What was clarence darrow known for

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Introduction "Clarence S. Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers. Timeline March Clarence Darrow tries and fails to get a stay of execution for Patrick Prendergast who had murdered the Mayor of Chicago. The McNamaras end up pleading guilty. August Jury acquits Clarence Darrow on bribery charges. July Clarence Darrow represents John T. This same year, Darrow successfully defended Eugene V.

As a result of this case, Darrow became a national celebrity and followed this success with numerous others, including successfully defending Bill Haywood, head of the Industrial Workers of the World, for murdering the governor of Idaho. Darrow's career suffered in , when he represented two brothers who had bombed the Los Angeles Times building.

The brothers were strong union supporters. The attorney convinced the men to plead guilty, and Darrow was also accused of bribing a juror. Shortly after this case, Darrow stopped representing labor unions, concentrating his practice on criminal law, especially death-penalty cases.

These two men, sons of wealthy parents in Chicago, murdered Bobby Franks, a fourteen-year-old boy. Darrow had the two men plead guilty and, in a brilliant closing argument, convinced the judge to spare both men's lives.

They were sentenced to life in prison. Darrow only lost one criminal case out of more than one hundred that he argued in Chicago. In death-penalty cases, Darrow never had a client sentenced to death.

Perhaps Darrow's best known case was the Scopes Monkey Trial. In , the Tennessee government enacted a law that made it illegal "for any teacher in any of the universities, normal and all other public schools of the state to teach 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.

He taught the theory of evolution, which states that human beings evolved from lesser life forms. If not allowing the science education one might wish for, the Butler Act could have been worse…. The real purpose was humiliation. The possible tactic, according to John Scopes, had been under discussion at least two days earlier. When the time came, Bryan dismissed the concerns of his prosecution team and took the stand willingly, subject only to his right to put Darrow and other defense lawyers on the stand as well.

Darrow, jacketless and wearing his trademark suspenders, began his interrogation of Bryan with a quiet question: "You have given considerable study to the Bible, haven't you, Mr.

I have studied the Bible for about fifty years. He asked Bryan about a whale swallowing Jonah, Joshua making the sun stand still, Noah and the great flood, the temptation of Adam in the garden of Eden, and the creation according to Genesis. After initially contending, "Everything in the Bible should be accepted as it is given there," Bryan finally conceded that the words of the Bible should not always be taken literally.

In response to Darrow's relentless questions as to whether the six days of creation, as described in Genesis, were twenty-four hour days, Bryan said "My impression is that they were periods. Bryan, who began his testimony calmly, stumbled badly under Darrow's persistent prodding. At one point the exasperated Bryan said, "I do not think about things I don't think about.

Bryan accused Darrow of attempting to "slur at the Bible. The next day, Raulston ruled that Bryan could not return to the stand and that his testimony the previous day should be stricken from evidence. The press reported the confrontation between Bryan and Darrow as a defeat for Bryan.

According to one historian, "As a man and as a legend, Bryan was destroyed by his testimony that day. When Judge Raulston mercifully ended the examination of Bryan, a large number of people rushed forward to congratulate Darrow.

They seemed to have changed sides in a single afternoon. The man he defeated, Darrow thought, was only a shell of the person he once had been. Darrow, however, did not escape criticism either. Alan Dershowitz, for example, contended that the celebrated defense attorney "comes off as something of an anti-religious cynic.

As he ended his argument, applause broke out. The court issued its opinion — months later, invalidating the decision of the Dayton court on a technicality--not constitutional grounds as Darrow had hoped.