Clarence Darrow: Attorney for the Damned - By John A. Farrell Page 0,208

AFL to pay for research on potential jurors—he had to rely on his own skill and intuition and what gossip the local lawyers brought in. But Murphy could be counted on to rule his way on challenges for cause, and state law gave Darrow 330 peremptory challenges. So he took his time, working his way through the panels of candidates, asking about their profession, faith, subscriptions, memberships, and political leanings, and their opinions on black folks, property values, and the like.

“Every question he asks,” Murphy told a friend, “sets up a chain reaction in the mind of every man in that box. Just watch their faces. They are doing more thinking about this subject of race than they have ever done before in their lives. Darrow is trying his case now. He is preparing that jury to appraise and interpret all the evidence which will be presented later on. The prosecution knows this but they don’t know how to stop him.”

Wearing his familiar gray suit, Darrow slouched with his hands in his pockets or slowly roamed the marble-floored courtroom, with its marble wainscot and gray and ivory walls, speaking in a low voice to the talesmen. “He’s got the court—judge, clerk, attendants—all with him, most of the jurors are eager,” White wrote Johnson. “He ever so often makes some droll remark that sets the entire courtroom to laughing and instantly all tension is relieved.”11

Darrow pushed too far with one prospective juror when, after almost satisfying himself, he asked the talesman where he got his news. The Nation, he said, and Toms promptly had the man excused. “You have to know where to stop,” Darrow told friends that night. “One question too many and you lose a desirable juror. I should have known enough to refrain.”

In the midst of the process, Mayor Smith crushed his Klan challenger in the municipal election. It was a good omen. Darrow and Hays found three Klansmen in the jury pool and sent them packing as well. Jury selection ended on Wednesday, November 4—the day after the election—with a collection of ethnic Catholics, immigrants, and workingmen on the panel.12

ON THE FIRST day of testimony, Toms put his key witness on the stand. Aside from any prejudice against blacks he may have harbored, Inspector Schuknecht had a motive for declaring that all was peaceful outside 2905 Garland Avenue on the night Breiner died: he was there with specific orders to prevent what took place.

No one could have seen it coming, Schuknecht assured the jury; the crowd on the corner numbered no more than a dozen. No one was shouting, no rocks were thrown; all was quiet when suddenly, without provocation, the blacks opened fire.

Darrow began his cross-examination before lunch and continued until court adjourned that evening. As Darrow fired questions, the inspector conceded that within a block of the Sweet house “a couple hundred people” had gathered on the night of September 8, and that “quite a number of automobiles” were cruising by and unloading passengers at dusk on September 9, prompting him to blockade the street. And, toward the end, as Schuknecht sagged under the strain of his long day on the stand, he admitted that he found a half a dozen or more stones on the porch and roof of the house. Darrow asked him to describe the front bedroom. What besides the furniture was there?

“A small stone,” Schuknecht acknowledged.

“Did you find any broken glass?”

“Yes …,” the inspector testified. “We found the stone on the inside, and I believe it was thrown from the outside.”

Toms was aggrieved. “You cannot ask for anything better than that, can you?” he muttered.

TOMS CALLED OTHER police officers and residents of the neighborhood to buttress Schuknecht’s claim that the blacks were not in danger. But the testimony seemed contrived—too good to be true. And one witness let slip why.

When Toms questioned him about the size of the crowd, Dwight Hubbard stumbled. “There was a great number … I won’t say a great number—there were a large … there were a few people there,” he testified.

“When you first started to answer the question … you started to say you saw a great crowd there, didn’t you?” Darrow asked him when his turn came to cross-examine.

“Yes, sir.”

“Then you modified to say a large crowd, didn’t you?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Then you said a few people …”

“Yes, sir.”

Hubbard had been coached by the police, Darrow said, and instructed to testify that only a few people had gathered. Wasn’t that so?

“Yes, sir,” the man, now thoroughly miserable,