July 2015 marks the 90 th anniversary of the Scopes Monkey Trial, one of the most famous court cases in American history. Defending substitute high school teacher John Thomas Scopes was Clarence Darrow, one of the celebrity lawyers of the day.
The Scopes Trial, formally known as The State of Tennessee v. John Thomas Scopes and commonly referred to as the Scopes Monkey Trial, was an American legal case in July 1925 in which a substitute high school teacher, John T. Scopes, was accused of violating Tennessee's Butler Act, which had made it unlawful to teach human evolution in any ...
Defending substitute high school teacher John Thomas Scopes was Clarence Darrow, one of the celebrity lawyers of the day.
Bryan died on July 26, five days after the end of the trial--a defeated man to some, to others an unbowed champion of common people everywhere. The Scopes Trial did not settle the debate between Fundamentalists and Modernists. Ninety years later, that theological and cultural dispute continues.
John Scopes. What became known as the Scopes Monkey Trial began as a publicity stunt for the town of Dayton, Tennessee. A local businessman met with the school superintendent and a lawyer to discuss using the ACLU offer to get newspapers to write about the town.
The trial was viewed as an opportunity to challenge the constitutionality of the bill, to publicly advocate for the legitimacy of Darwin’s theory of evolution, and to enhance the profile of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU).
Bryan and Darrow set the tone by immediately attacking each other in the press. The ACLU attempted to remove Darrow from the case, fearing they would lose control, but none of these efforts worked.
Bryan arrived in Dayton three days before the trial, stepping off a train to the spectacle of half the town greeting him. He posed for photo opportunities and gave two public speeches, stating his intention to not only defend the anti-evolution law but to use the trial to debunk evolution entirely. Recommended for you.
The trial day started with crowds pouring into the courthouse two hours before it was scheduled to begin , filling up the room and causing onlookers to spill into the hallways. There was applause when Bryan entered the court and further when he and Darrow shook hands.
When the judge ruled Bryan’s testimony be taken from the record, Darrow suggested that to save time his client should be found guilty. This prevented Bryan from making a closing statement.
The trial was viewed as an opportunity to challenge the constitutionality of the bill, to publicly advocate for the legitimacy of Darwin’s theory of evolution , and to enhance the profile of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU).
Chief Defense Lawyers: Clarence Darrow, Arthur Garfield Hays, and Dudley Field Malone. SIGNIFICANCE: The John Thomas Scopes trial checked the influence of Fundamentalism in public education and stripped William Jennings Bryan of his dignity as a key figure in American political history.
SIGNIFICANCE: The John Thomas Scopes trial checked the influence of Fundamentalism in public education and stripped William Jennings Bryan of his dignity as a key figure in American political history.
Closing for the defense, Clarence Darrow stole the prosecution's lines by asking the jury to find Scopes guilty so that the case could be appealed. After nine minutes, the jury came back with a guilty verdict. In violation of Tennessee law, which required that the fine be set by the jury, Raulston advised the jury to let him fix the fine, an error that led the court of appeals to reject the original verdict. While the appeals court upheld the constitutionality of the Butler Act, it did not order a retrial for John Thomas Scopes, who by that time had given up teaching.
Scopes' students testified that he had taught that mammals had evolved from one-cell organisms and that humans share the classification "mammal" with monkeys, cats, etc. The owner of the local drugstore where Scopes had purchased the textbook he used to teach evolution acknowledged that the state had authorized sale of the textbook. Darrow and the druggist read aloud portions on Darwin. To counter, Steward read the first two chapters of the Old Testament 's Genesis into the record. With that, the prosecution rested.
The prosecution's case was presented briskly. The superintendent of the Rhea County school system testified that Scopes had admitted teaching evolution in a biology class. Stewart then offered a King James Version of the Bible as evidence of what the Butler Act described as the Biblical account of Creation.
Just as quickly, the ACLU confirmed it was prepared to defend Scopes. Using a state-approved textbook, Scopes taught a lesson on evolutionary theory on April 24 to his Rhea County High School science class.
Arriving a few days early, he preached to a large audience, "The contest between evolution and Christianity is a duel to the death. … If evolution wins in Dayton, Christianity goes."
The Butler Act was written because many fundamentalist Christians (those who take the text of the Bible literally, without room for individual interpretation) feared that teaching evolution would undermine the authority and validity of the Bible. Between 1921 and 1929 thirty-seven similar bills were introduced in twenty states.
Because of the nature of the case and the fame of the lawyers involved, Dayton became the center of attention across the world. Reporters from all the major newspapers flocked to the small town, and readers followed the story with obsessive interest. The courthouse was wired for telegraph, and radio equipment was installed.
The trial opened with a prayer on Friday, July 10, 1925. After jury selection the state presented its case: Three students testified that Scopes had taught evolution in their biology class.
The trial could have ended there if Bryan had not allowed Darrow to put him on the stand. He called Bryan to testify as an “expert” on the Bible, a title Bryan was honored to accept. It would be the turning point in the trial.
Darrow succeeded. Caverly sentenced Leopold and Loeb to life in prison plus 99 years.
Scopes was found guilty and ordered to pay the minimum fine of $100. A year later, the Tennessee Supreme Court reversed the decision of the Dayton court on a procedural technicality—not on constitutional grounds, as Darrow had hoped. According to the court, the fine should have been set by the jury, not Raulston.
Darrow stunned the prosecution when he had his clients plead guilty in order to avoid a vengeance-minded jury and place the case before a judge. The trial, then, was actually a long sentencing hearing in which Darrow contended, with the help of expert testimony, that Leopold and Loeb were mentally diseased.
He concluded that "the fear of God is not the beginning of wisdom. The fear of God is the death of wisdom. Skepticism and doubt lead to study and investigation, and investigation is the beginning of wisdom."
In 1911, the American Federation of Labor (AFL) called on Darrow to defend the McNamara brothers, John and James, who were charged in the Los Angeles Times bombing on October 1, 1910, during the bitter struggle over the open shop in Southern California. The bomb had been placed in an alley behind the building, and although the explosion itself did not bring the building down, it ignited nearby ink barrels and natural gas main lines. In the ensuing fire, 20 people were killed. The AFL appealed to local, state, regional and national unions to donate 25 cents per capita to the defense fund, and set up defense committees in larger cities throughout the nation to accept donations.
( m. 1903) . Children. 1. Relatives. J. Howard Moore (brother-in-law) Clarence Seward Darrow ( / ˈdæroʊ /; April 18, 1857 – March 13, 1938) was an American lawyer who became famous in the early 20th century for his involvement in the Leopold and Loeb murder trial and the Scopes "Monkey" Trial.
"Attorney for the Damned" (Arthur Weinberg, ed), published by University of Chicago Press in 2012 ; Simon and Schuster in 1957; provides Darrow's most influential summations and includes scene-setting explanations and comprehensive notes; on NYT best seller list 19 weeks.
Defending substitute high school teacher John Thomas Scopes was Clarence Darrow, one of the celebrity lawyers of the day. William Jennings Bryan—the “Great Commoner,” three-time Democratic nominee for President, and Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A. ruling elder—argued for the prosecution, the State of Tennessee, ...
By the mid 1920s, the battle between Fundamentalists, who believed in the literal truth of the Bible, and Modernists, who believed religion should progress with modern society, embroiled most Protestant denominations. It was particularly divisive among Presbyterians, contributing to the formation of the Orthodox Presbyterian Church in 1936.
Charles Wishart, RG 414. (Image No. 4725) A convert to Presbyterianism, Bryan had served as Secretary of State under fellow Presbyterian Woodrow Wilson.
Darrow appealed the conviction to the Tennessee Supreme Court, which reversed it on a technicality.
10 In fact, the trial was later moved to the lawn because people feared the courtroom floor would collapse.
In his closing argument, Darrow, the defense attorney, pulled a switch. He asked the jury to find Scopes guilty, saying in part, “The court has told you very plainly that if you think my client taught that man descended from a lower order of animals, you will find him guilty….This law will never be decided until it gets to a higher court, and it cannot get to a higher court probably, very well, unless you bring in a verdict.” 11
The chief lawyer for the prosecution was William Jennings Bryan, a popular speaker who is widely regarded as one of America’s greatest orators. Bryan was a leader in the Democratic Party for nearly 30 years and served as Secretary of State under Woodrow Wilson. Though politically liberal in many of his views, Bryan was a conservative Christian who early developed a strong interest in the creation-evolution controversy. He clearly favored creation, but was inquisitive enough about evolution to have read Darwin’s On the Origin of Species in 1905 (20 years before the Scopes trial). Bryan was sufficiently sophisticated in his knowledge of the scientific evidence to carry on a correspondence-debate with distinguished evolutionists of his day such as Dr. Henry Fairfield Osborn. Bryan publicly declared that he did not oppose the teaching of evolution in the public schools as long as it was dealt with as a theory rather than a fact.
The basis for the Scopes trial was a presumed violation of the Butler Act by teacher John Scopes. The Butler Act declared that it was unlawful for a teacher in the public schools of Tennessee “to teach any theory that denies the story of the Divine Creation of man as taught in the Bible, and to teach instead that man has descended from a lower order of animals.” This law was one of 36 such bills introduced in 20 states in the 1920s. The Butler act, like many others, did not forbid teaching the evolution of animals and plants; only human evolution was proscribed. The maximum fine for violation of the Butler act was $200. Imprisonment was not a provision of the law, and John Scopes was never jailed.
To make evolution believable to the jury, the defense and its witnesses often equated evolution with the development of the embryo! Though irrelevant to the case, Darrow had gathered a large group of evolutionists to testify to the “fact” of evolution.
The Scopes trial began on July 10th, 1925, and lasted eight days . The trial became a major media event covered by over 200 news-men. It was the first trial to be covered by a national radio broadcast, and the first to receive international coverage as 65 telegraph operators sent daily reports over the newly laid transatlantic cable. Dayton took on a carnival atmosphere as spectators, “soap box” orators, and vendors converged on the little town from all over America. Much of this attention resulted from the fact that two of America’s most famous lawyers faced off on a deeply divisive religious and philosophical issue—how did humans come into being, and what control should parents have over how this subject is handled in our public schools.
The maximum fine for violation of the Butler act was $200. Imprisonment was not a provision of the law, and John Scopes was never jailed. The whole idea of suing a teacher for teaching evolution was not conceived by the citizens of Dayton, Tennessee, but rather was promoted by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) in New York City. ...
11 (November 1994). There has never been a stranger trial in the history of American jurisprudence than the famous Scopes “monkey trial” that took place in Dayton, Tennessee in 1925. This trial pitted William Jennings Bryan against Clarence Darrow in a classic confrontation over ...
He clearly favored creation, but was inquisitive enough about evolution to have read Darwin’s On the Origin of Species in 1905 (20 years before the Scopes trial).
The Scopes Trial, also known as the Scopes Monkey Trial, was the 1925 prosecution of science teacher John Scopes for teaching evolution in a Tennessee public
Other members of Scopes legal team were Arthur Garfield Hays, Dudley Field Malone, W.O. Thompson, and F.B. McElwee. Thompson was Darrow's law partner. Hays was general counsel and cofounder of the American Civil Liberties Union. Malone gave a strong speech in defense of academic freedom at the trial. He advocated for women's suffrage and specialized in international divorces.
This is the only line in question. The only part of the criminal homicide statute that could be brought up successfully by the defense was to show that Guyger intentionally killed Jean by accident without being reckless or negligent.
Central to the case for "alternative" theories is a misunderstanding of what a scientific theory is, and isn't. One thing it cannot do is depend on supernatural elements. That is the role of religious belief. By asking that creationism be given a place beside the theory of evolution, its supporters are asking that their beliefs be given equal standing with the scientific method. That violates the separation of church and state, as Judge Jones ruled; in claiming their science was not faith-based, he said, they lied.”
Clarence Darrow is the person who is most often remembered as Scope's attorney. However, Scopes was represented by a team of lawyers.
The American Civil Liberties Union immediately announced they would defend any teacher charged with a violation of the law and started looking around for a test case.
Clarence Darrow, a well known defense attorney in his day, defended John Scopes. Attorney for the prosecution was a former presidential candidate and Secretary of State, William Jennings Bryan.