Geoffrey Cowan

In 1912 Clarence Darrow was indicted for bribery as a result of a sensational trial of John McNamara. Darrow was a mass of contradictions. He worked for companies as a lawyer, defending them against the working man, charging huge fees so he could take cases he truly believed in defending the working man against corporate power. He could be ruthless and often unethical, doing anything he believed necessary to win.

Darrow's childhood was devoid of love and affection as he remembered it. His agnostic and freethinking parents insisted their children attend church - his father had been to seminary - but rarely were the children praised, hugged or kissed, just a lot of puritanical rules. Whether because of this or not, Darrow grew up feeling enormous empathy for the less fortunate. "My sympathies always went out to the weak, the suffering and the poor. Not only could I put myself in the other person's place but I could not avoid doing so." This attitude surely lay behind his decision to take the McNamara case.

The defendant had been hired by union organizers in Los Angeles to place bombs at various sites in their fight to overcome a rigidly anti-union city. The publisher of the Los Angeles Times had spent a small fortune organizing the business leaders and they effectively controlled the labor market. McNamara was an expert, but he made several mistakes. He placed the bomb in an alley that was used to store barrels of highly inflammable ink. The resulting conflagration killed twenty people. He was distraught, as he had intended to cause only physical damage. He immediately went into hiding, but the Burns Detective Agency tracked him down.

Darrow did not want to take the case. He was getting tired, was looking forward to retirement, and he believed that McNamara was guilty. Samuel Gompers, head of the AFL, had to pull out all the stops by agreeing to a huge fee. He also threatened Darrow with the knowledge that if he did not take the case, Darrow would appear to be a traitor to the labor movement.

With Darrow's approval, the AFL began a public relations campaign trumpeting the innocence of McNamara and accusing Burns of manufacturing evidence. By doing so he put the credibility of the labor movement on trial with the defendants.

Darrow's old friend Erskine Wood did not approve of the tactics Darrow adopted. Wood believed truth was inseparable from the cause: acquittal achieved corruptly would send the message that violence works. Darrow, conversely, believed that educating the public was a primary goal of the trial, that the McNamaras were mere pawns in the struggle between capital and labor and since the prosecution had resorted to kidnaping, cajoling and coercion of witnesses, that the defense was obligated to adopt an equally aggressive posture.

The evidence against the McNamaras was overwhelming and Darrow knew it. So did Lincoln Steffans who helped negotiate a guilty plea that would spare the lives of the two. It is difficult to overestimate the impact the guilty plea had on the labor movement, which was thrown into turmoil. It changed to course of an election in Los Angeles resulting in the election of an administration unfavorable to labor and by the "time the smoke cleared, the events in Los Angeles had helped make the [labor movement:] a more conservative and mainstream organization."

Darrow, in the meantime, was in a precarious position as the evidence of his complicity in the subordination of jurors accumulated. He hired Earl Rogers, an extraordinary character, to defend him. Rogers was a spectacularly successful defense lawyer who would use any number of theatrical and devious devices to win the case. One of his favorites was to use a lorgnette as a prop to distract the jury. He would peer intently at a hostile witness through the glasses, then spin them around at the end of a long ribbon finally flying them neatly into a breast pocket. He never missed. He specialized in defending people he knew were guilty. As Darrow was famous for his bending the rules in defense of ideals, so was Rogers notorious for his zeal in defense of the less savory.

The irony is that Rogers did not win the case; it was Darrow who, in the most stirring oration of his career, convinced the jury to find him innocent.… (meer)

FROM SYNC: History as melodrama. This exciting production, recorded before a live audience, dramatizes the WASHINGTON POST's struggle with the Nixon administration over the publication of the Pentagon Papers. Much of the dialogue is lifted straight from the historical record. Whether or not this is accurate history, it certainly makes excellent theater, reminiscent of the agitprop (agitation/propaganda) and Living Newspaper plays of the Depression. John Rubenstein has directed his fine ensemble to play broadly and to maintain that thrill of immediacy that surely informed the actions of the actual participants. Present, too, is the humor, intentional and otherwise, that forms an important part of the story, none of it lost on a sharp and enthusiastic house. A riveting subject is given its due. Y.R.… (meer)