Clarence Darrow: Attorney for the Damned (117 page)

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D
arrow, speaking to Judge John Caverly. To the left are Richard Loeb, in a light-colored jacket and tie, and Nathan Leopold, in a dark tie and suit, facing execution for killing young Bobby Franks for “the thrill” of it in 1924. The man in glasses to the left of Leopold, whose face is partially obscured by the lamp shade, is prosecutor Robert Crowe.

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L
eopold, Loeb, and Darrow in the courtroom. Leopold is the scarier-looking, but he managed to live a productive life in prison and was paroled after three decades behind bars. Loeb met an early death, knifed in jail by another inmate.

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W
illiam Jennings Bryan, arriving in Dayton, Tennessee, in July 1925 for the Scopes Monkey Trial. Bryan enlisted in the prosecution to promote his campaign to bar the teaching of evolution in public schools. His presence drew Darrow into a sensational and historic showdown with Bryan and the fundamentalists over academic and scientific freedom.

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J
ohn Scopes, the defendant, welcomes Darrow, his lawyer, in this photograph staged for the press. Between them, leaning to get into the picture, is Tennessee attorney John Neal, another member of the defense team.

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T
he streets of Dayton became a circus, hosting all sorts of festivities and attractions, including this sermon from the traveling evangelist T. T. Martin, a determined foe of evolution.

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T
he greatest legal face-off in American history took place on a small wooden platform on the lawn of the Dayton courthouse, in the shade of the trees. Here Bryan, on the witness stand, is answering Darrow, who seems to be plucking at his suspenders.

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D
r. Ossian Sweet, who was charged with murdering a white man while defending his Detroit home
(below)
from a racist mob. Darrow asked the all-white jury to put themselves in Sweet’s place and to recognize that black men, too, have a right to self-defense.

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I
n 1932, an emotionally troubled Thalia Massie claimed she was raped by a group of native Hawaiian youths. Her husband, Thomas, a naval officer at Pearl Harbor, led a lynch gang that kidnapped and murdered a young Hawaiian man in revenge. Darrow agreed to represent the killers because he needed money after losing all his savings in the stock market crash of 1929. Besides, he told the press, he had always wanted to see Hawaii. It was his last high-profile case.

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C
larence Darrow, circa 1902. At forty-five, he was one of the nation’s foremost labor lawyers, a defender of radicals and dissenters, a populist and progressive reformer, and almost mayor of Chicago. And his worst, and best, days were still ahead of him.