Following his departure from the University of Michigan Law School in late 1879 Darrow moved to the small village of
Harvard, Illinois, with his classmate L.H. Stafford, who was from Harvard. It was in the
McHenry County Courthouse that Darrow successfully tried one of his first cases in January 1880. Soon after, Darrow decided to return to Ohio and opened a law office in
Andover, Ohio, a small farming town just from Kinsman. Having little experience, he started off slowly and gradually built up his career by dealing with the everyday complaints and problems of a farming community. After two years Darrow felt he was ready to take on 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. 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 him 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 Harrison III. Darrow's insanity defense of Prendergast failed and he was executed. Among fifty defenses in murder cases in Darrow's career, the Prendergast case was the only one that resulted in an execution, though Darrow did not join the defense team until after Prendergast's conviction, in an effort to spare him the noose. Darrow flirted with the idea of running for mayor of Chicago in 1903, but he ultimately decided against it. In July of that year, he married Ruby Hammerstrom, a young Chicago journalist. From 1903 to 1911, Darrow was partners in the firm of Darrow, Masters and Wilson with
Edgar Lee Masters, who became a famous poet, and
Francis S. Wilson, who later served as Chief Justice of the Illinois Supreme Court. From 1906 through 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 conspiring to murder former Idaho Governor
Frank Steunenberg in 1905. Haywood and Pettibone were acquitted in separate trials, and the charges against Moyer were then dropped. In 1911, the
American Federation of Labor (AFL) called on Darrow 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 in Southern California. The bomb had been placed in an alley behind the building, and although the explosion itself did not bring the building down, it ignited nearby ink barrels and natural gas main lines. In the ensuing fire, 20 people were killed. The AFL appealed to local, state, regional and national unions to donate 25 cents per capita to the defense fund, and set up defense committees in larger cities throughout the nation to accept donations. In the weeks before the jury was seated, Darrow became increasingly concerned about the outcome of the trial and began negotiations for a plea bargain to spare the defendants' lives. During the weekend of November 19–20, 1911, he discussed with pro-labor journalist
Lincoln Steffens and newspaper publisher
E.W. Scripps the possibility of reaching out to the
Times about the terms of a plea agreement. The prosecution had demands of its own, however, including an admission of guilt in open court and longer sentences than the defense proposed. The defense's position weakened when, on November 28, Darrow was accused of orchestrating to bribe a prospective juror. The juror reported the offer to police, who set up a sting and observed the defense team's chief investigator, Bert Franklin, delivering $4,000 to the juror two blocks away from Darrow's office. After making payment, Franklin walked one block in the direction of Darrow's office before being arrested right in front of Darrow himself, who had just walked to that very intersection after receiving a phone call in his office. With Darrow himself on the verge of being discredited, the defense's hope for a simple plea agreement ended. On December 1, 1911, the McNamara brothers changed their pleas to guilty, in open court. The plea bargain Darrow helped arrange earned John fifteen years and James life imprisonment. Despite sparing the brothers the death penalty, Darrow was accused by many in organized labor of selling the movement out.
From defense lawyer to defendant Two months later, Darrow was charged with two counts of attempting to bribe jurors in both cases. He faced two lengthy trials. In the first, defended by
Earl Rogers and was ultimately acquitted. When Rogers became ill during the second trial and rarely came to court, Darrow represented himself for the remainder of the proceedings. The trial ended with a
hung jury. A deal was later struck in which the district attorney agreed not to retry Darrow if he promised not to practice law again in California. Darrow's early biographers,
Irving Stone and Arthur and Lila Weinberg, argued that he was not involved in the bribery conspiracy. However, more recent authors, including Geoffrey Cowan and John A. Farrell, concluded based on newly uncovered evidence that Darrow almost certainly was involved. In the biography of Earl Rogers by his daughter
Adela Rogers St. Johns wrote: "I never had any doubts, even before one of my father's private conversations with Darrow included an admission of guilt to his lawyer."
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 ended his career as a labor lawyer, and he switched to civil and criminal cases. He took the latter because he had become convinced that the criminal justice system could ruin people's lives if they were not adequately represented. Throughout his career, Darrow devoted himself to opposing the
death penalty, which he felt was incompatible with
humanitarian progress. In more than 100 cases, only one of Darrow's clients was executed. He became renowned for moving juries, and even judges, to tears with his eloquence. Darrow had a keen intellect often obscured 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.
National renown Leopold and Loeb In the summer of 1924, Darrow took on the case of
Nathan Leopold Jr. and 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 to 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. 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 had been 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 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 his clients plead guilty in order 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 argument lasted 12 hours. He repeatedly stressed the ages of the "boys" (before the Vietnam War, the age of majority was 21) 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 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 Leopold and Loeb to life in prison plus 99 years. Darrow's closing argument was published in several editions in the late 1920s and early 1930s, and was reissued at the time of his death.
Scopes Trial In 1925, Darrow defended
John T. Scopes in the
State of Tennessee v. Scopes trial. It has often been called the "Scopes Monkey Trial," a title popularized by author and journalist
H. L. Mencken. The trial, which was deliberately staged to bring publicity to the issue at hand, pitted Darrow against
William Jennings Bryan in a court case that tested Tennessee's
Butler Act, which had been passed on March 21, 1925. The act forbade the teaching of "the
Evolution Theory" in any state-funded educational establishment. More broadly, it outlawed in state-funded schools (including universities) the teaching of "any theory that denies the story of the
Divine Creation of man as taught in the
Bible, and to teach instead that man has descended from a lower order of animals." During the trial, Darrow requested that Bryan be called to the stand as an expert witness on the
Bible. Over the other prosecutor's objection, Bryan agreed. Popular media at the time portrayed the following exchange as the deciding factor that turned public opinion against Bryan in the trial: :Darrow: "You have given considerable study to the Bible, haven't you, Mr. Bryan?" :Bryan: "Yes, sir; I have tried to.... But, of course, I have studied it more as I have become older than when I was a boy." :Darrow: "Do you claim then that everything in the Bible should be literally interpreted?" :Bryan: "I believe that everything in 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 insist that man was actually salt, or that he had flesh of salt, but it is used in the sense of salt as saving God's people." After about two hours, Judge
John T. Raulston cut the questioning short and on the following morning ordered that the whole session (which in any case the jury had not witnessed) be expunged from the record, ruling that the testimony had no bearing on whether Scopes was guilty of teaching evolution. Scopes was found guilty and ordered to pay the minimum fine of $100. A year later, the
Tennessee Supreme Court reversed the decision of the Dayton court on a procedural technicality — not on constitutional grounds, as Darrow had hoped. According to the court, the fine should have been set by the jury, not Raulston. Rather than send the case back for further action, however, the
Tennessee Supreme Court dismissed the case. The court commented, "Nothing is to be gained by prolonging the life of this bizarre case." The event led to a change in public sentiment and an 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.
Ossian Sweet On September 9, 1925, a
white mob in Detroit attempted to drive a black family out of the home they had purchased in a white neighborhood. During the struggle, a white man was killed, and the eleven black people in the house were later arrested and charged with murder.
Ossian Sweet, a doctor, and three members of his family were brought to trial, and after an initial deadlock, Darrow argued to the
all-white jury: "I insist that there is nothing but prejudice in this case; that if it was reversed and eleven white men had shot and killed a black man while protecting their home and their lives against a mob of blacks, nobody would have dreamed of having them indicted. They would have been given medals instead...." Following a mistrial, it was agreed that each of the eleven defendants would be tried individually. Darrow, alongside Thomas Chawke, would first defend Ossian's brother Henry, who had confessed to firing the shot on Garland Street. Henry was found not guilty on grounds of
self-defense, and the prosecution determined to
drop the charges on the remaining ten. The trials were presided over by
Frank Murphy, who went on to become
Governor of Michigan and an
Associate Justice of the
Supreme Court of the United States. Darrow's closing statement, which lasted over seven hours, is seen 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"). The two closing arguments of Clarence Darrow, from the first and second trials, show how he learned from the first trial and reshaped his remarks.
Massie Trial The Scopes Trial and the Sweet trial were the last big cases that Darrow took on before he retired from full-time practice at the age of 68. He still took on a few cases such as the 1932
Massie Trial in Hawaii. In his last headline-making case, the Massie Trial, Darrow, devastated by the
Great Depression, was hired by Eva Stotesbury, the wife of Darrow's old family friend
Edward T. Stotesbury, to come to the defense of
Grace Fortescue, Edward J. Lord, Deacon Jones, and Thomas Massie, Fortescue's son-in-law, who were accused of murdering
Joseph Kahahawai. Kahahawai had been accused, along with four other men, of raping and beating
Thalia Massie, Thomas's wife and Fortescue's daughter. Fortescue and Massie were accused of orchestrating the murder of Kahahawai in order to extract a confession and were caught by police officers while transporting his dead body. Darrow entered the racially charged atmosphere as the lawyer for the defendants. He reconstructed the case as a justified
honor killing by Thomas Massie. Considered by
The New York Times to be one of Darrow's three most compelling trials (along with the Scopes Trial and the Leopold and Loeb case), the case captivated the nation and most of America strongly supported the honor killing defense. In fact, the final defense arguments were transmitted to the mainland through a special radio hookup. In the end, the jury came back with a unanimous verdict of guilty, but on the lesser crime of manslaughter. Darrow attributed the guilty verdict to the racially mixed nature of the jury, claiming that, "A jury of white men would have acquitted". As to Darrow's closing, one juror commented, "[h]e talked to us like a bunch of farmers. That stuff may go over big in the Middle West, but not here." Governor
Lawrence Judd later commuted the sentences to one hour in his office. Years later Deacon admitted to shooting Kahahawai; Kahahawai was found not guilty in a
posthumous trial. ==Religious beliefs==