FAMOUS BARRISTER

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXV, Issue 22987, 15 March 1938, Page 12

FAMOUS BARRISTER

(PEATH OF MR. C. DARROW NOTED TRIALS RECALLED • /. (Received March 14, 5.5 p.m) CHICAGO. Much 13 The death has occurred of Mr Clarence Darrow, famous United States criminal lawyer, in his 81st year.

Mr. Darrow claimed that no; one of over 100 men he had defended on grave charges had been executed. He was born in Ohio and admitted to the Bar in 1878. He became the most famous Counsel in United States criminal cases and fought numerous cases on behalf of Labour against trusts and otheir powerful interests. 'To him Ihere was no real criminal and he rever agreed that punishment—particularly capital punishment—was necessary, He was convinced that criminals <vere made, not born. "A man is 99 per cent, all right," he once said. "It is the one per cent, that lets him down." After beingj attorney for a rail vay he became chief counsel for the miners in the coal strike arbitration at Scianton and Philadelphia in 1902-3 nnd afterward acted in many mining disputes on the side of Labour. Meanwhile he had become a good p!atfo;*m speaker and, opening an office in Chicago, had been elected a memter of the Illinois Legislature as an independent Democrat. Among the many famous cases in which he defended wis that of the two wealthy youths Leopold and Loeb, who were accused of murdering a felU»w-student for the thrill of killing. Saved from execution by h:s dramatic appeal to the jury, they were given a long term of imprisonment. His eloquence also played a prominent part in the so-called "monkey trial" at Dayton, Tennessee, where u schoolmaster was charged with teaching the theory of evolution in a Stateaided school contrary to the State law. which insisted on the Bible version of .man's origin.