represent Debs, making a financial sacrifice. He saved Debs in one trial, but could not keep the union leader from being jailed in another.
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. 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.
Darrow became one of America's leading labor attorneys. He helped organize the Populist Party in Illinois, then ran for Congress as Democrat in 1896, but lost. In 1897 his marriage ended in divorce. He represented the woodworkers of Wisconsin in a notable case in Oshkosh in 1898, and the United Mine Workers in Pennsylvania in the great anthracite coal strike of 1902. He flirted with the idea of running for mayor of Chicago in 1903, but ultimately decided against it. That year he married Ruby Hammerstrom, a young Chicago journalist.
From 1906 to 1908, Darrow represented the Western Federation of Miners leaders William "Big Bill" Haywood, Charles Moyer and George Pettibone when they were arrested and charged with the 1905 murder of former Idaho Gov. Frank Steunenberg. After a series of trials, Haywood and Pettibone were found not guilty and the charges were dropped against Moyer.
The American Federation of Labor then called on Darrow to defend the McNamara brothers, John and James, who were charged with dynamiting the Los Angeles Times building during the bitter struggle over the open shop in Southern California (21 employees had died as a result of the explosion). Darrow came to realize that the McNamara brothers were guilty, but worked hard to have them acquitted. With his help, they were portrayed by the AFL as heroes to American workers, who contributed their hard-earned money to a McNamara defense fund. In November, 1911, an orchestrated plot was launched by the defense to bribe jurors in the McNamara case. Darrow was at the scene of one attempted bribery, as one of his investigators was arrested handing money to one of the prospective jurors. With the case collapsing around him, Darrow convinced the brothers to change their plea to guilty. The plea bargain he helped arrange got them lengthy prison sentences instead of the death penalty, but he was accused by many in organized labor of selling the movement out. Two months later, Darrow was charged with two counts of attempting to bribe the jurors. He faced two lengthy trials. In the first, defended by Earl Rogers, he was acquitted. Rogers missed much of the second trial, and Darrow defended himself. The trial ended with a hung jury.
From labor lawyer to criminal lawyer
As a consequence of the bribery charges, most 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 civil and, most notably, 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. Darrow had a keen intellect often hidden by his rumpled, unassuming appearance.
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 the summer of 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 from their stylish Kenwood neighborhood. Nathan Leopold was 19 and Richard Loeb was 18 when they were arrested. Leopold was a law student at the University of Chicago, about to transfer to Harvard law school. Loeb was the youngest graduate ever from the University of Michigan. They were gay lovers. When asked why they committed the crime, Leopold told his captors: "The thing that prompted Dick to want to do this thing and prompted me to want to do this thing was a sort of pure love of excitement...the imaginary love of thrills, doing something different....The satisfaction and the ego of putting something over."
The Chicago newspapers labeled the case a "crime of the century," and Americans around the country wondered what could drive the two young men, blessed with everything their society could offer, to commit such a depraved act. The killers were arrested after a passing workman spotted the victim's body in an isolated nature preserve near 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 had dropped at the scene. Leopold and Loeb made full confessions, and took police on a grim hunt around Chicago to collect 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 the killers plead guilty, to avoid a vengeance-minded jury and place the case before a judge. The trial, then, was actually a long sentencing hearing in which Darrow contended, with the help of expert testimony, that Leopold and Loeb were mentally diseased.
Darrow's closing address lasted 12 hours. He repeatedly stressed the ages of the "boys," and noted that "never had there been a case in Chicago, where on a plea of guilty a boy under 21 had been sentenced to death." His famous plea was designed to soften the heart of Judge John Caverly, but also to mold public opinion, so that Caverly could follow precedent without too huge an uproar. Darrow succeeded. Caverly sentenced the killers to life plus 99 years. The Leopold and Loeb case raised, in a well-publicized trial, Darrow's lifelong contention that psychological, physical and environmental influences control human behavior - not a conscious choice between right and wrong. The public got an education in psychology and medicine and, because Leopold was an admirer, the philosophy of Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche.
During the Leopold-Loeb trial, the newspapers claimed that Darrow was presenting a "million dollar defense" for the two wealthy families. Many ordinary Americans were angered at his apparent greed. He had the families issue a statement insisting that there would be no large legal fees, and that his fees would be determined by a committee composed of officers from the Chicago Bar Association. After trial, Darrow suggested $200,000 would be reasonable. After lengthy negotiations with the defendant's families, he ended up getting some $70,000 in gross fees, which, after expenses and taxes, netted Darrow $30,000.
The Scopes Trial
<
Pro Bono Lawyers
Pro bono lawyers are lawyers who take cases for free. They can practice any type of law from ... For example, a family law attorney may want to add criminal law experience to his ...
Law.com - A Lawyer Makes Pro Bono Her Crusade
A Lawyer Makes Pro Bono Her Crusade. Wesley Yang. The American ... The family moved to America, where her parents ... of this rise to the commitment of major law firms to endorse pro bono ...
Civil Pro Bono Family Law Porject
Learn about the Issues • History of the Civil Pro Bono Family Law Project (CPB-FLP) • Facts and Stats CPB-FLP Lawyer Volunteers If you've ever questioned how you can make a ...
Pro-Bono Work - Stowe Family Law
Pro Bono. Stowe Family Law does undertake legal work, pro bono and we are ... Divorce lawyer Marilyn Stowe is the founder of Stowe Family Law LLP: one of the UK's leading family law ...
Civil Pro Bono Family Law Porject
The Civil Pro Bono Family Law Project (CPB-FLP) mission is to represent incarcerated mothers on ... Metro-area lawyers volunteer to represent incarcerated mothers in custody ...
Easing into Pro Bono - Features/Substantive Law - The Hennepin Lawyer ...
Volunteer attorney, Nicole Druckrey represents a client on a family law case before Judge Tanya Manrique
Family Law For Non-family Law Lawyers - Celebrate Pro Bono
Family Law For Non-family Law Lawyers Tuesday October 27 , 2009
Pro Bono Lawyer : Pro Bono Lawyers & Probono Lawyer
Streetdirectory.com Legal Matters Guide is an essential guide for those looking to learn more about legal issues. From property law to criminal law, family law to tax law, the ...
The Am Law Pro Bono 100 - The American Lawyer
... by stints at Am Law 200 firms, lawyers in Mexico are pioneering a pro bono ... litigants in family court, and assisting the rural poor. Methodology: How we Compute the Pro Bono Report ...
Domestic Violence/Family Law | Pro Bono | Davis Polk & Wardwell LLP
... Abely's life and the contributions of pro bono lawyers, law ... York City Family Court, our lawyers assist pro se litigants with their family law-related questions. Our lawyers ...