Clarence Darrow

Clarence Darrow (born April 18, 1857, near Kinsman, Ohio, U.S.—died March 13, 1938, Chicago, Illinois) was a lawyer whose work as defense counsel in many dramatic criminal trials earned him a place in American legal history as an impassioned orator, debater, and an ardent defender of the underdog and those perceived to be “lost causes.”

Early life and education

Darrow grew up in the small town of Kinsman, Ohio, and was one of eight children. His father, Amirus Darrow, was a carpenter and part-time undertaker, and his mother, Emily Darrow (née Eddy), died when he was 15. Amirus Darrow had studied theology at a Unitarian school in Meadville, Pennsylvania, but by the time he finished his degree, he had become an agnostic—a skepticism that he passed on to his son. In his 1932 autobiography, The Story of My Life, Darrow recalled how his father’s willingness to discuss the “mysteries of life and death” shaped his early interest in debate—an interest that would determine his career and drive his lifelong commitment to defending the minority view.

My interest in these exercises was stimulated by my father. The fact that he was a heretic always put him on the defensive, and we children felt that it was only right and natural and loyal to echo and champion his cause.…As a listening youth, my moral support was with my father. I never doubted that he was right, and the fact that most of the community was on the other side made me feel surer that his was the just cause.…Perhaps that early and exciting environment implanted a certain liking for exchange of ideas and the evolving of whatever mentality and personality that it thus brought about.

Darrow entered Allegheny College in 1872 and spent one year there. Beginning in 1877 he studied law for a year at the University of Michigan. After leaving Michigan, Darrow read under the direction of a lawyer for another year before being admitted to the Ohio bar in 1878.

Union and labor lawyer

Darrow and his family moved to Chicago in 1888 after a failed home purchase in Ashtabula, Ohio, where he had a law office. The move to Chicago changed the trajectory of his life and career:

“If I had stayed I might have been in the graveyard or jail. I don’t know where I would have been, but it would not have been the same life.”

Through his friendship with Judge John Peter Altgeld—afterward governor of Illinois and his law partner from 1897 to 1902—Darrow was appointed Chicago city corporation counsel in 1890, and then he became general attorney for the Chicago and North Western Railway.

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Darrow left the employ of North Western during the April 1894 strike of the American Railway Union (ARU). A champion of labor and supporter of union demands for better wages and conditions, Darrow resigned his position when he could not “avoid being in sympathy with the strikers.” He went on to serve as counsel to Eugene V. Debs, ARU president, and other union leaders, who were arrested on a federal charge of contempt of court arising from the 1894 Pullman Strike. Although Debs and his associates were convicted and the decision was upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court, Darrow established a national reputation as a labor and criminal lawyer.

In arbitration hearings during the Pennsylvania anthracite coal strike (1902–03), Darrow represented the striking miners and in cross-examination illumined not only the arduous working conditions in the mines but also the degree to which child labor was used. In 1907 he secured the acquittal of labor activist and Industrial Workers of the World leader William D. (“Big Bill”) Haywood for the assassination of former governor Frank R. Steunenberg of Idaho.

After defending the McNamara brothers—two labor leaders accused of dynamiting the Los Angeles Times building in 1911—Darrow abandoned labor litigation. Though he encouraged the brothers to plead guilty, their abrupt change of plea during the course of the trial shocked many, especially after Darrow had vehemently and dramatically professed their innocence. The episode damaged his reputation. Soon after, Darrow himself became a defendant in the case of California v. Darrow, in which he was indicted for bribery after his investigator on the McNamara case, Bert Franklin, was accused of trying to bribe a juror. Darrow was acquitted in 1913.

Criminal defense lawyer

After World War I Darrow pivoted his legal work from labor to criminal defense. He defended several war protesters charged with violating state sedition laws and served as a criminal defense attorney in two of the era’s most highly publicized trials.

Leopold and Loeb (1924)

In 1924 Darrow undertook the defense of Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb, two wealthy and academically gifted Chicago teenagers who kidnapped and murdered 14-year-old Bobby Franks for what they called an “intellectual” thrill. The case, widely dubbed “the crime of the century,” gripped the public with its gruesome details and privileged defendants. A fierce opponent of capital punishment, Darrow did not aim to exonerate the pair—who had confessed to the crime—but to spare them the death penalty.

Darrow advised Leopold and Loeb to plead guilty, thereby avoiding a jury trial and placing their fate in the hands of Judge John R. Caverly. The courtroom was packed throughout the 33-day trial, as Darrow’s eloquence and impassioned plea drew national attention. In his 12-hour closing argument, Darrow emphasized the pair’s youth and psychological instability, declaring the crime “the senseless act of immature and diseased children.”

On September 10 Judge Caverly sentenced both defendants to life in prison for murder, plus 99 years for kidnapping. In his decision the judge cited the defendants’ youth as the chief reason for sparing them—an outcome widely attributed to Darrow’s persuasive advocacy.

Scopes Trial (1925)

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Darrow went from “the crime of the century” to the “trial of the century.” From July 10 to 21, 1925, he led the defense team for high-school teacher John T. Scopes, who was charged with violating Tennessee’s Butler Act—a law banning the teaching of evolution in public schools. The case, encouraged by local leaders and supported by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) as a constitutional test, unfolded in Dayton, Tennessee. Darrow, an agnostic since his youth, faced off against William Jennings Bryan, one of the country’s most prominent Christian fundamentalists.

Darrow’s attempts to challenge the Butler law’s constitutionality were blocked by Judge John Raulston, who also barred scientific testimony. The trial’s most dramatic moment came when Darrow called Bryan to the stand as an expert on the Bible. Before a packed audience on the courthouse lawn, he cross-examined Bryan on biblical literalism, exposing inconsistencies and weakening Bryan’s credibility. Although Darrow never directly questioned Bryan about evolution, his pointed interrogation shifted public perception of the trial.

Scopes was found guilty and fined $100, though the verdict was later overturned on a technicality. Although Bryan won the case, Darrow and the ACLU were perceived as having won the war by bringing the evidence for evolution to the wider public.

Legacy and publications

Darrow’s courtroom pleas were filled with allusions based on his wide reading. In his speeches and writings he advocated the closed shop and unrestricted freedom of expression and opposed capital punishment, Prohibition, protective tariffs, and the League of Nations. Among his books are An Eye for an Eye (1905; a novel), Crime: Its Cause and Treatment (1922), The Prohibition Mania (1927; with Victor S. Yarros), and The Story of My Life (1932).