Born: April 18, 1857
Died:March 13, 1938 Place of Birth: Farmdale, Ohio
Major Notes:
Clarence Darrow was a historic figure who had impact on the very direction US law was to take.
He was born to Amirus and Emily Darrow in Farmdale, Ohio, which was a very religious oriented community.
His father worked as an undertaker and sometimes built coffins.
Darrow's father, however, was agnostic and, therefore, stood out as a dissenter in this region.
This attitude was perhaps responsible for his son being so questionable later on about the law.
Darrow spent one year at the Allegheny College in Meadville, Pennsylvania, and then entered the University of Michigan law school.
In those days, a person would study law by learning from another lawyer and was said to be an "apprentice."
Darrow finally passed his bar exam in 1878 after reportedly first failing it six times.
After practising law in three smaller communities of Ohio, he moved to Chicago in 1887.
He often worked by taking cases on behalf of wronged people or the underdog, sometimes without being paid.
Darrow regularly spoke out against the state using the death penalty for convicted murderers.
He defended at least 100 individuals being tried for murder and none received the death penalty.
Darrow took on two clients, Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb, who had confessed killing a 14 year old and his defense saved them from the death penalty.
In 1925, Darrow came out of retirement to defend a biology teacher, John Scopes, who was teaching the Darwinian Theory of Evolution when it was not permitted.
Scopes lost but the points that Darwin made during the trial, even using the Bible as reference, became part of the argument which eventually changed the law in 1967.
Clarence Darrow is remembered as one of the greatest criminal lawyers in US court history.
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