Clarence Darrow: Attorney for the Damned - By John A. Farrell Page 0,95

hospital on October 6, but only for a day. Four days later he appeared in court for a hearing on the Pettibone case, bundled in a heavy overcoat. He returned to the hospital immediately and did not depart before mid-October, when he went to San Francisco seeking the advice of a specialist. Ruby was put in charge of irrigating the ear, boiling water to sterilize the instruments, sharpening the points of the hypodermic needles, and giving Darrow injections of codeine to help him sleep at night.

Darrow had tried to keep the second Adams trial in the mining country around Wallace, but the judge approved the prosecution’s motion for a change of venue to rural Rathdrum. On October 30, against the advice of his doctors, Darrow arrived to take charge of jury selection. He would remember this time as “one continuous orgy of pain.” They boarded with a local family, in a cottage near the courthouse. “I was becoming used to the hypodermic,” he recalled. “It took more and more to put me to sleep.”

The prosecution launched its case on November 5. It had difficulty getting witnesses to testify after a bomb at his own gate tore former sheriff Harvey Brown apart, so the jury listened as the lawyers recited testimony from the transcript of the first trial. On two days in mid-November, Darrow cross-examined McParland before a standing-room-only crowd. He had the detective tell of his exploits as a spy for hire to illustrate how McParland trafficked in deception. And he pressed McParland on the promises the detective made to induce Adams to testify.

The showdown was cut short, however, so that Darrow could be taken to Spokane for treatment. The doctor there prescribed rest, but rest was not an option. “There was scarcely a moment in court when I was not in pain,” he recalled. “When the pain was unbearable, as it often was, we had to resort to the hypodermic.”

As in the first trial, Darrow set the claim jumper’s death in the context of frontier justice. The pioneers had “subdued” the forest, Darrow said, and then “the coming of the jumpers led the older settlers to indulge in the carrying of firearms and to hold meetings at which jumpers were discussed and the best means of getting rid of them. It was almost open warfare.” Anyone might have killed Tyler. Hawley sprung a surprise toward the end, introducing letters written by Adams that had not been offered as evidence at the first trial. “I was glad to hear of your belief in my innocence,” Adams had told his family. “I wish to God that I was, but I fell in with bad company and was led to commit a number of most vile sins.”

Darrow gave his closing address on November 23. “If there ever was a cause or justification for poor men standing together, this is such justification,” he told the jury. “These powerful interests that are back of this case are not interested in Steve Adams … The pretense is made that a man is being prosecuted for one crime when the whole civilized world knows it is a delusion and a lie … He is being tried because he went back on McParland and repudiated his statements.” Back in Boise, the Statesman told its readers that the state’s case was “100 percent stronger than at the first trial.” But the jury declared itself hopelessly deadlocked. The eight members who voted for acquittal had not been able to budge four jurors who believed Adams was guilty. Another good hanging spoiled. Calvin Cobb aimed his fury at Darrow, the “blood-stained figure of anarchy” who “stalks into our courts and brazenly justifies murder.”2

THREE DAYS AFTER the Adams verdict, Judge Wood called Pettibone to trial. There was a good reason to rush: the defendant was fatally ill. The prosecutors wanted to hang him, and his lawyers wanted to win him a few months of liberty before he died.

As in Rathdrum, things moved quickly. Hawley led off for the state, telling the story of Steunenberg’s death. He characterized Pettibone as the counselor, paymaster, and armorer for the federation’s campaign of terror. Once more, Harry Orchard took the stand. He had “remembered” further details in the intervening months, including the sensational claim that Moyer, Haywood, and Pettibone had bragged about belonging to a secret “inner circle,” in which killing was a prerequisite of membership.

There was speculation before the trial about how Darrow would cross-examine Orchard. Richardson’s attacks had failed to shake the witness,