Due to the Freedom of Information Act many FBI dossiers are now available online. Every once in a while when I’m bored I like to peruse a few of them. This can be quite an undertaking as some of them are composed of multiple parts and thousands of pages. I spent an hour or so reading the FBI files on Wilhelm Reich, a contemporary of Freud. It was weird and depressing, but I was glad to have access to such primary documentation. Quite often correspondence is initiated by ‘concerned Americans’. This can be the most chilling material. In the case of Reich, such people accused him of being a communist and a pervert who was attempting to subvert american youth.
On the other hand, I found Clarence Darrow’s file amusing. It was almost entirely comprised of an Esquire article in which he describes jury selection and the character of people of certain religious denominations and his reasons for excluding or selecting them. That part of the article, “How to Pick a Jury” can be found in its entirety here. I especially liked the parts about Baptists and other protestants which I could entirely relate to. However, first I will start with some superb quotations from Mr. Darrow:
Whether a jury is a good one or a bad one depends on the point of view. I have always been an attorney for the defense. I can think of nothing, not even war, that has brought so much misery to the human race as prisons. And all of it so futile!
On judges:The judge wears the same flowing robe with all the dignity and superiority he can command. This sets him apart from his fellow-men, and is designed to awe and intimidate and to impress the audience with seeming wisdom oftener than with kindliness and compassion. One cannot help wondering what happens to the pomp and pretense of the wearer while the cloak is in the wash, or while changing into a maturer, more monarchial mantle, as his bench becomes a throne, or when he strolls along the street in file with the “plain clothes” people.
The litigants and their lawyers are supposed to want justice, but in reality there is no such thing as justice, either in or out of court. In fact, the word cannot be defined.
In the last analysis, most jury trials are contests between the rich and poor. If the case concerns money, it is apt to be a case of damages for injuries of some sort claimed to have been inflicted by someone. These cases are usually defended by insurance companies, railroads, or factories. If a criminal case, it is practically always the poor who are on trial. The most important point to learn is whether the prospective juror is humane.
On Baptists as potential jurors *grin*:If possible, the Baptists are more hopeless than the Presbyterians. They, too, are apt to think that the real home of all outsiders is Sheol, and you do not want them on the jury, and the sooner they leave the better.
And finally:If the physician so completely ignored natural causes as the lawyers and judges, the treatment of disease would be relegated to witchcraft and magic, and the dungeon and rack would once more hold high carnival in driving devils out of the sick and afflicted. Many of the incurable victims of crime are like those who once were incurable victims of disease; they are the product of vicious and incompetent soothsayers who control their destinies.
Every human being, whether parent, teacher, physician, or prosecutor, should make the comfort and happiness of their dependents their first concern. Now and then some learned courts take a big view of life, but scarcely do they make an impression until some public brainstorm drives them back in their treatment of crime to the methods of sorcery and conjury.
No scientific attitude toward crime can be adopted until lawyers, like physicians and scientists, recognize that cause and effect determine the conduct of men.
When lawyers and courts, and laymen, accept the scientific theory which the physicians forced upon the world long years ago, then men will examine each so-called delinquency until they discover its cause, and then learn how to remove the cause. This requires sympathy, humanity, love of one’s fellow-man, and a strong faith in the power of knowledge and experience to conquer the maladies of men. The forum of the lawyers may then grow smaller, the courthouse may lose its spell, but the world will profit a thousandfold by a kindlier and more understanding relation toward all humankind. ( Esquire Magazine, May, 1936.)
For more Darrow infotainment:
- Clarence Darrow links
- Absurdities of the Bible
- Voltaire by Clarence Darrow
- The Myth of the Soul by Clarence Darrow
- Facing Life Fearlessly by CD