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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, yeah. How are you?
N. Rodgers: I am feeling all Part 2-ish. How are you?
J. Aughenbaugh: This is going to Datney and I. When we were kids, there would be TV shows. They would have.
N. Rodgers: Coat hangers.
J. Aughenbaugh: Coat hangers.
N. Rodgers: At the end of the season, and then you'd go all summer. Waiting to find out what happened. Who shot JR? What happened?
J. Aughenbaugh: Unlike today where you get a complete season of a favorite show that drops on a streaming service and you can binge watch the entire thing.
N. Rodgers: It didn't work that way before.
J. Aughenbaugh: No. You had to wait all summer.
N. Rodgers: Yeah. It was terrible. It was terrible because you debated with your friends. Things got passionate sometimes.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah, you had to wait a week or they broke up the TV seasons, the fall season and the spring season.
N. Rodgers: They started doing that later.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah, you had to wait.
N. Rodgers: No, I'm never going to find out.
J. Aughenbaugh: Part 2.
N. Rodgers: Part 2 of Clarence Darrow's life, 'cause Clarence Darrow's life is long and involved. He lived to be 83. Yes. In our previous episode, we heard about his early career and his early marriage and his working with labor and civil rights, starting his civil rights career, that kind of stuff.
J. Aughenbaugh: Where we finished?
N. Rodgers: But then, he gets all mangled up. If you go listen to that episode, you'll find that the last case pushes him out of labor because labor doesn't want to have anything to do with him. They're like, "We don't like that guy. We think that that guy, he's not really on our side". He turns to criminal cases.
J. Aughenbaugh: He almost ends up losing his legal career because of what was alleged he did in the Infamous LA Times Bombing case.
N. Rodgers: Jury tampering. For anybody who's not going to listen to that episode, it was jury tampering. But now he says, okay.
J. Aughenbaugh: He begins to take civil and criminal cases.
N. Rodgers: Although I do think it's interesting, you do have in your notes something that I'd like to mention before we go on and talk about that, which is his lifelong opposition to the death penalty.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: He believes it is incompatible with humanitarian progress. Which I can't say that I disagree with that. In more than 100 cases, only one of Darrow's clients was executed, somebody we talked about earlier in the labor when he was doing the labor work. He has this this total focus on keeping his clients out of a chair, off the noose, away from being put to death.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: He takes some pretty intense cases.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes. That's going to be the focus of this second episode. How Darrow's deeply held political views and criminal justice system views really motivates, effectively, the second half of his career. To give you a sense of this, I found a reference to a case in 1915, where he represented this person, Mary Braselton. Her family wanted to commit her to an insane asylum. The landlord who attempted to go ahead and have her committed to the insane asylum alleged that Braselton owed him rent money. He goes ahead and takes the case, even though it's just in many ways, it's your Garn variety, at that time, little case.
N. Rodgers: She couldn't pay him. Yet he took the case because he's like, "No, people shouldn't be put into asylums because they can't pay".
J. Aughenbaugh: The rent?
N. Rodgers: That's an unethical, immoral? A lot of his cases you'll find, they have a thread of that. Now that was a case?
J. Aughenbaugh: Oh, yes.
N. Rodgers: In 1924, which I struggle with. I struggle with because Leopold and Loeb are not sympathetic characters. Now, wait, I should also pause and say, at this point, Darrow, by the way, looks like he rolls out of bed and goes to court every day. He is rumpled beyond what most people think of as a rumpled professor, hair is all crazy, his suits are all wrinkled. He doesn't look like a big-time lawyer.
J. Aughenbaugh: No.
N. Rodgers: He looks like a guy who is one step away from being homeless himself. But his intellectual stamina is at 1,000%. He's firing on every single cylinder. But he takes this case with these two guys and, they're not sympathetic. They're from rich families. They're snobby, they're obnoxious, and they are accused of kidnapping and killing a 14-year-old boy.
J. Aughenbaugh: By the name of Bobby Franks. Yeah.
N. Rodgers: For fun.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes, for fun.
N. Rodgers: They are 19 and 18 when they're arrested, Leopold is 19, Loeb is 18, and they are university students. They are accused of taking him and killing him.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah, they kidnapped him, they killed him. By all accounts, not only did they come from wealthy families, by all accounts, extremely bright kids.
N. Rodgers: Doing very well in school.
J. Aughenbaugh: Leopold was a law student at the University of Chicago. He eventually was about ready to transfer to Harvard Law. Loeb was the youngest graduate ever from the University of Michigan. But when they were arrested, Leopold went ahead and said, "The thing that prompted Dick to want to do this thing', his friend, 'and prompted me to want to do this thing was a pure love of excitement, the imaginary love of thrills, doing something different, the satisfaction and the ego of of putting something over".
N. Rodgers: They wanted to get away with it. That, by the way, is a common killer mentality. I am smarter than everybody else. I will not get caught. I will be able to do what I want to do, and I want to be able to do what I want to do. He wasn't saying anything that we don't know about killers now, but this is 1924, so we're new to this whole murder killer thing. By the way, it's the first time in my awareness that they use "Trial of the Century" as the headline of which now has no meaning because we don't. We've had so many trials of the century at this point.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: Yeah.
J. Aughenbaugh: What's fascinating is when Leopold and Loeb were captured, they then went ahead and took the police around Chicago to collect evidence that would be used against them. The state's attorney, when they were charged, went ahead and told the press that he had a hanging case for sure.
N. Rodgers: They actually put out a ransom demand, which they never wanted. They didn't want the money. He was basically torturing the family.
J. Aughenbaugh: Family. That's right.
N. Rodgers: There was some level of that with torture anyway, because the boy was not just gently killed. I mean, killers hardly ever. But they make full confessions. They're like, "Yep, we did it. Here's what we did. We're going to drag you around, show you all our stuff. Here's my glasses, my special made glasses". One of them, I can't remember whether its Leopold or Loeb, wore very distinctive glasses, and they were at the body.
J. Aughenbaugh: What Darrow here did and why trial lawyers have put him up on a pedestal, was that because Leopold and Loeb had confessed to the crime, Darrow went ahead and said, "We are pleading guilty". But then he wanted to focus on the separate part of the trial concerning the sentence.
N. Rodgers: Right, cause his argument was, if they're going to talk about it like this, clearly they're mentally diseased. Clearly, they are insane. Because no sane person would say, "Well, the other day I killed a kid and put him in a ditch". No sane person would do that. By definition, because they confessed, they must be insane. That's his first leg of his argument. Then the second leg of his argument is, You can't kill people under the age of 21. Because 21 is the age of majority at this time. It's not 18.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah. Listeners today, the age of majority is considered 18. You're an adult. But back then, the age of majority was 21. Because Leopold and Loeb were 19 and 18, Darrow's point was not only is it clear that they have a mental disease, who else goes ahead and proudly says to the cops when they're arrested, "Yeah, sure, we did it, and here's the reason why we did it". But he was just like, "You can't put them to death because they're not old enough to recognize that what they did was wrong. We know that they can't do this because according to every other similar law in the state of Illinois, they're not of age where they can be held responsible like we would hold adults".
N. Rodgers: They couldn't sign contracts, they couldn't do any of the other things that we allow adults to do. Twenty-one was the legal age. They were below that. It would be like now arguing that a 14-year-old could not be put to death. In fact, we rarely do put children to death in the United States because of that reason.
J. Aughenbaugh: The Supreme Court itself.
N. Rodgers: Right. The theory is that their brains are not fully formed and they can't make a full understanding decision of what they've done. They don't really understand the consequences of what they've done.
J. Aughenbaugh: He speaks his closing argument in the sentencing part of the trial, his closing argument was 12 hours.
N. Rodgers: Twelve hours. In case you are wondering, that is the length of time that it takes on a train to get from Richmond to Boston.
J. Aughenbaugh: Boston.
N. Rodgers: Twelve hours. That is a long time. If I were on that jury, I would have been like, I'm assuming there were bathroom breaks.
J. Aughenbaugh: But nevertheless, 12 hours. It was successful because he convinced the judge that instead of Leopold and Loeb being given the death sentence that they would receive, what was it? I forget what it was.
N. Rodgers: Life plus 99? Life life plus 99 years. They're never getting out of prison, but they're not going to be put to death.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: Prison at this time for rich people, was a nicer place than. Well, prison now for rich people, I'm sure that P. Diddy is not suffering the way your average prisoner is.
J. Aughenbaugh: Exactly.
N. Rodgers: In jail. But that was published and republished and republished his closing statement. It was considered so deft. It was considered so well constructed.
N. Rodgers: That it was really like trial lawyers ever are like, dude. This is changing how we view young people. This is changing how we view insanity.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: This is changing what we understand about, because he basically says, it is not just about understanding right and wrong. It's also about your psychology. It's about your environment. He brought up that he thought that they had been abused in their families. All these things that make you that would give you potential to commit a crime that you wouldn't necessarily commit if you were under a different environment.
J. Aughenbaugh: It really helped shape what a lot of criminal defense attorneys began to do throughout the rest of the 20th century, which is to make the argument that the psychological, physical, and environmental influences, play an important role in trying to decide guilt and innocence and then what would be the appropriate punishment.
N. Rodgers: It's fascinating to me his argument that if you're not repulsed by the crime, there is something wrong with you. Because the crime itself should be repulsive.
J. Aughenbaugh: That's right.
N. Rodgers: It's an interesting, circular. Well, this is clear proof that you're crazy because if you weren't crazy, you would be repulsed by the thing that you did.
J. Aughenbaugh: That's right.
N. Rodgers: You'd feel guilt. You would feel revulsion. You would feel like you shouldn't, and clearly these guys didn't feel that. That's basically what he was saying is they're psychopaths.
J. Aughenbaugh: Because he's basically then making the argument that not only are Leopold and Loeb guilty for the crime, but that their families are in the larger society is. We're all complicit. Which, many of us are like, hey, wait a minute, there. I had nothing to do with, how these boys were raised, etc. But, again, he's trying to defend his client, to get the best outcome possible for his client. Now, he also gets criticized in this trial, because of the payment that he received. It was labeled that he was providing $1 million defense for two wealthy families.
N. Rodgers: Right. That they were going to pay him $1 million. Back then would have been zillions of dollars now.
J. Aughenbaugh: Like $1 million is a now, Daryl was somewhat sensitive to this. After the trial, he eventually accepted $70,000 for his representation of Leopold and Loeb, which, after expenses and taxes, he netted 30,000.
N. Rodgers: Which at that time, would be about $400,000 today.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: I mean, still not but it's nothing like what some people get paid.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: He saved their lives. Yes. They lived out their lives in prison. Well, I don't know how long they lived. But so, Leopold and love kind of makes me feel a little dirty, right? Because that one I don't I'm like, Clarence, you made some arguments here that have opened the doors to arguments that I'm not sure we should agree with. Well, I don't think that psychopaths should just be able to say, well, I'm a psychopath, so I don't have to be I don't have to pay the ultimate price for what I've done. I know that I earlier in a previous episode said I don't really I'm not really big fan of the death penalty. I was a fan of it for Ted Bundy. I'm okay with that. Because Ted Bundy murdered and tortured more than 100 women. Done with you, there is no redemption, there is no saving. We just need to be finished with this. In my mind. I know that please don't send me emails telling me how evil am. I'm aware of it. But I do think that opening the door to saying because somebody is crazy, that doesn't necessarily mean that in the moment they did not know what they were doing and they were not fully aware and cognizant of the harm that they were causing. Because It's complicated.
J. Aughenbaugh: I get torn on this, because Nia, as you well know, because of my religious beliefs, the death penalty is immoral. On the other hand, there are some criminal acts. Folks, if you're even remotely curious, you ought to read some of the things that Leopold and Loeb said after they were arrested.
N. Rodgers: That they did to him, that they did to this boy, and why? I mean. They were not in any way sorry.
J. Aughenbaugh: They weren't, no. I mean, some crimes are so heinous to where you're just like, Nia, you used the phrase that really resonates with me as a Catholic. They were beyond redemption which.
N. Rodgers: You taught there's nobody beyond redemption man there are some people who walk right up to the line, aren't there? Is this the redemption line? You're shove right up against it. But then he redeems himself.
J. Aughenbaugh: Speaking of religion, let's go to the next trial.
N. Rodgers: Next trial of the century, which by the way, we still in the same century, but that's neither here nor there.
J. Aughenbaugh: Heck, it was in the same decade. It was later the infamous Scopes Monkey trial. In 1925, Daryl defends John T Scopes, in the state of Mississippi. No, Tennessee. Excuse me, State of Tennessee. The trial was a test case. Tennessee had a law that prohibited the teaching of evolution in biology classes. Teacher Scopes, okay, thought that his students should be presented both creationism as an explanation of how life began, but also evolution. The American Civil Liberties Union was looking for a test case because Tennessee was not the only state in the country that had these laws that forbid the teaching of evolution.
N. Rodgers: By the way, this is in state funded schools.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: You can teach whatever you want in private schools, although private schools are mostly religious schools and would never have considered teaching this to start with.
J. Aughenbaugh: Public schools. But what was fascinating about this case was Daryl's opponent was William Jennings Bryan.
N. Rodgers: See earlier name stories behind the name.
J. Aughenbaugh: This becomes a pitched battle. Not only because of the religion, public school curriculum, policy debate. But you're talking about two of the leading public intellectuals, all the time.
N. Rodgers: Great thinkers and great orators, people who could argue the birds out of the trees.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: There's an old and it's incredibly rude saying, you could sell ice to an Eskimo. These are those kinds of guys. That's their mojo. But what I love about this is Daryl calls Brian as a biblical expert.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: He's like, Mr. Brian, you are an expert on the Bible. I'd like to call you. The other prosecutor is like, no, and Brian says, no, I'll do it. I'll go because his ego is so there. Like you need to think about these two men as this is two giant egos.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: That are using this to have an intellectual battle?
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes. Even though the prosecutor objected, the judge allowed Daryl to call Jennings Bryn to the stand, which then led to one of the most infamous cross examinations in the history of American, trial courts,, where Daryl goes ahead and ask, Jennings Bryn, if you believe the literal word of the Bible, and then he started exploring if you.
N. Rodgers: Do claim that everything in the Bible should be literally interpreted? That's right. Brian says, basically, no, because it says it says in the Bible, are the salt of the Earth and he's like, I would not say that men are made of salt. But it goes on like that for two hours they're discussing the Bible. I'm not to be ugly. But when the judge the next day says, You know what? This has nothing to do with the trial itself. I don't disagree with that. This was just I think Daryl getting Brian on the record.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: Saying things about the Bible and saying that the Bible is not necessarily to be interpreted word for word per word.
J. Aughenbaugh: That's right.
N. Rodgers: That's what he's trying to do. He's trying to make an argument, a longer argument than the argument of this case, which is, if the greatest biblical scholars of the day do not believe that it is word for word accurate, then how can it be used as the basis of a document to teach?
J. Aughenbaugh: That's right.
N. Rodgers: To teach children?
J. Aughenbaugh: It's pretty clever. From what I read, the judge basically decided after he allowed Jennings Grind to be called, had some deep reservations because he recognized that as you just pointed out, Daryl wasn't necessarily trying to go ahead and defend scopes. He was trying to go ahead and take down organized religions prominent role in American society. He wasn't going to go ahead [inaudible]
N. Rodgers: He was playing the long game.
J. Aughenbaugh: He wasn't going to go ahead and allow this trial to be hijacked for that purpose. The next day the judge says that's going to be expunged from the record. The trial ends, Scopes is found guilty in his ordered to pay the minimum fine of $100, which again, back then would have been some serious cash. That's serious money.
N. Rodgers: Public side note, especially for a public teacher. I mean, that's probably what he made all year. The other thing to keep in mind about to me, to keep in mind about that is he says expunged from the record, but there were reporters in the room who were taking notes. We have the whole exchange.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: We have the whole exchange. What he means is from the legal record. Yes. Not from eternity because we do know exactly what was said. We have the whole two hour transcript or most of it. But he wanted the jury who was not in the room at the time for the 2 hours. He wanted them to never see the testimony. He didn't want it to influence them and it didn't found scopes guilty, frankly, Scopes was guilty. Scopes was guilty of doing the thing. That wasn't what was in question, and that's not even what Daryl was trying to do. Daryl was trying to say, Your law is stupid. No did he violate sure, he violated the law, but your law is stupid and it shouldn't be allowed to exist. That was the argument.
J. Aughenbaugh: What many Americans don't recognize is a year later, the Tennessee Supreme Court reversed the decision on a procedural technicality. In part, focused on some of the decisions made by the judge during the trial. But the Tennessee Supreme Court never did what Darrow wanted the Tennessee courts to do.
N. Rodgers: Which was to return the law.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah, which was to overturn the law.
N. Rodgers: They said when he said, Let's re-prosecute, basically, the Tennessee Supreme Court said, nope.
J. Aughenbaugh: We're dismissing the case.
N. Rodgers: We're done with it because we want to be done with we don't want to keep prolonging the life of this bizarre case.
J. Aughenbaugh: Quote unquote, right? Now, what Darrow did hope for, and it did lead to some significant change, was to have a conversation in the larger society about creationism.
N. Rodgers: Right. Should this be taught? What should be taught? What do parents have the rights to see their kids taught and not taught? When should the state be allowed to determine what people don't learn? It's an ongoing debate.
J. Aughenbaugh: It's an ongoing debate. We still see it in American society.
N. Rodgers: If you want to see a fantastic version of this.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: Watch Inhert the Wind.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: Which is a great movie about this.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah. Great movie.
N. Rodgers: One of Bucky's favorites.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes. I show it pretty much every fall in my politics and film class, and my students are always shocked to find out that there are still States that require the teaching of both evolution and creationism. I'm like, the debate hasn't gone away, guys, but if you want to know why we are having the debate, you need to go back to the Scopes Monkey Trial and what Clarence Darrow did by using the trial as a platform for a larger debate. We have two more cases I want to cover before we wrap up our discussion of the story behind this fascinating man's life. The next case is the Ossian Sweet case. This also occurred in 1925. A White mob in Detroit attempted to drive a Black family out of their home because the Black family had the audacity, sarcasm alert of purchasing a home in a White neighborhood.
N. Rodgers: Now, this is a doctor.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: This is not like your average. I mean, I'm not trying to say your average doc worker is not a great guy, but this isn't a highly educated individual.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: Who could only improve your neighborhood?
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: Just putting it out there.
J. Aughenbaugh: During the struggle, a White man was killed.
N. Rodgers: By the way, not that doc workers don't improve your neighborhood. Sorry, I didn't mean to make that weird comparison.
J. Aughenbaugh: But during this struggle between the White mob and a number of African Americans, 11 Black people in the home were arrested and charged with murder.
N. Rodgers: Because a White man was killed.
J. Aughenbaugh: A White man was killed. Ossian Sweet, the aforementioned doctor and three members of his family were brought to trial and the jury was deadlocked. The jury was all White. During his closing statement, Darrow argued, "I insist that there is nothing but prejudice in this case. That if it was reversed and 11 White men had shot and killed a Black man while protecting their home and their lives against a mob of Blacks, nobody would have dreamed of having them indicted.".
N. Rodgers: Which is true.
J. Aughenbaugh: They would have been given medals instead.
N. Rodgers: I don't know about that, but they would they would not have been indicted.
J. Aughenbaugh: By the way, for those of you who are John Grisham fans. The book, which was later made into a movie, a Time to kill, Grisham has acknowledged that Darrow's closing statement in this case, was what motivated him to write, A Time to kill, but in particular, in the book and movie, where the White attorney says to the all White jury in the book, okay, I want you to think, okay? And he asked them to go ahead and think about how-
N. Rodgers: Victim of a crime. We won't ruin it for you. But then he says, now imagine she's White.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes. Imagine she's, exactly.
N. Rodgers: Imagine she's White and every eye comes open because they have been imagining she's White.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: It's a very powerful moment. It's a powerful moment of, oh, I have bias here. It's one of Matthew McConaughey's probably best performances as an actor. But anyway, so they have a they have a mistrial?
J. Aughenbaugh: They have a mistrial. Then the prosecutor decides to go ahead and charge each of the 11 defendants individually. Ossian's brother, Henry, was found not guilty on self defense. After that happened, the prosecutors decided to drop the charges on the remaining 10. All of these trials were presided over interesting historical footnote by a judge by the name of Frank Murphy. Frank Murphy would eventually go on to become the governor of Michigan and an Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court, Darrow's closing statement lasted over 7 hours, and it was considered such an important landmark closing statement. It's included in a book called Speeches That Changed the World, and it's been subtitled I Believe in the Law of Love. It's powerful stuff. If you get a chance to read it, and I've read it a number of times and every time I read it, I'm like, to believe that the law can go ahead and change society and change people's minds.
N. Rodgers: Right, and make them face things that they wouldn't normally face.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah. We're probably running out of time here. Just to go ahead and wrap things up, let's be very clear. There's a lot about Clarence Darrow's life that was positive. There are some that is negative.
N. Rodgers: I know where you're going. His position on eugenics?
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: Yeah. There he is. He believes in civil rights, and he's clearly moved to that place and has all these strong emotions on that, and then you get to eugenics. Part of me has to remind myself that at the time, a lot of people saw eugenics as a way to improve society, to improve humanity. This is Buck V. Bell. This is the whole that era.
J. Aughenbaugh: Basically, in 1915, Washington Post had a quote from Darrow where he said, "Perhaps it would be wise to chloroform unfit children, show them the same mercy that is shown to beasts that are no longer fit to live. " Again, as Nia pointed out, Darrow as a progressive, was definitely a person of his time. To his credit, that are, as the Eugenics movement, shall we say, developed, grew, and expanded, he became very skeptical. Of the Eugenics movement and eventually became a critic.
N. Rodgers: Right. Because he said that the Eugenics movement ignored failures in families. It only focused on, oh, well, Augenbaum successful Professor and Augenbaum's sister is a successful, whatever it is that she does. We won't mention the other sibling who didn't do anything. He was like, you don't get to pick and choose. If your thing is real, then it would be real all the way across.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah, exactly.
N. Rodgers: He does come to a better position, but his early position.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: Not so great. But what I think about him when I think about him and I think about his the best quality that he has across his career is that he constantly reevaluates his position, reevaluates the law, reevaluates what things should mean. I think that's what we should take away from Clarence Darrow, is that the law is not static we grow to understand as we are exposed to more information.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah. Again, he has a passion that I find admirable. I mean, not all passions are positive, but it's funny that he was agnostic because he has a belief in the law.
N. Rodgers: That's almost religious.
J. Aughenbaugh: It's almost religious. I'm like, wow.
N. Rodgers: Yes.
J. Aughenbaugh: I love dichotomies and people's, their personalities and lives. I wondered how. Again, this is one of the values for me of doing this series is I try to put myself into the shoes and the life experiences of these people who we've been covering. I'm like, how does a person go ahead and reconcile being agnostic on one hand, but also being almost religious in their belief that the law can be used for positive change. Yeah, for good. I'm like, wow, how does one manage that?
N. Rodgers: Well, if we don't mind wrapping up on a final note, for all of his oratory skills and for all of his talent in terms of making a good argument, he did not sell himself to people. He was not politically, he ran for offices and just failed. Lots of times. Lots of different offices wasn't his jam. He either didn't get elected or he didn't stay because it didn't work and like, it's proof that you can be really good at a thing and it does not translate to other things. He was a great speaker, but he could not convince people politically.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah. Get him in a courtroom. Hey, he was magic. Outside the courtroom.
N. Rodgers: People are like, who's that Dweeb?
J. Aughenbaugh: Who's that disheveled, unkept person. Anyways Nia, thank you very much. This was a great experience delving into Clarence Darrow's life. I really enjoyed it.
J. Aughenbaugh: Me too. Thank you, Aggie.