Clarence Darrow: Attorney for the Damned - By John A. Farrell Page 0,142

I have loved the struggling; I have fought for their liberties, for their rights, that they might have something in this world more than the hard conditions that social life has given them.

“I could have hunted with the wolves. But I did not,” he said. “I have brains enough to know that that path is easy. I know that all the good things in the world come to those who play with them. I have passed it aside … I could have done nothing else … I was born with the feelings I have. I have lived them the best I could.

“I could travel no other road,” he told them, weeping with them now. “I come to you worn and weary and tired, and submit my fate.”28

It was not the speech of a flabby pirate. Even Johannsen thought Darrow showed guts. “This took courage and faith,” the union organizer said. “And it was stated at the time and place where there was imminent danger, and it was made against the advice of some of his eminent counsel.”29

The jury began its deliberations at nine p.m. on Thursday. There was no quick verdict this time. “An air of gloom” settled on Darrow as the hours passed. At least some of the jurors, it was apparent, believed him guilty. Inside the jury room, two factions talked and argued all of Friday, and after the jurors retired that night, word reached reporters that the count stood 8 to 4 for conviction. Darrow had sat in the courtroom all day with Ruby and Steffens, Mary and other friends, enduring the pressure.

“Hour in, hour out—every little while the room would thrill with a rumor and the news would flash back and forth and soon an Extra would be out,” Mary wrote Lem. “The strain of that waiting was terrible.”30

On Saturday morning, the Times greeted Los Angeles with an editorial, attacking Darrow for “wanton words of glorification of his miserable self.”

“How can he sleep with the shrieks of the McNamara victims ringing in his ears?” the editors asked, no doubt mindful that the judge allowed the jurors to read the daily papers. “How can he drink with the blood of twenty innocent men surging to the rim of his cup?”31

Shortly before noon, the jurors reentered the courtroom and told Conley they were helplessly deadlocked. The judge declared a mistrial. For Darrow, it was less than vindication. He left the courtroom quickly, snapping at reporters. “He seemed a beaten man,” Baillie said.32

There had indeed been four holdouts, who told reporters they were not convinced of Darrow’s involvement. The eight who pushed for a guilty verdict said that Darrow’s closing argument justifying the Times bombing was a factor in their decision. His radical philosophy, they concluded, could easily have led him to bribery. It was the verdict reached by Mary Field, and confided to her diary. And one that Darrow himself seemed to give when talking to his friend and investigator Victor Yarros a few years later.

“Do not the rich and powerful bribe juries, intimidate and coerce judges as well as juries? Do they shrink from any weapon?” Darrow asked. “Why this theatrical indignation against alleged or actual jury tampering in behalf of ‘lawless’ strikers or other unfortunate victims of ruthless Capitalism?”33

Like Harry Orchard, Franklin had been caught at the scene and cut a deal with the authorities. In each case, it was reasonable to assume that someone had sent the miscreants on their missions. But where was the evidence that proved it was Haywood, Pettibone, or Darrow? Logic may have argued that the defendants were guilty—but not proof. In all of the Idaho and California trials, it is hard to argue that the verdict was unjust.

WHICH STILL LEAVES a question to be answered. Did Darrow participate in the bribery scheme?

Almost assuredly.

Two years later, when Los Angeles was preparing to put Matt Schmidt and David Caplan on trial for their role aiding James McNamara, a Times reporter came upon Johannsen and asked him if Darrow would play a role in the defense of the two co-conspirators. Johannsen had the odor of liquor on his breath. He was untypically candid. He dismissed Darrow as a “sentimental [expletive]” who “got off lucky.”

In his correspondence with his family, Darrow did not assert innocence—only righteousness. “Can’t make myself feel guilty,” he wrote his brother Everett. “My conscience refuses to reproach me.” Guilty of what? Reproach him for what? “Do not be surprised at anything you hear,” he told Paul.

It might well have taken