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Clarence Darrow

I fear he's right...


The Jan/Feb issue of THE FEDERAL LAWYER includes a review, by Nicholas J. Patterson, of a recent biography of Clarence Darrow, the renowned early 20th century trial lawyer.


The review discusses the Steunenberg/Haywood murder trial briefly, and my thoughts while reading it stuck on that.


Frank Steunenberg had been the Governor of Idaho from 1897 to 1901. (The officeholder received a two-year term in that state in those days, so this entailed one re-election.) Though he was elected largely through labor support, near the end of his second term he took management's side of a labor conflict, asking President McKinley to send federal troops into Idaho to break a miners' strike.  He did not seek a third term in the 1900 election, and seems not to have continued to be active in politics in the years left to him.


In 1905, Steunenberg died. Somebody -- probably former miner Harry Orchard -- had rigged explosives to the gate outside his home, in such a way that the explosives would go off once the gate was opened. Orchard was arrested soon thereafter, and in an effort at saving his own life he told a Pinkerton man interrogating him that "Big Bill" Haywood, Secretary-Treasurer of the Western Federation of Miners had ordered this hit.


Darrow successfully defended Haywood and another man implicated by Orchard, mine explosives expert George Pettibone. There was nothing extraordinary about the defense strategy -- it was of necessity a matter of attacking the credibility of the key prosecution witness, Orchard, whom Darrow called an "inhuman monster, a murderer, bigamist, perjurer, gambler, thief, and incendiary." But Darrow pursued that inevitable strategy with extraordinary zest and skill, winning his man's acquittal.


Ah, the good old days.


So my question: why is it that Darrow is best known for his much-later involvement in the Scopes/Monkey trial? Yes, because as Patterson mentions there was a Hollywood movie with big stars in it. But there were more dramatic instances in his life worthy of plays, movies, paperback novelizations, etc., and the rescue of Big Bill was just one of them.


Somebody should get to work on the screenplay.
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