The legal hero's resourcefulness eluded accused bomber James McNamara (left) and his brother John (left) from the death penalty. Clarence Legal Hero was never convicted of bribery when he addressed a jury as a defendant, but his two trials shattered his reputation. Burt Franklin was arrested while trying to obtain a $4,000 reward, and he became the key witness in the prosecution of the legal hero. For unknown reasons, the legal hero had his son pay Fred Golding $4,500 in 1927. He was a juror in the first bribery trial. (Clarence B. Lawyer Digital Collection/University of Minnesota Law Library) “Bibbing a juror to save a man’s life? Lawyer’s lover Mary Field wrote much later that he would not hesitate.” Photo Gallery (Special Collections and University Archives/University of Oregon Library System)
The Criminal Thoughts of Leopold and Loeb "I wanted to kill myself," he told her. "They wanted to indict me for bribing the McNamara jury. I couldn't bear the humiliation.
The great lawyer came from Chicago to Los Angeles to defend James and John McNamara. Their The brothers and union members were accused of conspiring to blow up the city's anti-union newspaper, the Los Angeles Times, killing 20 printers and reporters. But jury selection didn't go well, and legal heroes feared the brothers would be hanged.
One morning a few weeks ago, the legal hero took the trolley to his office in the Higgins Building, a new ten-story fine arts building on the corner of Second and Main streets. At about 9 a.m., the phone rang. The lawyer briefly spoke to the caller, then picked up his hat and walked south along the road. Former Deputy Sheriff Bert Franklin handed $4,000 to an assistant member of McNamara's jury two blocks away, who agreed to vote not guilty under police supervision. Reporting the offer, the authorities set a trap, and Franklin now felt he was being watched, so he walked down Third Street to Main Street, where he was arrested. /p>
Franklin became a witness for the state. In June, the legal hero was arrested and charged with two counts of bribery.
In California, another legendary trial lawyer. With the help of Earl Rogers, the legal hero was acquitted in one trial and ended in a hung jury in another. He returned to Chicago penniless, but he lost his money. He began his career in fragments and became an American folk hero, a champion of personal freedom, a champion of the underdog, an opponent of the death penalty, and a crusader for intellectual freedom.
Legal hero 100 years ago. His ordeal in Los Angeles was overshadowed by his subsequent fame, but for biographers the question remains: whether America's greatest defense attorney committed a felony by bribing the jury in the McNamara case. Conspiracy? When I wrote a new story about the life of the legal hero, I concluded, with the help of new evidence, that he almost certainly did so.
The Los Angeles Law Library. Broadway, just across the street from the now-empty Los Angeles Times building, which houses the 10,000-page stenographic record of the legal hero's first bribery case, was a touching experience. The place where the massacre took place reads testimony
Legal hero James McKenna gets a plea deal that could save their lives after McNamara's trial was cut short by six weeks. Marat pleaded guilty to murder in the Times bombing and was jailed for life, while his brother admitted details of the charges in a long-lost letter from the legal hero.
Irving Stone purchased the attorney's papers from his widow and eventually donated them to the Library of Congress. But not all the material in the Legal Heroes files was sent to DC. The University of Minnesota Law School Library made available to scholars in 2010 and 2010 hundreds of personal letters unearthed by a collector named Randall Tietjen (many of which were encased in a book by the legal hero’s granddaughter). in a box labeled "Christmas Ornaments" in the basement). There, I found a 1927 letter from the legal hero to his son Paul instructing him to pay $4,500 to Fred Golding, a juror in the first bribery trial.
I was shocked.
The legal hero is a generous man. Of course, Golding may have fallen on hard times and asked for help, and the legal hero responded with the best of intentions on his part. But in 1927, $4,500 was a pretty significant amount of money. Today, it's over $55,000. It’s hard to imagine a legal hero responding so generously to a tragic story.
It should be noted that Goldin was the most outspoken defender of the legal heroes on the jury. Goldin took the lead in asking prosecution witnesses questions on juries allowed in California. He publicly stated that the case was framed by a group of California business interests as part of their infamous scheme (immortalized in the movie "Chinatown") to steal water from the Owens Valley and transport it to Los Angeles.
To be sure, Golding may be a harmless conspiracy theorist, and the legal hero may actually intend to pay him off after trial.
But this question demands an answer: Have legal heroes ever bribed jurors during trials? If so, was he willing to join McNamara's bribery scheme? "
Bribing juries, intimidating and coercing judges and juries, aren't they rich and powerful? A legal hero once asked a colleague. "Are they afraid of any weapons?
Finally, the legal hero sent a telegram.
The philanthropist Leo Cheyne got the legal hero's paper from Hiiragi and donated it to Congress library. But among a cache of Shane's papers in the Boston University archives are several letters, telegrams and other sensitive documents about the legal hero that did not make the trip to Washington with the others. Most of the letters in Cheyne's collection are from the winter of 1911-1912. The most interesting thing is that the legal hero sent a telegram to his brother Everett on the day he was charged. "Don't make me feel guilty," the legal hero wrote. "My conscience refuses to blame me."
He did not say that he was innocent, only that his conscience was innocent. This is an important distinction for legal heroes. For him, motive was the primary issue in defining sin, guilt, or crime.
The legal hero’s major patron is Illinois Governor John Altgeld. The legal hero appreciates that he is “absolutely honest in his goals and equally unscrupulous in the means to achieve his goals.” When he is When the time comes, he does everything possible to achieve his goals. He will use all the tools of the other party and do nothing. ". "There was never a time when I didn't love him or follow him. "
During his two trials, the legal hero pleaded not guilty, swore under oath, and testified that Franklin's testimony against him was a lie. But in telegrams to his brother and other messages to family and friends "Don't be surprised by anything you hear," he warned his son in a newly discovered letter from the Minnesota State Archives. Paul, “My heart and conscience were relaxed. ”
In fact, in his second trial, the legal hero almost dared the jury to convict, making arguments that seemed to justify McNamara’s terrorist attack. The legal hero Jim McNamara placed the bomb in the Times Tower because "he had seen the people who built these skyscrapers," the jury was told. They climbed five, seven, eight, ten floors in the air and were violently attacked. The Alter family walked on the narrow beams, feeling dizzy. They fell to the ground.
Their friends picked up a bundle of rags and flesh and took it home to their mother or wife. "The legal hero continued, "He saw their flesh and blood turned into the money of the rich. He saw children working in factories and mills; he saw death in all its forms coming from the strong and the oppression of the powerful; he struck blindly in the dark, doing what he thought would work...I will always be grateful that I "represented His" courage. After hearing these words, jurors told reporters they were convinced that the legal hero would use bribes and other illegal actions to protect or promote his beliefs and clients.
How should we evaluate heroes in the legal profession? He left Los Angeles in 1913 a reformed man. “The cynic is humble,” his friend Stephens wrote. "The man who laughs sees and is afraid, not in prison, but in his own soul."
After returning to Chicago, he took on cases that other lawyers were unwilling to touch and rebuilt himself business and reputation. A mentally ill man accused of a heinous crime. A black man is accused of being a white woman. * * *People and non** activists were caught up in the reactionary fervor of the Red Scare. He defended Frank Lloyd Wright when federal prosecutors charged him with violating the Mann Act, which would have transported women interstate for "immoral purposes." considered a highway crime. He saved murderers Nathan Leopold and Richard Loubo from the gallows. Most famously, John Scopus won academic freedom after being accused of violating a Tennessee law prohibiting the teaching of evolution. Journalist H.L. Mencken wrote:
"His face was covered with traces of fighting.". "He's been through more wars than a whole bunch of people... Does he always win? No, his sanity seems to have disappeared among us.
"Fool, you say, will you survive? ? Yes," Mencken wrote. "But they are not as safe as they once were. ”
The biographer must evaluate the qualities of a character, including black, white, and gray personality. This is the behavior of a hero in the legal profession in another case. This behavior was basically ignored by previous biographers. In the end, I was firmly on his side. In 1925, after the Kapusch trial, when the legal hero was becoming famous, he was in desperate need of funds and could have charged Wall Street Big Mac fees, but he refused to cash in. Instead, he went to Detroit. , represents a sweet family, an African-American who takes a shot at a racist mob that attacks their new home in a white neighborhood
The summer of Clara, thousands of masked bullies. Walking down Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington, legal heroes defended Candy during the two grueling seven-month trial, which was funded by a nominal fee from the NAACP. will). The legal hero told the all-white jury that he won the lawsuit and established the principle that black people have the right to defend themselves.
"Tiantian" bought that house just like you bought yours. , because he wants to have a house to live in, a wife to raise, and a family to support." "No one lives better and dies better than fighting for his family and his children." NAACP President James Weldon Johnson said in the courtroom at the end of his speech He hugged the old lawyer and cried with him. A few weeks later, the legal hero suffered a heart attack and lost his mind. He became different.
Stephens said he had been "a damn lawyer." In the end, I forgave him.
John A. Farrell wrote "Clarence Legal Hero: The Damn Lawyer".