Educated at the University of Michigan Law School, Darrow began his career as a lawyer in Youngstown, Ohio. He moved to Chicago where he became a corporate lawyer for the railway company. During the Pullman Strike of 1894, he left the company to represent Eugene V. Debs and the America Railway Union. After a number of successful cases in corporate law, Darrow switched to criminal law. His career was phenomenally successful and in over 100 cases, he lost only one murder case in Chicago. Opposed to the death penalty, he often took on no-hope cases in order to save his clients from such an end. Darrow was extremely eloquent and was a force in front of a jury. In 1924, he represented Leopold-Loeb in the infamous murder case and was successful in avoiding the death penalty, pleading the diminished responsibilities of his clients. In 1925, he defended, and won acquittal for, Henry Sweet, a black man accused of murder when he shot a member of a mob that was attacking his brother's home. Later that same year, he defended John T. Scopes, a school teacher who was accused of teaching Darwinian evolution theory rather than the proscribed doctrine of divine creation. Although Scopes was found guilty, Darrow's performance was said to have overshadowed his opponent, William Jennings Bryan. The trial was extremely controversial and was made into the film Inherit the Wind. Darrow published Farmington, some boyhood reminiscences, in 1903. His other works include Persian Pearl and Other Essays (1899), Eye for an Eye (1905), Industrial Conspiracies (1912), Insects and Men, Instinct and Reason (1920), Crime: Its Cause and Treatment (1922), The Prohibition Mania (1927), Facing Life Fearlessly (1929) and Story of My Life (1932). |
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