Scopes Trial - Butler Act, Testing the Butler Act, Prosecution and defense teams, Trial, Examination of Bryan

(1925) A trial of a high-school teacher, John Thomas Scopes, in Tennessee, who instructed his biology students in the evolutionary theory of creation in violation of a Tennessee state law mandating that only the literal account of the creation as told in the Book of Genesis should be taught. He was arrested and charged with violating the statute. William Jennings Bryan appeared for the prosecution, while Clarence Darrow was the attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union which paid for Scopes's defence. The trial was broadcast on the radio and became a media event. Many accepted the view that monkeys and humans had common ancestors, and so the Scopes case was sometimes called the ‘Monkey Trial’. Although Scopes was found guilty and paid a small fine of $100, the real significance of the case was the confrontation when Bryan testified and Darrow cross-examined him. The Tennessee law remained in effect until 1967, when the state legislature abolished it.

State

Criminal Court of Tennessee
Date decided	July 21, 1925
Full case name	The State of Tennessee v. John Thomas Scopes
Citations	None
Judges sitting	John T. Raulston
Case history
Prior actions:
Subsequent actions:	Scopes v. State (1926)
Case opinions
The Butler Act does not violate church and state or state religion laws but instead merely prohibits the teaching of evolution on the grounds of intellectual disagreement and leaves the only non-religion specific option as creationism.

The "Scopes Trial" (Scopes v. 1925), often called the "Scopes Monkey Trial") pitted lawyers William Jennings Bryan and Clarence Darrow against each other (the latter representing teacher John T. Scopes) in a American court case that tested a law passed on March 13, 1925, which forbade the teaching, in any state-funded educational establishment in Tennessee, of "any theory that denies the story of the Divine Creation of man as taught in the Bible, and to teach instead that man has descended from a lower order of animals."

Butler Act

At issue was the Butler Act, which had been passed a few months earlier by the Tennessee General Assembly. The Butler Act provided:

"... that it shall be unlawful for any teacher in any of the Universities, Normals and all other public schools of the State which are supported in whole or in part by the public school funds of the State, to teach any theory that denies the story of the Divine Creation of man as taught in the Bible, and to teach instead that man has descended from a lower order of animals."

At that time in history the theory of evolution was considered controversial in public opinion, and a large fraction of its detractors linked it with atheism. In his published work, In His Image, William Jennings Bryan argued that evolution was both irrational and immoral. Bryan was highly influential in raising public and legislative support for the Butler Act, and its enactment by the legislature of Tennessee came at least partially as a result of his advocacy.

Because Bryan was a prominent progressive Christian, the stigma associated with evolution at the time contradicted his Christian values.

Testing the Butler Act

The ACLU (American Civil Liberties Union) had offered to defend anyone accused of teaching the theory of evolution in defiance of the Butler Act. George Rappleyea, who managed a number of local mines, convinced a group of businessmen in Dayton, Tennessee, then a town of 1,800, that the controversy of such a trial would put Dayton on the map.

Rappleyea pointed out that while the Butler Act prohibited the teaching of the theory of evolution, the state required teachers, to use a textbook - George Hunter's Civic Biology(1914) - which explicitly described and endorsed the theory of evolution, and that teachers were therefore effectively required to break the law. Scopes could not actually remember having covered the section on evolution in Hunter's textbook, but he told the group "If you can prove that I've taught evolution and that I can qualify as a defendant, then I'll be willing to stand trial."

Scopes was charged with having taught from the chapter on evolution to a class at the high school on May 5, 1925 in violation of the Butler Act (and nominally arrested, though never detained).

Prosecution and defense teams

The original prosecutors were Scopes' friends, Herbert E.

Hoping to attract major press coverage, George Rappleyea, the person primarily responsible for convincing Scopes to allow himself to be charged with breaking the law, went so far as to write to the British novelist H.

Baptist pastor William Bell Riley, the founder and president of the World Christian Fundamentals Association, was instrumental in calling lawyer and three-time Democratic presidential candidate and fundamentalist Christian William Jennings Bryan to act as that organization's counsel.

In response, Clarence Darrow, a staunch agnostic, volunteered his services to the defense. After many changes back and forth, the defense team consisted of Darrow, ACLU attorney Arthur Garfield Hays, and Dudley Field Malone, an international divorce lawyer who had worked with Bryan in the State Department while Bryan was Secretary of State.

The prosecution team was led by Tom Stewart, district attorney for the 18th Circuit (and future United States Senator), and included, in addition to Bryan and Herbert and Sue Hicks, Ben B. It was Mencken who provided the trial with its most colorful labels such as the "Monkey trial" of "the infidel Scopes."

Trial

The ACLU had originally intended to oppose the Butler Act on the grounds that it violated the separation of Church and State within the public education system and was therefore unconstitutional. Mainly due to Clarence Darrow, this strategy changed as the trial progressed, and the earliest argument proposed by the defense once the trial had started was that there was actually no conflict between evolution and the creation account in the Bible.

By the latter stages of the trial, Clarence Darrow had largely abandoned the ACLU's original strategy and attacked the literal interpretation of the bible as well as Bryan's limited knowledge of other religions and science.

Only when the case went to appeal, did the defense return to the original claim that the prosecution was invalid because the law was essentially designed to benefit a particular religious group, which would be unconstitutional.

To support his contention that evolution was morally pernicious, Bryan cited the famous Leopold-Loeb trial involving Darrow the year before the Scopes Trial. Darrow had saved two rich young child murderers from the death sentence, and Bryan cited Darrow's own words:

This terrible crime was inherent in his organism, and it came from some ancestor … Is any blame attached because somebody took Nietzsche's [evolutionary] philosophy seriously and fashioned his life upon it?

Malone responded for the defense in a speech that was universally considered the oratorical triumph of the trial. In his gale-force conclusion, Malone declared that Bryan's "duel to the death" against evolution should not be made one-sided by a court ruling that took away the chief witnesses for the defense. The courtroom went wild when Malone finished and Scopes himself declared Malone's speech to be the dramatic highpoint of the entire trial and insisted that part of the reason Bryan wanted to go on the stand was to regain some of his tarnished glory.

On the sixth day of the trial the defense ran out of witnesses.

Examination of Bryan

On the seventh day of the trial, Clarence Darrow took the unorthodox step of calling William Jennings Bryan, counsel for the prosecution, to the stand as a witness in an effort to demonstrate that belief in the historicity of the Bible and its many accounts of miracles was unreasonable. Bryan accepted, on the understanding that Darrow would in turn submit to questioning by Bryan.

Biblical miracles and creation days

Darrow questioned the story of Jonah, the account of the Earth standing still, and the Ussher chronology. When asked to explain the use of the word "Day" in the first chapter, he said:

I have not attempted to explain it.

Adam and Eve

The questioning continued into whether Eve was actually created from Adam's rib, where Cain got his wife, and how many people lived in Ancient Egypt. The celebrated "duel in the shade" was very heated with Darrow telling Bryan, "You insult every man of science and learning in the world because he does not believe in your fool religion."

Bryan, correctly gauging the effect the session was having, snapped that its purpose was "to cast ridicule on everybody who believes in the Bible."

The end of the trial

The confrontation between Bryan and Darrow lasted for approximately two hours on the afternoon of the seventh day of the trial. Thus Bryan was denied the chance to cross-examine the defense lawyers in return, and the defense's final attempt to present evidence was denied. In response, Darrow asked the judge to bring in the jury only to have them come to a guilty verdict:

We claim that the defendant is not guilty, but as the court has excluded any testimony, except as to the one issue as to whether he taught that man descended from a lower order of animals, and we cannot contradict that testimony, there is no logical thing to come except that the jury find a verdict that we may carry to the higher court, purely as a matter of proper procedure.

After they were brought in, Darrow then addressed the jury, telling them that:

We came down here to offer evidence in this case and the court has held under the law that the evidence we had is not admissible, so all we can do is to take an exception and carry it to a higher court to see whether the evidence is admissible or not.

Darrow closed the case for the defense without a final summation.

Scopes himself never testified, as there was never a legal issue as to whether he had taught evolution. Scopes later admitted that, in reality, he was unsure of whether or not he had taught evolution, but the point was not contested at the trial (Scopes 1967:59-60).

After eight days of trial, it took the jury only nine minutes to deliberate.

Appeal to Supreme Court of Tennessee

Scopes' lawyers appealed, challenging the conviction on several grounds.

First, they argued that the statute was overly vague because it prohibited the teaching of "evolution," a very broad term. The Court rejected that argument, holding:

"Evolution, like prohibition, is a broad term.

Second, the lawyers argued that the statute violated Scopes' rights under the Due Process Clause of the U.S. Constitution, as it prohibited him from teaching evolution. The court rejected this argument, holding that the state was permitted to regulate his speech as an employee of the state:

"He was an employee of the state of Tennessee or of a municipal agency of the state.

Third, it was argued that the terms of the Butler Act violated the Tennessee constitutional clause providing: "It shall be the duty of the General Assembly in all future periods of this government, to cherish literature and science."

The court rejected this argument (Scopes v State, 154 Tenn. 105, 1927), holding that the determination of what laws cherished science was an issue for the legislature, not the judiciary:

"The courts cannot sit in judgment on such acts of the Legislature or its agents and determine whether or not the omission or addition of a particular course of study tends 'to cherish science.'"

Fourth, the defense lawyers argued that the statute violated the Establishment Clause, unconstitutionally establishing a state religion.

The Court rejected this argument, holding that the Establishment Clause was designed to prevent the establishment of a state religion as had been the experience in England and Scotland at the writing of the constitution, and held:

"We are not able to see how the prohibition of teaching the theory that man has descended from a lower order of animals gives preference to any religious establishment or mode of worship.

Further, the Court held that while the statute forbade the teaching of evolution (as the Court had defined it), it did not require the teaching of any other doctrine, so that it did not benefit any doctrine over the others.

Nevertheless, having found the statute to be constitutional, the Court set aside the conviction on appeal due to a legal technicality: the jury should have decided the fine, not the judge, as Tennessee judges could not at that time set fines above 50 dollars.

Not until 1968 did the US Supreme Court rule in Epperson v. (Tennessee had repealed the Butler Act the previous year.)

Publicity and drama

Publicity

The press coverage of the "Monkey" Trial was overwhelming. Chicago's WGN radio station broadcast the trial with announcer Quin Ryan via clear channel broadcasts for the first on-the-scene coverage of a criminal trial.

The trial is described in detail in the Pulitzer Prize-winning book Summer for the Gods, by Edward J. See also The World's Most Famous Court Trial, State of Tennessee vs. John Thomas Scopes: Complete Stenographic Report of the Court, by John Scopes (ISBN 0-306-71975-4)

The trial also brought publicity to the town of Dayton, Tennessee, leading some to speculate that it was a publicity stunt. From The Salem Republican, June 11, 1925:

"The whole matter has assumed the portion of Dayton and her merchants endeavoring to secure a large amount of notoriety and publicity with an open question as whether Scopes is a party to the plot or not."

The trial did not stop the anti-evolution movement. While most of these efforts were rejected, both Mississippi and Arkansas put anti-evolution laws on the books after the Scopes trial.

The site of the trial, the Rhea County Courthouse, has in recent years largely been restored to its 1925 appearance, and a museum of the trial events is located in its basement.

Humor on the Scopes Trial

Anticipating that Scopes would be found guilty, the press fitted the defendant for martyrdom and created an onslaught of ridicule.

Overwhelmingly, the butt of these jokes was the prosecution and those aligned with it: Bryan, the city of Dayton, the state of Tennessee, and the entire South, as well as Fundamentalist Christians and anti-evolutionists.

Inherit the Wind

The stage play Inherit the Wind (1955) by Lawrence and Lee, later adapted into a film in 1960 by Stanley Kramer, was (very loosely) based on this trial.

There were a number of substantial deviations from actual events in the movie:

Brady was portrayed as refusing to read Charles Darwin, whereas Bryan was well acquainted with Darwin's ideas. It has the Bryan character ("Brady") claiming that sexual intercourse was original sin, although nothing at all was said about sex during Darrow's examination of Bryan. Bryan did not die until seven days after the trial ended.

The Scopes trial did not appear in the Encyclopædia Britannica until 1957 when the inclusion was spurred by the successful run of Inherit the Wind on Broadway, which was mentioned in the citation. Allen and focused on Darrow reducing Bryan to a figure of ridicule and several substituted the substance of the drama for the reality of the actual trial.