SOURCE: "Clarence Darrow," in Defenders of the Damned, Thomas Yoseloff Ltd., 1952, pp. 65-122.

In the following essay, Hynd details Darrow's defense of "hopeless" cases.

The old Criminal Courts Building in Chicago was the habitat of the greatest aggregation of hard-drinking reporters, assorted malefactors, shyster lawyers, heartless prosecutors, and book-throwing judges ever assembled in one American legal arena. It is difficult, in retrospect, to point the finger at the most colorful performer in the all-star cast. Some spectators to the show would choose Hildy Johnson, the old Hearst reporter (the central character in the play The Front Page) who one day hid an escaped murderer in his roll-top desk in the pressroom. But when it comes to nominating the most colorful lawyer ever to gain acquittals for murderers, pickpockets, second-story specialists, dippers into the public till, madams of brothels and their horizontal merchandise, it is Clarence Seward Darrow, hands...