John T. Scopes, a Tennessee biology teacher, was tried for violating the Butler Act, a 1925 state law banning the teaching of evolution. This so-called "Monkey Trial" became a flashpoint for debate among religious scholars and scientists as well as the general public. Scopes was found guilty and fined $100, though the verdict was later reversed. Despite the outcry stemming from the case, the Butler Act was not repealed until 1967.
The verdict was overturned on a technicality unrelated to the merits of the case, but he was not found not guilty. Is "reversed" an accurate term for this?
He was "Found guilty" by our great legal system, and then the verdict was later reversed, finding him "not guilty". Hey, this is the United States Judicial system
You've missed my point. Your second post is untrue. Your first seems, at best, misleading in that people will tend to conclude that the higher court found him "not guilty."
Scopes was not found "not guilty" at any point. The prosecutors could have retried the case had they wanted to. All the higher court did was say that there was a procedural mistake dealing with sentencing. The prosecutors chose not to have another trial.
"On appeal of the conviction, the Tennessee Supreme Court concluded that the statute was constitutional, because it could find "no unanimity among the members of any religious establishment" about evolution. The court nevertheless reversed Scopes's conviction on a technicality and instructed the state attorney general not to try Scopes again, saying, "We see nothing to be gained by prolonging the life of this bizarre case."3
In 1928, Arkansas legislators passed a law they believed would better withstand a First Amendment challenge. The Arkansas law simply made it a crime "to teach the theory or doctrine that mankind ascended or descended from a lower order of animals." This "monkey law" was challenged in the mid-1960s by a young high-school biology teacher, who had obtained an injunction against its enforcement. On appeal, the Arkansas Supreme Court reversed and lifted the injunction in a two-sentence opinion, finding the law "a valid exercise of the state's power." The case then went to the U.S. Supreme Court, where the Arkansas law was declared unconstitutional as a violation of the First Amendment, because it furthered no secular purpose, only a religious one:
'The overriding fact is that Arkansas law selects from the body of knowledge a particular segment when it proscribes for the sole reason that it is deemed to conflict with a particular religious doctrine: that is, with a particular interpretation of the Book of Genesis by a particular religious group. . . . Government in our democracy, state and national, must be neutral in matters of religious theory, doctrine, and practice.4"content.nejm.org
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