Clarence Darrow: Attorney for the Damned (93 page)

11.
Transcript,
Illinois v. Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb; Chicago Herald Examiner
, July 28, 29, 1924;
Chicago Tribune
, July 28, 1924; Bowman-Hulbert, White, Healy, and Glueck reports, Elmer Gertz papers, Library of Congress; Leopold,
Life Plus Ninety-nine Years;
Leopold deposition, Elmer Gertz papers, Library of Congress;
New York Times
, Sept. 7, 1924; Leopold testimony to Illinois parole board, 1958, quoted in Gertz,
A Handful of Clients
(Chicago: Follett, 1965). In keeping with his cracker-barrel persona in court, Darrow used “skizzyphratic” and other nonsense words for “schizophrenic.”

12.
Transcript,
Illinois v. Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb; Chicago Tribune
, July 31, Aug. 1, 1924;
Chicago Herald Examiner
, July 31, 1924. Pethick was the twenty-two-year-old delivery boy who had murdered Ella Coppersmith and her two-year-old son in 1915, then sexually abused her body. His name was also spelled, in the press, official records, and medical journals, as “Pethrick.”

13.
Transcript,
Illinois v. Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb;
Leopold,
Life Plus Ninety-nine Years; New Statesman
commentary, published in
Living Age
, Nov. 1, 1924; William White to Darrow, July 24, 1924, Ruby to White, undated, William White papers, National Archives;
New York Times
, Jan, 13, 2008. In light of recent research into the causes of psychopathy, it should also be noted that Loeb had suffered a serious head injury in an automobile accident at the age of fifteen. The talk about sex had its limits. When it came time to discuss the defendants’ sexual practices, Judge Caverly told the compliant newspapermen of the era: “This should not be published.” And prosecutor Crowe displayed his naïveté (or perhaps it was his calculation) when, after one witness testified that gay sex was a not-so-unusual practice, he asked the psychiatrist: “Aren’t you ashamed of yourself, doctor, to testify in that manner?”

“No. I should say not,” the psychiatrist replied. “I have known of very nice children of very nice families who have gotten through with things of that sort.”

14.
Transcript,
Illinois v. Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb; Chicago Herald Examiner
, Aug. 23, 1924. The text of Darrow’s closing address has been pieced together from the surviving court transcripts. The first day’s transcript can be found at the University of Minnesota Law Library Web site; the second and third days’ in the Elmer Gertz collection at the Library of Congress. In his published version of the address, Darrow adjusted the number of guilty pleas from 350 to 450.

15.
Transcript,
Illinois v. Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb;
Loeb to Darrow, “Friday nite,” CD-LOC;
Chicago Tribune
, Aug. 23, 1924;
Chicago Herald Examiner
, Aug. 23, 1924;
Chicago Daily News
, Aug. 23, 1924;
New York Times
, Aug. 23, 1924.

16.
Transcript,
Illinois v. Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb; Chicago Tribune
, Aug. 26, 27, 28, 1924;
Chicago Daily News
, Aug. 26, 28, 1924.

17.
Transcript,
Illinois v. Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb; Chicago Tribune
, Aug. 28, 29, 1924;
Chicago Daily News
, Aug. 28, 1924;
Washington Post
, Aug. 29, 1924;
New York Times
, Aug. 29, 1924.

18.
Chicago Daily News
, Sept. 10, 1924;
Chicago Tribune
, Sept. 11, 12, 1924;
New York Times
, Oct. 4, 1924;
Los Angeles Times
, Sept. 11, 1924; unnamed Omaha newspaper clipping, Jan. 5, 1925, CD-LOC;
University Review
, summer 1938; Leopold to Darrow, Sept. 10 or 11 (undated), Loeb to Darrow, Apr. 15, 1926, and Darrow to Leopold, Sept. 20, 1924, CD-LOC. A month later, from the hospital bed where he was treated for exhaustion, Caverly explained his reasoning. It was obvious that Darrow’s arguments had an impact. The defense had left it on him. They had no grounds for appeal and “burned their bridges behind them,” the judge told a reporter. “Why, Clarence Darrow … said himself: ‘If you say those two boys must die, they will die.’ ” Burdened by that responsibility, “I think I did right,” Caverly said. “There has never been a minor hanged on a plea of guilty … If I had hanged them, I would have been a great big fellow. I would have been praised on all sides. It would have been the path of least resistance. But my conscience told me what to do.”

19.
Charles Yale Harrison,
Clarence Darrow
(New York: Jonathan Cape & Harrison Smith, 1931); Stone,
Clarence Darrow for the Defense;
Ruby letters to Irving Stone, CD-LOC;
Chicago Tribune
, Jan. 9, 1925. Ruby was sore, and her anti-Semitism flared. “That these two happened to be Jewish families proves nothing whatever against their race,” she told Stone, who was Jewish. But the episode had, she said, “added to the hateful stigma upon Jews as sharp dealers and dishonest people.” There was a sad footnote to the case. When claiming that the wealth of the killers’ families was distorting justice, Crowe taunted Darrow and asked why no tears were being shed for
Bernard Grant, nineteen, who had been sentenced to death, along with
Walter Krauser, twenty-one, for killing a policeman during a grocery store holdup. Surely a “boy” from a poor family deserved the aid that Babe and Dickie were getting. So Darrow joined the effort to win clemency for Grant and agreed to speak on his behalf to Illinois governor Len Small. The governor granted a reprieve, and things looked hopeful, until the mentally disturbed Krauser stabbed Grant to death with a shiv in the Cook County jail.

CHAPTER 18: THE MONKEY TRIAL

1.
Darwin had published
On the Origin of Species
in 1859; his treatise persuaded scientists that life evolved from a common ancestry through a process known as natural selection. In 1871, the British naturalist followed up with
The Descent of Man
, which explicitly contended that human beings were animals descended from “a hairy, tailed quadruped.”
Herbert Spencer, a contemporary of Darwin, applied evolutionary theory to social progress; it was he who coined the phrase “survival of the fittest,” which laissez-faire capitalists used to justify their success. Bryan seemed willing to accept Darwin’s theory as it applied to animals, and to credit the findings of geologists that contradicted the biblical account of “days” of Creation. The Bible could “mean periods of indefinite lineage instead of twenty-four hour days,” he told an ally. What Bryan resolutely opposed was what Darwin had to say about man. If human beings were not divine creations, Bryan said, man lost all his nobler attributes and aspirations.

2.
Benjamin Kidd, a British writer, connected Darwinism and Nietzsche’s writings to German aggression. James Leuba, an American educator, persuaded Bryan that the growing secularism in American schools threatened the nation’s Christian character. See Scopes trial transcript for the text of Bryan’s “Proposed Address,” the great closing speech he had hoped to give, but was denied the chance, a copy of which was added as a courtesy to the record. See also Bryan’s speech, “Is the Bible True?” Jan. 24, 1924, Nashville, Tennessee.

3.
Debs to Darrow, June 4, 1925, Eugene Debs collection, Indiana State University;
Chicago Tribune
, July 4, 5, 1923; Bryan, “Proposed Address”; Bryan to Howard Kelly, June 22, 1925, WJB; for Bryan at the 1924 convention see Michael Kazin,
A Godly Hero
(New York: Borzoi, 2006) and Louis W. Koenig,
Bryan: A Political Biography of William Jennings Bryan
(New York: Putnam’s, 1971).

4.
Kenneth K. Bailey, “The Enactment of Tennessee’s Antievolution Law,”
Journal of Southern History
, Nov. 1950; Bryan to Samuel Untermyer, June 11, 1925, WJB; George Hunter,
A Civic Biology
(New York: American Book Co., 1914).

5.
Darrow’s sentiments about Kinsman were mixed. “Once in a while I go back to Trumbull County, but most all the names I used to know are chiseled on gravestones, so I do not get much of a kick out of it,” he wrote to a fellow Ohioan, James Kennedy. “The last time I was there, I intended to spend a week. I got into Kinsman on the morning train and in an hour or two, thought I would want to spend two or three days. Along toward noon, I found there was an afternoon train out … But somehow I have a feeling for the old place and may possibly go back again this summer.” See Darrow to Kennedy, Mar. 21, 1925, Ohio Historical Society.

6.
Kinsman Journal
, Oct. 3, 1924;
Warren Chronicle
, Oct. 1, 1924.

7.
Darrow straddled the choice between Democratic senator John W. Davis and Progressive senator Robert La Follette in the 1924 election. Either one would be better than Calvin Coolidge, he said. Both lost.

8.
Mary Field Parton diary, MFP; Darrow to Mary, Feb. 19, 1925, CDMFP-NL.

9.
Chattanooga Times
, May 4, 6, 1925;
Memphis Press
and
Sue Hicks telegrams, May 14, 1925, Sue Hicks papers, University of Tennessee. Sue Hicks was named in honor of his mother, who died in childbirth. He is said to have served as an inspiration for a country song by Johnny Cash. ACLU papers, Library of Congress; John T. Scopes,
Center of the Storm
(New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1967); L. Sprague de Camp,
The Great Monkey Trial
(New York: Doubleday, 1968); Edward J. Larson,
Summer for the Gods
(Cambridge: Harvard, 1998); Ray Ginger,
Six Days or Forever
(Boston: Beacon, 1958).

10.
John T. Scopes,
Center of the Storm; New York Times
, July 9, 1925;
Washington Post
, July 8, 1925;
Chicago Tribune
, July 8, 9, 1925; manuscript of a biography of Bryan, by his daughter Grace, WJB.

11.
Mary Field Parton oral history, MFP;
Baltimore Evening Sun
, July 14, 1925; Scopes,
Center of the Storm
.

12.
Chicago Tribune
, May 17, 1925.

13.
New York Times
, June 7, 9, 10, 1925;
Chicago Tribune
, June 9, 1925;
New York Post
, June 11, 1925; George S. Thomas to Scopes, June 26, 1925, WJB; Mencken to “Garrison,” July 6, 1925, Mencken papers, Princeton University; Scopes,
Center of the Storm;
American Civil Liberties Union, Executive Committee minutes, May 11 and 25, June 1 and 8, 1925, Bailey to Lippmann, June 12, 1925, ACLU; Bryan to W. B. Marr, June 11,
1925, WJB;
Chattanooga Times
, July 9, 1925; Mary Field Parton diaries, MFP; Mary to Sara, June 4, 1925, CESW-HL.

14.
Dayton’s cultural amenities were “Agri-cultural!” it boasted, and its resistance to change was represented in the promotional brochure
Why Dayton of All Places?
by the motto “Consistency Indeed a Jewel.” Ignoring the satire, Dayton likened itself to Gopher Prairie, the hidebound setting of Sinclair Lewis’s
Main Street
. “This is America—a town of a few thousand, in a region of fruit and corn and dairies and little groves,” the pamphlet said. “Come on. Come to Main Street. Show us. Make the town—well—make it artistic. It’s mighty pretty … Probably the lumber yard isn’t as scrumptious as all these Greek temples. But go to it! Make us change!”

15.
Mencken to “Garrison,” July 6, 1925, Mencken papers, Princeton University; Mencken to Sara Haardt, May 27, 1925, quoted in Marion Elizabeth Rodgers,
Mencken and Sara: A Life in Letters
(New York: McGraw-Hill, 1987); Mencken to Masters, May 25, 1925, ELM.

16.
Chicago Tribune
, July 12, 1925.

17.
“Light vs. Darkness,”
Time
magazine, May 25, 1925;
Chicago Tribune
, May 26, 27, 1925; Ira Hicks to Herbert Hicks, June 5, 1925, and Ira Hicks to Sue Hicks, undated, Sue Hicks papers, University of Tennessee.

18.
William Jennings Bryan to W. B. Marr, June 15, 1925, CD-LOC; Bryan to W. B. Riley, J. Frank Norris, and George M. Price, all on June 7, 1925, Untermyer to Bryan, June 25, 1925, Alfred McCann to Bryan, June 30, 1925, WJB; Sue Hicks to Ira Hicks and to Reese Hicks, both June 8, 1925, Ira Hicks to Sue Hicks, undated, Sue Hicks to Bryan, June 12, 1925, Hicks to John Raulston, July 1, 1925, Sue Hicks papers, University of Tennessee. In a June 13 letter Sue Hicks objected to Bryan’s recruiting of Samuel Untermyer because “we somewhat doubt the advisability of having a Jew in the case for the reason that they reject part of the Bible.”

19.
Scopes,
Center of the Storm;
Sue Hicks to Bryan and Haggard to Bryan, June 23, 1925, and Bryan to Hicks, June 25, 1925, WJB; Jack Lait column in
Knoxville Sentinel
, July 10, 1925. Larson notes that a newsman traveling with Colby, Scopes, and Darrow described the trial as a murder case, not a rape; see Larson,
Summer for the Gods
.

20.
Masters to Mencken, May 23, 1925, and Mencken to Masters, May 27, 1925, ELM; see also Mary Field Parton to Sara Field Wood, July 1925, CESW-HL. “It seems to me a beautiful climax to Darrow’s life that he should transcend the particular … and defend Knowledge … as if it were his client,” Mary wrote Sara. “Darrow will not be able to save Knowledge from the mob in Dayton … But the seeds will blow from those isolated mountains all over the land.”