Sunday, July 21, 2013

John Scopes was GUILTY

In March 1925, the Tennessee legislature passed an anti-evolution law, making it a crime 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." 

John Scopes, along with the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) determined to test this law in court. On this date (July 21, 1925),  Scopes was found GUILTY.  In fact, On July 21, in his closing speech, the great attorney Clarence Darrow, who had volunteered to defend Scopes, asked the jury to return a verdict of guilty in order that the case might be appealed.

The fact that the law itself was unconstitutional had nothing to do with the case.  The law was there, and Scopes had violated it.

In 1927, the Tennessee Supreme Court overturned the verdict on a technicality but left the constitutional issues unresolved until 1968, when the U.S. Supreme Court overturned a similar Arkansas law on the grounds that it violated the First Amendment.

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