The Great Trials of Clarence Darrow by Donald McRae

Author:Donald McRae
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins

TUESDAY, as if in heavenly sympathy for the vanquished Bryan, began with soft rain falling across Dayton. Judge Raulston ordered a return to normal proceedings and a proper courtroom and such was his haste to cut short an often uncontrollable trial that he began at 8:58 A.M. Darrow was still scrambling toward his seat inside when Raulston made a telling announcement. “I feel that the testimony of Mr. Bryan can shed no light upon any issue that will be pending before the higher court.” The judge ruled that, apart from preventing Darrow’s attempts to hound Bryan with further questions, the previous afternoon’s dramatic exchange would be expunged from the record. “The only question we have now is whether or not this teacher, this accused, this defendant, taught that man descended from a lower order of animals. As I see it, after due deliberation, I feel Mr. Bryan’s testimony cannot aid the higher court in determining that question.”

Bryan was the first to respond—asking whether Darrow’s questions as well as his own answers would be removed from the official court account of the trial.

“I expunged the whole proceedings,” Raulston said sympathetically.

Bryan complained that he had been denied the opportunity to respond fully to Darrow’s accusations of ignorance and bigotry. Without the prospect of placing Darrow on the stand, Bryan would have to trust the press to give him the space to put questions of his own to Darrow. They had reported his humiliation in such gory detail that he hoped they would now provide him a similar opportunity to test Darrow. “I think it is hardly fair for them to bring into the limelight my views on religion and stand behind a lantern that throws light on other people, but conceals themselves. I think it is only fair that the country should know the religious attitude of the people who come down here to deprive the people of Tennessee of the right to run their own schools.”

“I object to that,” Darrow sighed.

“I overrule the objection,” Raulston insisted.

“That is all,” Bryan muttered as he sat down again.

Some might have expected Darrow to be downcast, but the old battler was jubilant. His real war, against Bryan, had been settled in emphatic style. Victory had been confirmed joyously in the verbatim accounts of his cross-examination that had been printed in virtually every major newspaper in the United States. The truth of Bryan’s crushing defeat was indisputable, with most editorials echoing the belief that Darrow had “brought about a striking revelation of the fundamentalist mind in all its shallow depth and narrow arrogance.”

The judicial technicalities mattered far less than the sweeping moral triumph for Darrow and the defense. They would fight the prosecution again, on a more equal footing, in a higher court of appeal. But Darrow had one last devilishly clever trick to play on his demoralized rival. There was little point in perpetuating a legal charade and so, to crush Bryan still further, he decided to call an abrupt end to the monkey trial of Dayton.

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