Subscribe
Share
Share
Embed
This podcast uses government documents to illuminate the workings of the American government, and offer context around the effects of government agencies in your everyday life.
N. Rodgers: Hey Aughie.
J. Aughenbaugh: Good morning Nia. How are you?
N. Rodgers: I'm excellent. How are you?
J. Aughenbaugh: I'm good, and listeners, if my voice sounds a little deeper and raspier this morning, we are recording in the throes of Richmond springtime.
N. Rodgers: When all the things bloom and all the animals frolic and everybody who's allergic to anything sneezes like there's no tomorrow.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes. We are in the middle of springtime allergy season in Richmond. I am one of those.
N. Rodgers: Which really it's just which season to what allergy at least for me.
J. Aughenbaugh: For me, I am one of those late onset allergy sufferers. I never had allergies as a child or even into my early adult years. But when I moved to Richmond.
N. Rodgers: I moved to Richmond, I'm allergic to Richmond. I have no idea you could be allergic to a place.
J. Aughenbaugh: But this is the high period.
N. Rodgers: When your car is covered in yellow, you're just oh, okay. This is why I wake up sneezing and blowing my nose every five seconds.
J. Aughenbaugh: For me, it really does a number on my vocal chords. Right now I'm sounding particularly deeper.
N. Rodgers: You got that Kathleen Turner sexy thing going on.
J. Aughenbaugh: Kathleen Turner Debra Winger and I want to apologize, listeners. Nia is actually talking to her colleague, good friend, and podcast partner. This is not a new person.
N. Rodgers: Can I tell you how delightful you are?
J. Aughenbaugh: How was that?
N. Rodgers: We're doing a story behind the name. I know I can never get it right. Clarence Darrow. We're actually going to make a two potter because Clarence Darrow has a long, florid and colorful life. But you introduced me to something that I did not know existed, and I could not be more delighted. Listeners, did you guys know there is a trial lawyer Hall of Fame?
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: I'm sorry. I've ruined it because he is a member of said trial lawyer Hall of Fame. But I'm used to it with baseball players and basketball players and even rock stars. Music Hall of Fame. I totally get but really trial lawyer Hall of Fame. Anyway. Considering his career, he belongs clearly. It's not that he doesn't belong. It's just that I didn't know it was a thing to belong to until I saw your notes.
J. Aughenbaugh: I know listeners, you've heard me say this on the podcast. That anytime we do research, no matter what the subject, but particularly with this series, the story behind the name.
N. Rodgers: I am Dorn stuff. It's really cool.
J. Aughenbaugh: There I am. I'm digging deep into Clarence Darrow's life and then I see these multiple references by multiple sources, and they prominently, discuss how he was inducted into the trial lawyers Hall of Fame, which I'm enough of a skeptic. I got to look this up. Yes, it exists.
N. Rodgers: He was inducted posthumously which I would imagine, and I'm not trying to be ugly here would be the best way to induct a lawyer into the Hall of Fame so that you don't have to deal with a very long closing speech. You know what I mean? That was just me. I shouldn't be like that.
J. Aughenbaugh: If they're a trial lawyer.
N. Rodgers: The closing statement in a case. They're going to wrap it up, get you on board.
J. Aughenbaugh: What? Do they have judges there?
N. Rodgers: Like the gymnastics, I give it an 8.9 or 10 from the remaining.
J. Aughenbaugh: Trying to keep them on track Mr. Darrow I believe your last two senses, in your acceptance speech were irrelevant. I'm going to advise the jury to disregard.
N. Rodgers: Oh my gosh, can you imagine Scalia, what you're saying now is just arbitrary and capricious?
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: Clarence Seward, I don't know how you pronounce his middle name. S-E-W-A-R-D, Clarence Seward. As in Seward's Folly?
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: Clarence Seward Darrow. Tell me about Clarence Seward Darrow 'cause all I know about him is the Scopes monkey trout. My knowledge of him is very limited.
J. Aughenbaugh: Because we oftentimes do this off recording, we need to do Seward's Folly as a podcast episode. I'm just thinking out loud. Think about it.
N. Rodgers: Put it on the list. We should do amazing purchases the United States has made because we've got some pretty cool stuff over the years.
J. Aughenbaugh: Louisiana purchase, Sewers folly. The purchase of what is California, Arizona, New Mexico. By the way, that purchase was made without the president or the Congress even know that the representative was going to make the purchase.
N. Rodgers: Hey, about the West.
J. Aughenbaugh: Anyways, it's like we're two young puppies right now out in the backyard and they're focus.
N. Rodgers: Focus and we're doing squirrel.
J. Aughenbaugh: Birds.
N. Rodgers: Flowers, air.
J. Aughenbaugh: Car's backfired. But anyways, so Clarence Darrow, born in April of 1857, died in March of 1938, is, as Nia pointed out just a few moments ago, was a well known American lawyer and politician, he became famous at the tail end of the 19th century because he represented as a lawyer, trade union causes. But as we move into the first decades of the 20th century, he becomes famous for what, I believe, probably many Americans may associate with Clarence Darrow. He was legal counsel in a number.
N. Rodgers: High profile. You know how they always say the case of the Century. He did that several times. It wasn't the case of the century.
J. Aughenbaugh: There's a reason why he's in the trial lawyers Hall of Fame because he did represent some high profile defendants.
N. Rodgers: The other thing that I know about him is he was a public speaker. Didn't he do a lot of public speaking was very pro civil liberties and civil rights. He was that guy. He was really a man before his time in some ways, in the sense of what would eventually become the ACLU and other organizations that do work in those areas.
J. Aughenbaugh: He is a really good example of early 20th century American progressivism. Let's take a deep dive. Listeners, this is going to be two episodes because Clarence Darrow led a rich, and in some ways, complicated life. We're going to have to break it up. Let's talk first about his early life. He was born in Farmdale, Ohio. He was the fifth son of Amirus. I love that name. Amirus.
N. Rodgers: A-M-I-R-U-S.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes. Amirus and Emily Darrow and this is rural, Ohio. His family did have ancestors that can be traced back to the American Revolution.
N. Rodgers: On both sides, she was an Eddie which is a famous name in Ohio, I think, at least up in that area.
J. Aughenbaugh: Again, his parents, were also have some very prominent political views for the time. Because his father was a hardcore abolitionist in Ohio was at that time.
N. Rodgers: In 1857, that would have been.
J. Aughenbaugh: In Ohio was chock full of abolitionists, Supreme Court Chief Justice Salmon Chase was the governor of Ohio.
N. Rodgers: In 18157 just before the Civil War before it all comes to a head.
J. Aughenbaugh: His dad was a religious free thinker. Thought most organized religions tended to lead to group think. His mum was an early supporter of female suffrage and women's rights. Now, many will be surprised by this. Darrow was a smart young lad. I don't think we've ever used the word lad before.
N. Rodgers: We should incorporate that in more.
J. Aughenbaugh: Lads and lassies. I'm tapping into perhaps some of my family's background. Lads and lasses. Anyways, so he attended both Allegheny College in Pennsylvania, which is in the western part of the state and the University of Michigan law school, but did not complete either. He dropped out of Allegheny College after one year because of the panic of 1873, where the American economy just nosedived and he didn't want to be a burden on his family financially. He quits college and goes to teach at one of the schools in their rural country community.
N. Rodgers: Which because he's had some college he's qualified to do.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes. He's teaching, he's tutoring, he's making money for the family.
N. Rodgers: He's not being a burden on his parents.
J. Aughenbaugh: That's right. That's what you did in rural United States in the mid to late 1800s. But while he's teaching, he begins to study law on his own.
N. Rodgers: He starts to read the law. We've seen this from several other problems attorneys.
J. Aughenbaugh: He talked about this with a number of the Supreme Court justices as part of our Supreme Court era series. He then is encouraged by his family to apply for and he's accepted to go to law school to University of Michigan, which at the time was one of the most prominent law schools. It's still a very good law school even today.
N. Rodgers: Ann Arbor. Wow, that would have been a big change for him for Farmdale to Ann Arbor. Ann Arbor of the day was big bustling city.
J. Aughenbaugh: But after doing that for a year, he decides that it would be more cost effective. If he read law in an actual law office, and he did that and when he thought he was ready.
N. Rodgers: Did they pay people who read the lot? Did they pay them like clerks? He would have been making a small amount of money while he was doing that?
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes. Again, not a financial burden on his family.
N. Rodgers: Taking money very seriously, doesn't want to be in debt.
J. Aughenbaugh: He then goes and takes the Ohio bar exam, he passes and because he's already been working in a law firm, he immediately begins to practice the law.
N. Rodgers: He's admitted to the bar right away?
J. Aughenbaugh: Oh, yes.
N. Rodgers: Just because you pass the test doesn't mean they admit you to the bar.
J. Aughenbaugh: That's right. For our listeners who don't know this, when you pass the bar exam, so you pass the exam. But bar associations in all 50 states then make sure that you have the requisite moral and intellectual temperament to join the August ranks of being a lawyer.
N. Rodgers: They basically do a background check on you. Are you ethical? Sketchy because if you're sketchy, they don't want to admit you to the bar. This is super hard to disbar someone once you have barred them. Once they've been admitted to the bar is not an easy thing to admit them. That's why it's such a big deal when somebody is disbarred.
J. Aughenbaugh: He with one of his former classmates, L H Stafford, who was actually from Harvard.
J. Aughenbaugh: They moved to a small village in Harvard, Illinois. I actually had to look it up. This was once thriving community in rural Illinois. They set up their own law practice and almost immediately he starts to work.
N. Rodgers: The friend didn't go to Harvard the friend was from Harvard, Illinois. I mixed that up in my brain, so his friend from Michigan law school, and he went and started in a very small town and how he ended up in that small town was his buddy. His buddy said, "Hey, man, why don't we start a law firm in my little tiny town of Harvard?" Probably Darrow somewhere inside him thought that was actually amusing Harvard.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: He would have thought that was funny, I think.
J. Aughenbaugh: This will become a theme. Darrow was, shall we say, very skeptical of many prominent elites in American society, so he does this for a short period of time. He then returns to Ohio and he opens up his own law office in Andover, Ohio, which is a small farming town, and he slowly builds his practice. He took all cases, and I found references in some of the sources I looked at where many of his customers paid him as you would do at that time in farming communities, not with cash.
N. Rodgers: With food and chickens?
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: I could see that coming because that's how the doctor in my small town that I grew up in got paid.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: Got paid in people's produce and in chickens or eggs or somebody would come do work on his house, they would come and work on his tractor. That's how it barter he used the barter system in a lot of these small towns.
J. Aughenbaugh: Listeners, this is a slight digression, but to Nia's point, let me remind you, Nia and I did not grow up in rural America in the late 1800s. We're not.
N. Rodgers: Right.
J. Aughenbaugh: We grew up in rural America in the 1970s and in '80s. I remember working with my great uncle who owned his own construction company, and I asked him, I said, when you first started working did it pay well? I said, what led you into construction? He goes, in some cases, I would trade my construction labor for doctors appointments, legal representation. I said, Excuse me.
N. Rodgers: That's how you form a company.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: If you're rural and you're small and you just have a one man construction, one or two man three man construction company.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: You go build something for a lawyer, and he sets up your LLC or whatever it is.
J. Aughenbaugh: He goes, I paid off legal bills by putting roofs on like three or he goes, I even put on a roof for a then well known judge in our small town, and I'm like, really? He goes, Yeah, he goes, Tomorrow morning when I pick you up for work, he goes, we'll drive by the judge's house. I'll show you the roof I put on. He goes, yeah.
N. Rodgers: Yes. Still done today. It's not as common, but it's still done today.
J. Aughenbaugh: He then after two years, moves to a slightly larger rural community in Ohio, Ashtabula, Ohio, I've driven by Ashtabula, Ohio, traveling through the Midwest.
N. Rodgers: I want to say that Ashtabula is in it's in a song, but I can't remember what anyway. Ashtabula anyway.
J. Aughenbaugh: He goes there, and this is when he finally gets involved in politics, specifically Democratic politics.
N. Rodgers: He's in the Democratic Party because remember listeners, at this time, the Democratic Party.
J. Aughenbaugh: Party of rural America.
N. Rodgers: It was conservative.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: This was rural.
N. Rodgers: Which makes sense for a lawyer?
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: Makes sense for a lawyer to be on a more which is weird because he comes from progressive people, but I bet I would be willing to bet his dad didn't belong to any particular party because his dad probably thought they were all full of crap. He seems like the guy, I don't believe in any of these people.
J. Aughenbaugh: Because if you have that view of organized religion.
N. Rodgers: It's not a hard leap to think that the political parties are ungodly, as well, but he gets married. He gets married, pretty he follows the normal track of a man his age. He's now got a job, he's making decent money, and he gets married. He marries Jessie Ohl, O-H-l.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes. Then they have a son, Paul and they moved to Chicago. He struggled initially.
N. Rodgers: He came from a town of 5,000 people. He moves to Chicago, which is like one block of Chicago quite but that's pretty. There's a lot of people in Chicago.
J. Aughenbaugh: He eventually begins to speak for the Democratic Party, and it's at this time, Nia, his oratory skills become prominent. Because he gave a series of speeches, and he began to get so noticed. Again, the Democratic Party has dominated the city of Chicago's politics forever. He eventually, because he is beginning to become more prominent in Democratic Party politics in Chicago, begins to work for the city's law department.
N. Rodgers: Now, just as a side note listeners, one of the things that is happening at this time is that he's joining social clubs with prominent people.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: Like, he's working his way into Clarence Darrow looks across the city of Chicago and says, I'm not going to make it in Chicago unless people know me socially.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: He's building that out as well, so he's very smart. Like a lot of people from small towns don't think to do things like that.
J. Aughenbaugh: To your point, listeners, I'm going to go ahead and give an example. When we were discussing a the errors of the Supreme Court. We talked about the Supreme Court led by Chief Justice Harlan Fiske Stone and then the Fred Vincent court. One of the prominent justices on both of those courts was Robert Jackson. Robert Jackson never finished law school. He was a prominent attorney in a small community in upstate New York, and he thought strategically, much like Darrow.
N. Rodgers: How do I build out my influence?
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes. One of the things that you did was you made it very clear that you would represent both corporations and little people. You would do trusts and wills, but you got involved in civic organizations. As a lawyer, you could demonstrate to the elites that you were one of them. You were a committed member to the community, and you had a series of skills that would be beneficial to both important people but also excuse the expression, small people, everyday people. What's really fascinating to me is it's in this decade, Nia, where Darrow becomes very prominent in the American legal landscape. Because he takes the position working for the city law department, but then he resigns to become a lawyer for a railway company.
N. Rodgers: Next is going to pay a lot better.
J. Aughenbaugh: He quite consciously does this. Again, this is a guy that's very aware of personal finance, so this is his opportunity to make some money, but he doesn't like the client. He resigns.
N. Rodgers: The Chicago and Northwestern Railway.
J. Aughenbaugh: Great company.
N. Rodgers: In 1991, he joins them?
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: He's making a nice chunk of change for a couple of years, but he can feel his soul slipping away.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: It's like being a lawyer for Exxon. You can do it. But at some point, it's going to cost you. I shouldn't say Exxon. Any oil company, I was thinking during the BP spill. None of those lawyers, all of them wished they had left a year before that.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: Because trying to defend that in court. But anyway.
J. Aughenbaugh: It would've been like lawyers for Enron.
N. Rodgers: Also, at this point, think about where we are in history in the United States. In the 1890s, you're starting to see the unions and the civil rights folks say, "Hey, we think this work is dangerous. We think this work shouldn't be done 12 hours a day by small children." Like, all these things we want to see changed, and he's having to work on the business side of that.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: Doesn't seem really aligned with his personal.
J. Aughenbaugh: Political views, so then he makes a shift that it really foreshadows what he ends up doing with the rest of his career and his life. In 1894, he resigns from the Chicago and Northwestern Railway Company, and he decides to represent Eugene Debs, who was the leader of the American Railway Union.
N. Rodgers: Who ran for president from prison, which we've discussed Eugene Debs before, but we should probably do a whole episode on him because he is a fascinating character.
J. Aughenbaugh: We might want to go and do a story behind the name for Eugene Debs.
N. Rodgers: But I'm sure Debs couldn't pay him.
J. Aughenbaugh: No.
N. Rodgers: I'm sure Debs was like, I got some cotton in my pocket you can have. Like, I've got lint. No cotton lint in my pocket you can have cause he wouldn't have had a lot of money. He would have been at that point, a worker.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes. When you think about it, the unions were actively being busted up by not only the corporations, but the corporations were actively enlisting or soliciting help from the government. The government was frequently targeting the heads of unions for being socialist and communist and corrupt and this.
N. Rodgers: Debs was actually a communist, but he wasn't corrupt.
J. Aughenbaugh: He was.
N. Rodgers: But wasn't he accused of leading a strike?
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes. This was where Darrow represented Debs for leading the Pullman Strike of 1894. At this point, Darrow severs all ties with the railroad, makes a huge financial sacrifice. He saves Debs in one trial, but in subsequent trials, he couldn't keep Debs out of jail.
N. Rodgers: But that he could save him at all is pretty impressive. Says a lot to his oratory and argument skills.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: He also picks the weirdest people because didn't he at the same time defend some lunatic nut job?
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: That murdered the Chicago mayor.
J. Aughenbaugh: Later on in 1894, Darrow takes his first murder case of his career. He was solicited to help defend Patrick Eugene Prendergast, who was in the newspapers called the mentally deranged drifter who had confessed to killing Chicago mayor Carter Harrison. Darrow's insanity defense failed, and Prendergast was executed.
N. Rodgers: He's the only one, though, isn't he? He's the only one in Darrow's career that Darrow lost to death?
J. Aughenbaugh: To death.
N. Rodgers: Darrow lost some to prison, but Prendergrass was actually executed.
J. Aughenbaugh: Darrow was vehemently opposed to the death penalty.
N. Rodgers: I don't necessarily disagree with that. The death penalty is tough 'cause I understand in some instances why you would want somebody to have the death penalty, and I can understand the emotion behind that, especially if I were a victim if I was a family member of a victim. But if you're wrong, there is no getting it back.
J. Aughenbaugh: It is the ultimate sanction, and if there are errors you better be right. We've not developed the skills to resurrect people.
N. Rodgers: Unlikely to happen. Debs shifts him. He goes from being a corporate lawyer to being a labor lawyer. He's he's going to be out there fighting for the Working Man cause.
J. Aughenbaugh: The Working Man cause, and he begins to drift away from the Democratic Party. He helped to organize the populist Party in Illinois, ran for Congress as a Democrat in 1895, but he lost. His marriage to Jessie all ended divorce two years later in 1897. There was a huge chasm developed in their marriage because A thought that she was marrying a prosperous young attorney, not necessarily a crusader, whose actions really hurt their shall we say, lifestyle.
N. Rodgers: I'm sure their financial status was up and down. I'm sure she got distressed by that, which we also don't know what happened to them personally. She have also just gotten tired of him. Who knows? Darrow did, by the way, side note. The other thing that I know about Darrow is that he did go on and on. He was on a topic. It could be that she just wanted to slap him so hard so much that she was like, I need to get a divorce because I'm going to end up knocking the fool out of you and there won't be anything left. Because the struggle would be real with someone, particularly, who couldn't turn it off. I don't know whether he could turn it off or not because I don't know what happened in their personal lives, but if he couldn't I would feel some sympathy for the oh, no, I can't do this the rest of my life.
J. Aughenbaugh: I can only imagine being the life partner of a trial lawyer who like to give speeches.
N. Rodgers: That would be tough.
J. Aughenbaugh: You get into a disagreement, and 45 minutes later, they have wrapped up their closing statement. Where that's probably not the best way to go ahead and interact with your life partner I can only imagine.
N. Rodgers: It would be you lecturing on politics every time you came home. At first, that would be really interesting and then it would be like you need to stop.
J. Aughenbaugh: You need to stop.
N. Rodgers: But we don't know. Who knows what happened? Maybe there were torrid affairs on both sides, and we shall never know that's probably.
J. Aughenbaugh: It's at this point.
N. Rodgers: But he's doing strike stuff. He's doing a lot of going in and being the lawyer for because remember, striking was illegal.
J. Aughenbaugh: At that time, yes.
N. Rodgers: You couldn't walk off the job because you were, basically, owned by the company that you worked for. When people would say, that's it, we're done and they would get up and leave, they would immediately get arrested. There would immediately be charges. There would be all stuff.
J. Aughenbaugh: He's doing legal representation of various unions. There are numerous examples, United Mine Workers in Pennsylvania, woodworkers in Oshkosh, Wisconsin.
N. Rodgers: Six years later, he marries Ruby Hammerstrom is a young Chicago journalist.
J. Aughenbaugh: He's a muckraker, and this fits very much in line with how his life had changed. He's taking down big corporations. He's representing labor, and she's a muckraker. He creates his own law firm. The law firm is very prominent. The law firm's name was Darrow Masters and Wilson. Masters ends up stopped being a lawyer and becomes a well known poet. Wilson, eventually, leaves the firm and becomes Chief Justice of the Illinois Supreme Court. Though Darrow is no longer representing corporations, he's a prominent person in Chicago, and in Illinois politics. But he continues to represent mine workers, and I love this. For three years, 1906-1908, he represented the Western Federation of miners Leader William Big Bill Hayward, Charles Moyer and George Pettibone because they were arrested and charged with conspiring to murder former Idaho Governor Frank Sternenburg, and he gets Hayward and Pa Bone off. Eventually, the charges were dropped against Moyer. At this time, Nia, he is the preferred lawyer of labor in the United States.
N. Rodgers: But then in 1911 the American Federation of Labor calls on Darrow to defend the McNamara brothers, John and James who were charged in the Los Angeles Times bombing of October 1st, 1910?
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: The case note, is they don't put the bomb in the building, but they put the bomb behind the building and the explosion that it causes ignites ink barrels and natural gas lines, which causes an enormous fire which causes 20 people to die.
J. Aughenbaugh: What the AFL was doing in LA was the Los Angeles Times newspaper was what's known as a closed shop. Meaning you had to agree that you would not unionize if you worked there. The AFL wanted to be an open shop, allowing for the workers to collectively bargain. When the LA Times refused to negotiate and at this point in American history, labor did not have any rights in federal law. What the McNamara brothers did was John and James. They were accused of if you will, placing the bomb in the alleyway because labor strikes at that time could get very violent. Corporations would hire firms to go ahead and keep the shops closed, and labor would respond with violence. You're hurting us, we're going to hurt you back. However, so in the weeks before the jury was seated, Darrow becomes concerned that the McNamara brothers are going to be found guilty. He begins negotiations for a plea bargain. This is where it gets complicated.
N. Rodgers: It gets convoluted. He's trying to work out a plea bargain, and what he wants basically is to avoid the death penalty, or 20 people died in it. That's pretty intense. He's trying to avoid the death penalty. Darrow knows he can't defend these guys and say they're completely innocent. He just can't get away with that. He's trying to limit the damage that they will no death penalty, have them serve time instead. But he gets accused of jury tampering. Because he gets accused of trying to buy off a juror $4,000, which at that time, for most people would be getting a million. It's a huge amount of money in 1911. It was weird because, like, the chief investigator who was working for him gave the person money and then started to walk back towards his office, and Darrow got a call, and so he went out to meet the guy. Nobody's really sure if Darrow knew what was happening or not, and I don't know that that was ever resolved. Was it ever resolved whether Darrow really tried to tamper with the jury or not?
J. Aughenbaugh: What the District Attorney's office wanted for a plea bargain was that the McNamara brothers would have to announce in open court that they actually planned the bomb. Then you got the jury tampering charges. While those charges were being investigated against Darrow, eventually, a plea bargain was struck. John McNamara got 15 years, James got life imprisonment. Darrow was able to spare both McNamara Brothers' lives. However, he lost a lot of credibility in the labor movement because it looked like he sold out the McNamara brothers.
N. Rodgers: To save himself?
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah, to save himself. Darrow, eventually, gets charged with two counts of attempting to bribe jurors. He had two lengthy trials. He was acquitted in the first one, and in the second one, it was a hung jury.
N. Rodgers: Because Darrow had to represent himself because his lawyer got sick.
J. Aughenbaugh: His lawyer got sick.
N. Rodgers: Hung jury isn't an acquittal, but it's also not a prosecution.
J. Aughenbaugh: He wasn't found guilty. To avoid the district attorney re trying him, Darrow agrees to never practice law in California ever again. Now, I read a number of books about Darrow's life. Some of the biographers were like, he was not involved. This was classic elites in LA who didn't like labor, who were trying to trump up charges against Darrow. Other biographers were like, wait a minute, there is evidence that Darrow was so concerned that the McNamara brothers would be found guilty of capital murder charges, which in California at that time, you would be put to death, right?
N. Rodgers: He was trying to save their lives, [OVERLAPPING] and 4,000 is a cheap price to pay for saving somebody's life. I could see that it would be complicated for Darrow. I could actually see Darrow doing that if he really thought it was going to go against his clients. But there's not proof one way or another, is there?
J. Aughenbaugh: No.
N. Rodgers: Is it one of those things where scholars go back and forth on it?
J. Aughenbaugh: They go back and forth. In the research that I did, I'm not sure. But nevertheless.
N. Rodgers: 'Cause he was pragmatic in a lot of ways. He was also idealistic in a lot of ways.
J. Aughenbaugh: To end this episode, because our second episode we'll be looking at what he does after becoming a labor lawyer.
N. Rodgers: Getting booted out of California.
J. Aughenbaugh: Because of the bribery charges and because it looked like at least to a lot of prominent labor union officials that Darrow was selling out the labor movement because of his anti-death penalty view, Darrow segues from being labor unions preferred lawyer to criminal trials. That's where we're going to pick up our next episode about the life of Clarence Darrow.
N. Rodgers: A Part 2 coming next.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: Thank you, Aughenbaugh.
J. Aughenbaugh: Thank you, Nia.