#14: Darrow’s Marathon Closing Argument
Darrow delivered a famously long closing argument, spread across many hours over several court sessions, attacking the death penalty and urging the judge to reject vengeance. He discussed youth, psychological development, heredity, environment, and the dangers of state killing. Popular accounts often reduce the speech to twelve uninterrupted hours, but its delivery was more complicated. Whatever the stopwatch says, its impact was enormous. Darrow essentially placed capital punishment itself on trial beside his two clients.
