Clarence Darrow: Attorney for the Damned - By John A. Farrell Page 0,93

reporter. The press and the lawyers settled in, drawing chairs together as makeshift beds. According to the courthouse scuttlebutt, the jury had taken a quick vote, and gone 10 to 2 for conviction. The Associated Press carried the story to the waiting nation; it seemed but a matter of time before the two holdouts were converted.

Just before ten p.m., the judge went home. The courtroom was swept of the newspapers and sandwich wrappings and cigar butts, and locked up for the night. Darrow could not sleep; he roamed the streets with friends and reporters, finally settling in a house across the street from the courthouse. At midnight the rumors were again specific. One of the holdouts had caved; it was now 11 to 1, and Haywood would surely hang.

On Sunday morning, before seven a.m., telephones started ringing in Boise. The jury had reached its verdict. No audience gathered at this early hour, just reporters and lawyers. Darrow was among the first to arrive, his eyes red and his skin ashen. Haywood was brought up from the jail, still dressed in yesterday’s clothing, testament to a sleepless night. Borah was missing, but Governor Gooding stood in the doorway.

The morning sun streamed through the courtroom windows, heralding another hellish day. Darrow put his arm around his client and said quietly, “Brace up there, now, Bill.”

Haywood sat erect, red-faced, his arm hooked upon the high back of his chair. The jury was brought in, looking grim.

“Have you agreed upon a verdict?” Wood asked.

“We have,” said the foreman. There was fumbling with the envelope. The judge looked at the verdict and handed it to his clerk to be read. Darrow covered his face with his hands.

“State of Idaho against William D. Haywood,” the clerk intoned. “We the jury in the above entitled cause find the defendant, William D. Haywood, not guilty.”

An instant of shock; then pandemonium.

“Bill, you’re free, you’re free, do you know it?” Darrow told him, grasping Haywood by the hands. Richardson rose to make a motion, but couldn’t get the words out. “The defendant will be discharged,” Wood declared, “and the jury dismissed.” Hawley departed; Gooding disappeared.

Haywood gleefully shook hands with the jurors, who crowded around the labor leader and his lawyers.

“I want to say, Mr. Darrow, that I like you. I liked the way you handled this case,” said juror Russell. “I believe you are honest and what you said went a long way with me.”

“And you, too, Mr. Robertson, were with us,” Darrow told the aged Scot. “I was afraid of you. I was afraid you could not forget that Gov. Steunenberg was your friend.”

“So he was, Mr. Darrow,” Robertson replied. “But do you suppose that after Harry Orchard, that wretch, killed him that I could sit and see him try to throw it off on Mr. Haywood? No, sir.” He walked off chuckling at the way he had fooled the lawyers.

“Mr. McBean,” said Darrow, reaching to pull the juror into the circle. “We never could figure just where you stood.”

“Mr. Darrow, I didn’t know myself,” he replied. “When the state got through I was in doubt. And when you finished I was in doubt. The judge said if any of us had doubts we must acquit. I said that is good enough for me.”

And Darrow told Foreman Gess, “I didn’t know as you liked my attack on Mr. Hawley, as I believe he and you are old friends.”

“Oh, that’s all right,” Gess replied. “I know how lawyers are.”

Ruby was searching for Darrow, squeezing her way through “a solid jam of humanity on every street … trying to get to the winners, shouting, surging, waving, smiling, crying aloud their joy over the victory.” As she made her way down Main Street she saw Borah, “in the doorway at the foot of the stairway that led up to his office … one shoulder leaning against the wall, hands in pockets, feet crossed, hat tilted to one side, the picture of abject despair.”

Haywood, grabbing Darrow’s hat instead of his own in his excitement, rushed from the courtroom. He went first down the stairs, to greet his codefendants.

“That’s good,” said Moyer, who never stopped shaving as he heard the news.

“Give my regards to Broadway,” said Pettibone.

Then Haywood went to the hospital, where his mother was being treated for exhaustion and a Federation lawyer, John Murphy, was dying of tuberculosis. Murphy’s two withered arms reached up. He knew his friend well. He placed his hands on Haywood’s cheeks and said, “Bill, you are a