Read Trials of the Monkey Online
Authors: Matthew Chapman
Tags: #Biography & Autobiography, #Nonfiction, #Retail
Trials of the Monkey (16 page)
As my daughter would say: ‘Yeah, right.’
Darrow insisted that if the lead prosecution lawyer, ex-Attorney General A. T. Stewart, was going to be referred to as ‘General,’ when in fact he was not a general, then he, Darrow,
should also be given some equally meaningless title. ‘Colonel’ was agreed on and, much to his amusement, Darrow was referred to as such whenever anyone remembered.
should also be given some equally meaningless title. ‘Colonel’ was agreed on and, much to his amusement, Darrow was referred to as such whenever anyone remembered.
The grand jury returned the new indictment and the rest of the morning was taken up with discussion on the admissibility of scientific testimony. Stewart said he would object to it; Darrow wanted to know immediately if it would be allowed so that he could bring in his witnesses, or not. The prosecution agreed to a quick disposal of the matter on Monday and the court adjourned for lunch.
Outside on the courthouse lawn, preachers preached and vendors vended, and tracts were offered, all to the accompaniment of various musicians, including a black string quartet and a blind man with a guitar and a mouth organ. Four steers were roasting over a barbecue pit and two planes, commissioned to take newsreel footage to the cinemas in the North, buzzed the town.
In the afternoon, the jury was selected. Darrow, who would sometimes spend months on jury selection, now spent a few hours at most. Only white males were eligible and none were impartial. All he could hope for was a modicum of honesty from the wholly religious pool. One man was asked if he’d ever read anything by Bryan on the subject of evolution.
‘No, sir, I can’t read.’
‘Well, you are fortunate,’ said Darrow and then asked him why he couldn’t read.
The man replied frankly, ‘Because I’m uneducated.’
Darrow picked him right away. Another, a preacher, was asked if he preached for or against evolution. ‘Well, I preach against it, of course!’ He got a lot of applause but no seat in the jury box. Only one juror, a part-time teacher, seemed to have any real understanding of, let alone sympathy for, the concept of evolution. ‘Such a jury, in the legal sense,’ wrote Mencken, ‘may be fair. That is, it may be willing to hear the evidence against Scopes before bumping him off. But it would certainly be spitting into the eye of reason to call it impartial.’
The court adjourned until Monday. Bryan had not spoken the
entire day. He was saving himself for closing arguments and would, for the moment, content himself with sermons and speeches made outside the courtroom.
entire day. He was saving himself for closing arguments and would, for the moment, content himself with sermons and speeches made outside the courtroom.
On Sunday morning Bryan preached at a Methodist church. Judge Raulston and his family sat among the cheering crowd as Bryan reiterated his position on the irrelevance of Darrow’s so-called ‘expert witnesses.’ In the afternoon, he gave another speech to an estimated 3,000 listeners on the courthouse lawn where, on Saturday, a freethinker had been arrested for giving a speech critical of the church. By all accounts, Bryan’s speech delivered him the required tonic of applause.
Mencken went up to the mountains to watch a revival. He thought he would be amused, but instead returned to town depressed. He found the clashing theologians monotonous and expressed a longing for ‘a merry laugh, a burst of happy music, the gurgle of a decent jug.’
On Monday, the 13th, after the obligatory prayer, the defence made a motion to quash the indictment on the grounds that the law violated numerous articles of the constitution of Tennessee, fourteen of them to be precise. A typical example was Section 12, Article 11 of the Tennessee constitution which, in reference to education, states, ‘it shall be the duty of the general assembly … to cherish literature and science.’ The defence also believed the law violated the part of the constitution guaranteeing the right to ‘worship Almighty God according to the dictates of his own conscience.’ In banning the teaching of evolution because of something said in the Bible, the law favoured one form of religion over another. Neal laid out the legal details, Hays then followed with a more impassioned plea. He argued that if the law was against not evolution but the Copernican ‘theory’ that the earth moved around the sun it would be clearly unconstitutional. ‘The only distinction you can draw between this statute and the [hypothetical] one we are discussing is that evolution is as much a scientific fact as the Copernican theory, but the Copernican theory has been fully accepted.’
In fact the Copernican theory had
not
been fully accepted in
1925, at least not in some quarters. For supporting Copernican theory in the mid-1600s, Galileo was tried by the Roman Catholic Church and put under house arrest for the last eight years of his life. He was not ‘pardoned’ until 1988, when Pope John Paul II finally conceded that the church had made a ‘mistake.’ 1988! Over three centuries to concede a scientific point that every man of reason had accepted two hundred years before.
not
been fully accepted in
1925, at least not in some quarters. For supporting Copernican theory in the mid-1600s, Galileo was tried by the Roman Catholic Church and put under house arrest for the last eight years of his life. He was not ‘pardoned’ until 1988, when Pope John Paul II finally conceded that the church had made a ‘mistake.’ 1988! Over three centuries to concede a scientific point that every man of reason had accepted two hundred years before.
Darrow closed the day with a long speech. He started out by thanking the court for its courtesy, in particular for giving him the title of Colonel, which ‘I hope will stick to me when I get back north.’
He then went on to sum up the major issues. When you read the transcript of the trial, you can understand most of the complex legal issues expressed by Darrow’s fellow lawyers
—if you concentrate
. However, when you get to Darrow, he rambles, he makes jokes, he repeats himself, but by the end of it, everything is not only clear but obvious.
—if you concentrate
. However, when you get to Darrow, he rambles, he makes jokes, he repeats himself, but by the end of it, everything is not only clear but obvious.
‘There are in America at least five hundred different sects or churches, all of which quarrel with each other over the importance and non-importance of certain things or the construction of certain passages … There is such disagreement that my client, who is a school-teacher, not only must know the subject he is teaching, but he must know everything about the Bible in reference to evolution. And he must be sure that he expresses it right or else some fellow will come along here, more ignorant perhaps than he, and say, “You made a bad guess and I think you have committed a crime.” No criminal statute can rest that way … Every criminal statute must be clear and simple. If Mr. Scopes is to be indicted and prosecuted because he taught a wrong theory of the origin of life, why not tell him what he must teach? Why not say that he must teach that man was made of the dust; and still stranger, that Eve was made out of Adam’s rib.’
In other words, it was not only a bad law but badly written. Darrow went on for over two hours. As he walked around the courtroom, he played constantly with his suspenders, even at times putting his arms right through them and then pulling them
out again. He would pause and stop to think, and then renew his argument with increased vigour.
out again. He would pause and stop to think, and then renew his argument with increased vigour.
He concluded by saying, ‘There is an old saying that nits make lice … It is a good idea to clear the nits, safer and easier … Ignorance and fanaticism is ever busy and needs feeding. Always it is feeding and gloating for more. Today it is the public school teachers, tomorrow the private. The next day the preachers and the lecturers, the magazines, the books, the newspapers. After a while, your honor, it is the setting of man against man, and creed against creed, until with flying banners and beating drums we are marching backward to the glorious ages of the sixteenth century when bigots burned men who dared to bring any intelligence or enlightenment and culture to the human mind.’
Although some of the audience hissed at the end of the speech, most said it was one of Darrow’s best. ‘It was not designed for reading but for hearing,’ wrote Mencken. ‘The clangorousness of it was as important as the logic. It rose like a wind and ended like a flourish of bugles.’ Bryan sat through it, tight-lipped and unmoved. He looked ‘mangy and flea-bitten’ according to Mencken. ‘His eyes fascinated me: I watched them all day long. They were blazing points of hatred. They glittered like occult and sinister gems. Now and then they wandered to me, and I got my share. It was like coming under fire …’
The judge adjourned court so he could work on his decision about the motion to quash. That night there was a storm. Some townspeople suggested it was an expression of God’s anger with Darrow. In any case, the electricity failed.
As usual, a preacher was called to give a morning prayer before court began on Tuesday. Before he could start, Darrow objected. As this was a case involving a conflict between science and religion he argued that to have prayers at the opening of every day was clearly prejudicial.
Stewart and Malone got into a brief but nasty argument over this. The judge intervened, overruling Darrow’s objection and asking for the prayer to be said. When it was over, he explained that because of last night’s power outage, he had been unable to
complete his ruling on the motion to quash and needed to adjourn court until the afternoon.
complete his ruling on the motion to quash and needed to adjourn court until the afternoon.
‘If you want to make any pictures,’ he told the photographers, ‘make them now. I will give you fifteen minutes.’ Having struck several judicial poses, he left the court for the rest of the morning.
That afternoon was one of the comic high points of the trial.
Yesterday, Raulston told the court when it reconvened, he had dictated most of his ruling on the motion to quash and had given it to the court stenographer, a reputable woman, with instructions that no one should see it. Today, however, several newspapers in the larger cities were stating which way he had ruled. He was furious. He ordered the members of the press to stay while he dismissed the jury and the public and read a wire from St. Louis saying the
St. Louis Star
was carrying a story that the motion to quash had been denied. How could they possibly know? No one except he and his stenographer knew. The motion was not yet even completed!
St. Louis Star
was carrying a story that the motion to quash had been denied. How could they possibly know? No one except he and his stenographer knew. The motion was not yet even completed!
He appointed a committee of pressmen to get to the bottom of the matter and report back to him as soon as possible. The five pressmen spent the night playing cards and getting drunk on bootleg liquor. They knew exactly who was responsible for the leak and had from the start.
The next morning, Wednesday, Raulston called on the chairman of the press committee, Richard Beamish, to make his report. Beamish was an outlandish character who wore extraordinarily loud shirts, each of which, according to Mencken, was given a name, ‘Garden of Allah,’ ‘Who Is Sylvia?’ ‘I’m Called Little Buttercup,’ and so on.
In fine judicial style, Beamish stated that the reporter who had leaked the story had believed it to be correct and true and did not obtain it in any unethical manner. Beamish was prepared to leave it at that. End of story. Of course, he teased, if the court
insisted,
he’d be willing to give more details …
insisted,
he’d be willing to give more details …
Raulston took the bait. ‘I think the court is entitled to know how this information was had,’ he declared pompously.
‘Upon investigation,’ Beamish told him, ‘we find that the information came from you.’
‘Well …’ said Raulston, gaping at the courtroom in shock.
Beamish immediately went on to tell the story. A young reporter named Hutchinson had seen the judge leaving court after Monday’s adjournment. Noticing he had a lot of papers under his arm, he asked if this was his decision. The judge had replied, no, the decision was being copied by the stenographer. Hutchinson then asked whether the judge was going to read his decision that afternoon. The judge replied that that was his intention. Hutchinson then asked if, having given his decision, the judge would adjourn until the following day? The judge had said yes, that was his plan. Now, of course, if the motion to quash were granted, there would be no next day. The trial would be over. Hutchinson deduced therefore that the judge was denying the motion to quash and sent the information to his paper.
The judge was mortified but soon recovered himself and got ready to take center stage. ‘I shall expect absolute order in the courtroom because people are entitled to hear this opinion,’ he declared and turned again to the photographers. ‘If you gentlemen want to take my picture, take it now.’ And once again, he posed for them. Quash the indictment and miss this? Not a chance. It took him several hours to over-rule all the defence’s objections and when he was done, the poor man was worn out.
It was unbearably hot and during lunch Scopes and Bryan Jr. went up in the hills to swim in a waterhole in the mountains. Scopes liked Jr. but thought he had been crushed by his famous father. They were late getting back to court, which began without them. Hays was furious with Scopes. No one else seemed to have noticed his absence.
At last the jury was sworn in. The judge asked the attorneys to make their opening statements.
Stewart spoke for about a minute, stating their side’s theory of the case. There was a law. Scopes had broken it. It was that simple.
Malone then got up, dressed as always in an elegant suit and necktie. There was, he stated, more than one theory of creation in the Bible and, through expert witnesses, both scientists and theologians, the defence would show that many people found no conflict between the Bible’s stories and the theory of evolution.
Malone then glanced at his old boss, Bryan.
‘There may be a conflict between evolution and the peculiar ideas of Christianity which are held by Mr. Bryan as the evangelical leader of the prosecution, but we deny that the evangelical leader of the prosecution is an authorized spokesman for the Christians of the United States.’
He then told the court he was going to read from the writings of ‘a great political leader’ commenting twenty years earlier on Jefferson’s ‘Statute of Religious Freedom.’
‘“Jefferson said, in the first place, that to attempt to compel people to accept a religious doctrine by act of law was not to make Christians but hypocrites … that the regulation of the opinions of men on religious questions by law is contrary to the laws of God … that God had it in His power to control man’s mind and body, but did not see fit to coerce the mind or the body into obedience to even the Divine Will; and that if God Himself was not willing to use coercion to force man to accept certain religious views, man, uninspired and liable to error, ought not to use the means that Jehovah would not employ …” ’ Malone turned to Bryan. ‘These words,’ he said, ‘were written by William Jennings Bryan and the defense appeals from the fundamentalist Bryan of today to the modernist Bryan of yesterday.’
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