CLARENCE DARROW
Closing speech in defence of Henry Sweet, 11 May 1926
CLARENCE DARROW
Born 18 April 1857 in Kinsman, Ohio, son of an agnostic undertaker.
He studied law, was admitted to the Bar in 1878, and initially practised law locally. He moved to Chicago in1887, and was influenced by the liberal judge John Altgeld. Became active in local Democratic politics, and was appointed to Chicago’s corporation counsel in 1890. And he acted as a general attorney to the Chicago and North Western Railway until 1894. He successfully defended socialist miners’ leader Bill Hayward against a charge of ordering the assassination of Idaho’s governor, 1907 and was acquitted on a charge of attempting to bribe a jury, 1912. He defended the Chicago student murderers Leopold and Loeb (1924) and the freedom to teach evolutionary theory in the Scopes ‘Monkey’ trial (1925). In 1932 he came out of retirement to defend Thomas Massie from the charge of murdering his wife’s alleged rapist.
Died 13 March 1938 in Chicago.
On 11 May 1926, In a Detroit courtroom, lawyer Clarence Darrow completed his seven-hour closing summary as he battled to save an African American man from a murder charge. For the unconventional defence attorney, the case was his latest to challenge received opinion and attack prejudice.
The background to the case is redolent of the racial tensions in the decades before civil rights legislation. In Detroit, the growing automobile industry brought an influx of African American workers in the early 1920s, and sometimes white mobs drove African Americans away from the largely white areas they were living in. The night that Dr Ossian Sweet and his family moved into their new home, an organized riot broke out and rocks were thrown at the house. The family fought back with a firearm from an upper window, and a white man, Leon Breiner, was killed.
Clarence Darrow first defended the whole Sweet family against a charge of murder but the jury failed to reach a verdict. Darrow then defended Ossian’s younger brother, Henry Sweet (who admitted to firing the gun), in the first of what were planned to be individual trials of each family member. Darrow believed that if he could secure an acquittal for Sweet, then the case for the other trials would disappear.
In his long summing-up for the all-white jury, Darrow demonstrated his superb qualities as a lawyer – immense courtroom skill, strong dramatic instincts and powerful persuasive abilities. He argued that the case was about racism, not murder: ‘I insist that there is nothing but prejudice in this case; that if it was reversed and eleven white men had shot and killed a black while protecting their home and their lives against a mob of blacks, nobody would have dreamed of having them indicted . . . Now, that is the case, gentlemen, and that is all there is to this case. Take the hatred away, and you have nothing left.’ The jury took four hours to reach a ‘not guilty’ verdict, and in July the other defendants’ charges were dropped.
Darrow’s freethinking, questioning disposition had its roots in a family background of social radicalism and agnosticism. Having moved into criminal law, he handled the notorious case of Leopold and Loeb, two University of Chicago students in thrall to the philosopher Nietzsche, who murdered a 14-year-old boy in an experiment to commit the ‘perfect’ crime. Firmly opposed to the death penalty, Darrow made innovative use of psychiatric theories about determinism in human behaviour to have the two teenagers’ likely death sentence commuted to life imprisonment. In over 50 capital cases throughout his career, Darrow lost only his first client to the executioner.
In 1925, Darrow defended John T. Scopes in a test case. He was accused of violating Tennessee’s laws by teaching the theory of evolution in public schools. The Scopes ‘Monkey’ trial won national attention and has gone down as a landmark debate between Old Testament literalism and scientific discovery. Although Scopes was found guilty, the verdict was overturned on a technicality, and Darrow was able to deliver penetrating cross-examinations of the fundamentalist worldview. It is no wonder that Darrow had a posthumous life as the subject of books, films and plays.
NOW, GENTLEMEN, JUST ONE MORE WORD, and I am through with this case. I do not live in Detroit. But I have no feeling against this city. In fact, I shall always have the kindest remembrance of it, especially if this case results as I think and feel that it will. I am the last one to come here to stir up race hatred, or any other hatred. I do not believe in the law of hate. I may not be true to my ideals always, but I believe in the law of love, and I believe you can do nothing with hatred. I would like to see a time when man loves his fellow man, and forgets his colour or his creed. We will never be civilized until that time comes.
I know the negro race has a long road to go. I believe the life of the negro race has been a life of tragedy, of injustice, of oppression. The law has made him equal, but man has not. And, after all, the last analysis is, what has man done? – and not what has the law done? I know there is a long road ahead of him, before he can take the place which I believe he should take. I know that before him there is suffering, sorrow, tribulation and death among the blacks, and perhaps the whites. I am sorry. I would do what I could to avert it. I would advise patience; I would advise toleration; I would advise understanding; I would advise all of those things which are necessary for men who live together. Gentlemen, what do you think is your duty in this case? I have watched, day after day, these black, tense faces that have crowded this court. These black faces that now are looking to you twelve whites, feeling that the hopes and fears of a race are in your keeping.
This case is about to end, gentlemen. To them, it is life. Not one of their colour sits on this jury. Their fate is in the hands of twelve whites. Their eyes are fixed on you, their hearts go out to you, and their hopes hang on your verdict.
This is all. I ask you, on behalf of this defendant, on behalf of these helpless ones who turn to you, and more than that – on behalf of this great state, and this great city which must face this problem, and face it fairly – I ask you, in the name of progress and of the human race, to return a verdict of not guilty in this case!