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The Last Trials of Clarence Darrow

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When Donald McRae paints a word picture of Darrow in the courtroom, he writes a compelling story. While most people think of Clarence Darrow defending evolution in the famous "Monkey Trial", McRae expands the picture to show the sequence of two other trials, famous in their own time and still resonant today.

The first is the defense of two cold-blooded murderers, Leopold and Loeb, both sons of Chicago millionaires, whose illicit homosexual love affair led them to kill a 14-year old neighbor boy, pour acid on his body and stuff it into a culvert. With the whole nation crying for the execution of the two 19-year olds, Darrow, a staunch opponent of capital punishment, takes the case and succeeds in saving their lives. McRae makes us fascinated with this crime and notes that the wealthy fathers stiff the famous lawyer on his legal fees.

The second trial of Kentuckian John T. Scopes for the teaching of evolution in the Tennessee schools gives us a colorful cast of characters. Although Darrow didn't get his client off, he won in the court of public opinion by showcasing the narrow-mindedness of the anti-evolution forces.

In the third trial, Darrow defends a black man on a charge of murder in Detroit. Dr. Ossian Sweet, a doctor who had studied in Europe, had bought the corner house in a white neighborhood. On the first night in the house, an angry mob congregates outside the house, but nothing serious happens. On the second night, Dr. Sweet, his college student brother, a dentist and two insurance salesmen are in the house to keep watch. Stones are thrown, a window is broken and suddenly a shot rings out from the upper windows of the house. One of the men outside the house falls dead -- and it falls to Darrow to convince an all-white jury that the men in the house acted in self defense.

These are absolutely riveting cases, but the author undercuts all pretense of making this a serious biography by overemphasizing Darrow's extra-marital involvement with Mary Field Parton. McRae lavishes page after mawkish page on Mary without convincing the reader that she has any true importance in Darrow's life. They had an affair, then she married someone else, gave up her journalism career and raised a daughter. She saw him in Chicago before the trial of Loeb and Leopold, but Darrow refused her the "inside scoop" she was hoping would revive her journalism career. While she continued to carry a torch for the much older Darrow, it seems apparent from McRae's narrative facts that she was nothing more than a footnote in Darrow's life. McRae seems to put Mary Parton forward because she is all he has in the way of "new" material. While it is interesting to learn that the famous lawyer was a jerk in private life, that is less surprising to the modern reader than Darrow's conviction that he could use the law to fight for the oppressed. This might serve the reader as an introduction, but don't take this for a definitive biography.

At age 59, the courtroom is still central to my identity as a lawyer. Nonetheless I have begun to imagine a world where when the demands of trials will exceed the abilities of my body and brain to endure. The end must come for us all, although its timing remains outside of human or even most medical knowledge. So too the end would come to Darrow-controversial,often despised by his contemporaries, beloved by subsequent generations of trial lawyers.

Here we meet Darrow, the aging, wounded lion of the American bar. Acquitted in California of bribery of two jurors in a murder case, he is back in Chicago over a decade later still looking for redemption. He is 67, and he has acquired against all odds the responsibility to defend "the Case of the Century"-Leopold and Loeb, the brilliant sociopaths who killed a neighbor boy to prove their superiority. The teenaged defendants, sons of the city's Jewish elite, were in the sights of prosecutors whose thirst for judicial blood was perhaps matched only by the howling mob who would have settled for a lynching. There was no doubt about their factual guilt. There remained one question and one question only: should they live or should they be put to death?

Rumors swirled abut Darrow's fee. Some said it was a million dollars. In truth it was much less. That was the sideshow. What was really at stake was the death penalty. To avoid it Darrow took the road less traveled. He pleaded them guilty and threw their fate to the hands of one Chicago judge. His summation, whose phrases still ring out in the defense of capital cases to this day, was the difference, The boys went to prison where Loeb died in a prison hospital following an attack in a shower with a straight razor. Leopold went on to be paroled and moved to Puerto Rico where he worked in a hospital as a lab assistant. Ironically his supervisor was a distant cousin of the child Leopold and Loeb had killed.

The next case took Darrow to Tennessee where amid great clamor he defended John Scopes on charges of teaching evolution in violation of state law. So powerful was his advocacy, it is often forgotten that Scopes was in fact convicted by prosecutor and former Presidential candidate William Jennings Bryan. Scopes was fined a small (and forever unpaid) amount for his crime.

The final trial (although Darrow actually had one other major case) was that of Ossian Sweet a black man tried along with ten others for the murder of a white man who as part of a mob had invaded Sweet's home in an attempt to run him out of the neighborhood. Probably the first major trial of the beginning of the civil rights movement, Darrow's perfect pitch in closing argument captured the sense of rage and plea for justice that would echo in American courtrooms for years to come.

I knew more about Clarence Darrow's famous cases--defending Leopold and Loeb, The Scopes Trial, and the Sweets--than I did about the man. Though growing up in a family that was pro-union with an immigrant grandfather who supported the Communist party, was an atheist, and nearly deported under the Palmer Act, I had a vague sense of who he was and what he stood for. Still, I probably wouldn't have considered this book had it not been available to me through the Vine program.

Overall I'm glad I did decide to try it. While I generally prefer my biographies (though this is not technically a biography because it deals only with the end of Darrow's life) a little more straight forward and less inclined toward the dramatic, when dealing with an individual I might not normally read about a slightly lighter treatment makes for an easier read. Former South African Donald McRae did an excellent job of researching, and his dramatic touch perhaps was necessary when dealing with a figure who depended so much on drama to win his cases.

At first I wasn't too keen on references to Darrow's love life with Mary Field Parton, his almost life-long mistress, mostly through her diary entries, especially as she wasn't present for any of the main events. Yet they did serve to provide insights into Darrow's character. On the other hand, telling so much from her point of view left me wondering whether she was his "one and only" or as Darrow's wife Ruby obviously thought, one of many or someone who insinuated herself into his life for personal gain.

What I found most amazing was how in the 1920s this avowed atheist could have so much support in the press defending two obvious sociopaths and the teaching of evolutionary theory in schools. When in our more "modern" times hiring an atheist as your defense lawyer would be tantamount to asking to be executed. Still, we could use more Clarence Darrows today--men and women not afraid to claim the freedoms guaranteed in our Constitution.

All in all, a book worth reading.

If you are going to write a biography of someone who has been the subject of as many books as Clarence Darrow has, it's not enough to write well. You'd better have something new to say. Unfortunately, McRae, while a decent enough writer for the most part, does nothing to add to our knowledge or understanding of Darrow.

For many years, Darrow carried on an extramarital relationship with journalist Mary Field Parton. He was clearly the love of her life (despite her marriage to Lemuel Parton); whether she was the love of his is not, I think, as clear as McRae suggests. McRae has taken this relationship, using Parton's diaries, letters between Darrow and Parton, as well as writings and interviews with Parton's daughter, Margaret, and has set it as a framing device for his description of three of Darrow's most famous cases, cases that came towards the end of his legal career.

The difficulty is that those cases (the Leopold-Loeb sentencing hearing, the Scopes trial and the murder trial of Ossian Sweet and his co-defendants) have been written about at great length. Bibliographies of the Scopes trial and the Leopold-Loeb case run for pages and pages. Although writings about the Sweet case are not as extensive, they are readily available.

If the Parton connection had any relevance to, or effect on, Darrow's participation in, or conduct of, these cases, then the device would work. But, if she did, it is not apparent from McRae's book. For the most part, he simply quotes her diaries or her daughter's writing as to what she was feeling at the time of the events, or engages in speculation as to her or Darrow's reactions. Further, he takes Mary and her daughter (who was quite young at the time of these events) at face value, without seeming to take into account their biases. Should we really assume that Mary is correct in her assessment of Darrow's wife, Ruby, and his satisfaction or lack thereof in his marriage, when she wanted to be married to him herself? People are not generally objective about their rivals in love!

I have the sense that McRae thought there'd be a book in Darrow's relationship with Parton, but found that there simply wasn't sufficient source material to write a full-length book. So he used it as padding. This would have been far better off as an article in a periodical such as The New Yorker.

Finally, I am tired of non-fiction writers who really want to be novelists. Non-fiction is about fact. It is not about pretentious, overblown invention. The opening paragraph of the book gives a broad hint of problems to come. I have to quote that paragraph in full, with my comments, so you'll see what I mean:

"Darkness spread slowly across a city in tumult. It seeped through the burnt orange and faded [is that a verb or an adjective?] red streaks of a sky that softened the stone buildings towering over her [Who is "her"? The "darkness"? The "city"?] Alone in the Loop on a summer evening [well, that's arrant nonsense to anyone who knows the Loop!], Mary Field Parton picked her way through the teeming streets, slipping quietly past the blurred faces and babbling voices. [Wait! What happened to "Alone in the Loop . . . ?"] And the farther she walked the more she lowered her gaze, as if willing herself to become invisible. The dusk framed her own trepidation [huh?] as she went to meet the man she had loved so long."

Writing like this is guaranteed to lose me from the start.

I was rather disappointed by this book, which felt like the synopses of three famous Darrow trials, flimsily tied together with a narrative about Darrow and the women in his life. Most of this is ground which has been covered before, and in a much more compelling fashion. We learn nothing particularly new about the trials and Darrow comes off looking like a really unappealing character, which again we already knew. Towards the end I was just waiting for it all to be done with. There are better books on the individual trials already referenced in the notes; go read those instead.

This book was an eye-opening pleasure to read. I always thought I knew a lot about history, and of course I'd heard of Clarence Darrow, but I never knew that Darrow had represented Leopold and Loeb and I had never even heard of the Ossian Sweet murder trial. I knew that Darrow had taken on religious fundamentalists in general and William Jennings Bryan in particular in the Scopes monkey trial, but my knowledge of that had come from the 1960 movie "Inherit The Wind". Since that movie pretty faithfully gave us the wordplay between Darrow and Bryan, I didn't really learn that much in that section of the book. But the background on Leopold and Loeb was fascinating, including the rather bizarre bathtub shenanigans involving the pre-adolescent Leopold and his kinky German nanny. Darrow was a lifelong opponent of the death penalty, and he succeeded in saving Leopold and Loeb from execution. If you happen to be pro-death penalty I don't think Darrow's arguments against it would change your mind.....then again, we are talking about seeing his words on paper rather than hearing the charismatic man himself in court. I do happen to be in favor of the death penalty, but it was interesting to find out that Leopold led a fruitful life as a teacher while in prison and as a research assistant to a professor once he got out of prison. Again, I had never heard of the Ossian Sweet murder case but just reading about "civilized" white people trying to keep this young doctor from moving into an all-white neighborhood was enough to make my blood boil and fill me with disgust. Darrow was masterful in court, and merciless towards a procession of lying, vigilante prosecution witnesses. (He taunted one such woman, who happened to be a teacher, with her ignorance as she mispronounced a street in her neighborhood, Goethe street, as "Go-Thee" street. Darrow wondered out loud how such an ignorant person could be a teacher in Michigan.) I found the introductory chapter, which attempts to introduce Mary Field Parton to the reader, a bit odd and written in the style of a poor romance novel. Actually, after that chapter I was tempted to give up on the book, but I'm very glad I didn't. After that the book really moved up to a much higher level. I learned a lot about 2 of the cases, and about many of the people involved in them. One of the best books I've read this year and highly recommended.

This interesting book focuses on the three last "big" cases handled by Clarence Darrow (1857-1938), although I would venture to say that any case involving this giant of the American trial bar by his mere presence became a "big" case. Darrow, of course, is still famous for defending underdogs caught in the web of the law. However important, two of these cases--the Leopold & Loeb "thrill" murder and the Scopes "Monkey Trial"--have been almost done to death. The third case, the Sweet murder trial in Detroit, is not so well known and it is a case that well bears study. The author suggests that one justification for covering once again this well trod ground is new research focusing upon Darrow's former mistress and later compatriot, the journalist and writer Mary Field Parton (who died in 1969). The author conducted interviews with some of her relatives and had access to her diary and other papers. While spending as much time as the author does on Ms. Parton may have made sense if this were a full-scale biography of Darrow, I found it distracting me from the main narrative.

But there is much good to report about this book as well. The author is one of the rare writers who can examine a case trial transcript and know how much detail to include and how much to ignore. So his narratives of the trials is crisp and focused, and does not bury the reader (especially the general reader) in needless jargon and courtroom detail. Also, the author does give us a lot of insights into Darrow; for example, he discusses the 1911 LA Times bombing case that led to allegations that Darrow had tried to bribe a juror. He also is quite effective in setting the stage for each case, sketching carefully the background and Darrow's strategy. This fine exposition is particularly welcome when the author discusses the Sweet murder cases, as bizarre a set of circumstances as one can imagine. The case illustrates one important facet of Darrow too often overlooked--his string of cases defending black defendants who had gotten themselves into precaious situations with the law, with many facing "the rope" or "the chair" should Darrow lose. I also liked that while the author clearly respects Darrow and his talents, he does an excellent job in painting the curmudgeonly and cranky sides of Darrow's character, characteristics which contributed to his courtroom effectiveness. Darrow's final years are also covered.

The book runs some 400 pages, and is supported by an Epilogue, personal Afterword, and 46 pages of "Notes and Sources." The author obviously has done a solid job of research, some of it original. The book stands I think as a good overview introduction to Darrow and to the kind of sensational cases with which he was involved in the early 20th century. A colorful book about an extremely colorful figure.

I would have to agree with most of the reviews in that this was not a biography, nor a historical novel.Using Darrow's relationship with Mary Parton is what seemed to keep things together. It seemed to me too much focus was put on the relationship.It was interesting, somewhat long and drawn out but it held my attetnion.

"The Last Trials of Clarence Darrow" covers three trials from the 1920s which resuscitated the famous progressive defense attorney's reputation and sealed his legacy after Darrow had been disgraced for jury-tampering in 1912. The Leopold and Loeb murder trial (1924), the Scopes "Monkey Trial" (1925), and the Ossian Sweet murder trial (1925) represent three of the most contentious issues of the twentieth century -capital punishment, the teaching of evolution vs creationism, racial injustice. Darrow's powerful oratory made its mark on all of them. Donald McRae's approach is to illuminate Darrow's role in these last great cases of his career, a revitalized man, and also to shed light on his relationship with former mistress and activist Mary Field Parton during this time.

Darrow fought against the death penalty for "thrill killers" Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb, rich 19-year-old Chicagoans who murdered a 14-year-old acquaintance in a strange sex/crime pact that the nation's press and public naturally found irresistible. Darrow fought to get Darwinism its day in court Tennessee, where high school science teacher John T. Scopes served as a test case of the state's law prohibiting the teaching of evolution in schools, culminating in a courtroom showdown with former colleague, now fundamentalist rabble-rouser William Jennings Bryan. In Detroit, 11 black defendants were charged with murder in the shooting death of a man who was part of a lynch mob that threatened Dr. Ossian Sweet and family when they moved into a white neighborhood.

Donald McRae provides the context for these cases, courtroom drama, and, of course, Darrow's sharp cross-examinations and great closing arguments that held everyone rapt, whether or not they were convincing. Darrow was part of very capable defense teams in these cases; he didn't work alone. But he was a great rhetorician who could turn anything into a moral imperative that judges and juries would be ashamed to ignore. By the time the cases were through, Darrow was nearly 70 years old and in declining health. The author takes us through the final decade of his life and, much later, Mary Field Parton's final years and her continuing preoccupation with the man who was the love of her life.

Mary Field Parton's feelings about Darrow, presumably gleaned from her diaries, and her uneasiness with the role of wife and mother are interspersed with accounts of the three trials. Mary carried a torch for the man, but her presence in this book in awkward, as their affair ended 12 years earlier. She was on the periphery of Darrow's life at this point. The author is obviously a great admirer of Darrow and shares many of his subject's values -perhaps too much of an admirer, willing only to criticize Darrow in his personal conduct, i.e. he was self-absorbed, inconsiderate, and treated his women badly. "The Last Trials of Clarence Darrow" is a decent introduction to these trials and to Clarence Darrow, but there are better books on those subjects, and the long-lost-love theme seems forced and saccharine.

Clarence Darrow was a lawyer whose closing arguments in court brought tears to the eyes of judges...and not because he went on for hours...but because he was that powerful a speaker. He defended the guilty and non-guilty alike, trying to save all from the prisons and gallows. According to Mr. Mcrae's book, Mr. Darrow thought no one deserved to go to prison or to swing from the end of a rope. This brought up the intriguing question: "Was Clarence Darrow simply more "Christ-like" than others, or was he a staunch believer in ammorality?"

While reading about the Loeb-Leopold case and looking at the pictures of the two with Mr. Darrow, I couldn't help but get the creeps at times. Here were two rich homosexual college "boys", who killed a 14-year-old for the thrill of it, smiling, laughing, joking with their attorney and the press. Clarence Darrow did everything he could to make everyone see Loeb and Leopold as misunderstood, misguided, mentally ill "boys", while seemingly spending little time thinking of the young boy who was viciously murdered...and who was actually an innocent boy. The fact that Mr. Darrow appeared so little interested in children in general, made this all seem quite disturbing. The author, himself, seemed to display a too creepy interest in Loeb and Leopold when he related what happened the night Loeb was killed in prison. Not to mention he seems to want the reader to believe the nannies both Loeb and Leopold had as boys were responsible for their disturbed minds. (The 1950's movie "Compulsion" tried to place the blame on their mothers--one for being dominating, the other for being dead!) Mr. Mcrae also goes on at the end of the book to tell what happened to Leopold, including his marriage to a woman, saying he thought it was "poignant" that Leopold was more concerned about being seen as a homosexual than a murderer. Bobby Franks' life is reduced to nothing again! Nothing matters more than Nathan Leopold's brilliant mind and sensitive nature. There's no concern whatsoever about women who marry homosexuals or bisexuals, either...no comments about how such marriages are far greater shams than marriages between cheaters like Clarence Darrow and their "long-suffering" wives.

Clarence Darrow obviously cheated on his wife again and again. Why Mr. Mcrae sees Mary Field Parton as his "soul mate", I am not sure. They both seemed to use each other. And Mr. Darrow seeing her much like himself sounds more like narcissism than anything else. I personally found Mrs. Parton to be a terribly interesting person. She was a writer who eventually chose marriage and motherhood, and seemed to have a time with both. In her final years, she called out for Darrow in the darkness, as well as felt guilt about their adulterous affair. Why the author chose to revolve his book around her is also interesting...namely because I am not sure why. Why did he? It gave the book more appeal to the female reader in general, but why did he not entitle the book something different...something that reflected her major role in both the book and in Darrow's life? Why call it "The Last Trials of Clarence Darrow" when he spends so much time concentrating on Mary Field Parton? Some may wonder what she's even doing in the book period. My wildest guess about all of this? Since Mr. Mcrae shows such empathy for non-straight men who marry women and don't won't to be exposed, he possibly believes Clarence Darrow was either a homosexual or bisexual, and this book is providing a cover for a man who is obviously a hero to the author. So many paragraphs in the book about the affair read like fiction...maybe that's exactly what they were...nothing but fiction.

Donald Mcrae wrote a highly readable, well written book that kept the reader's interest to the very end. But he took tremendous liberties in the book, and he is far, far from being an objective type of writer. What "The Last Trials of Clarence Darrow" can do, though, besides greatly entertaining the reader, is create tremendous interest in Clarence Darrow and his trials. For anyone interested in the Sweets trial, get "Arc of Justice" by Kevin Boyle. The book is a powerhouse...and the more I read it, the more I see Donald Mcrae's book as being...fluff.