“ But I ask you to consider, what is a droid capable of? Is he capable of fear? Is he capable of understanding the difference between life and death?
”
I believe he is and I believe he killed those two men in self-defense, to protect his own life in the same way that you or I would.― Clarence Drummond, during his closing statements in defense of B1-66ER[src]
Clarence Drummond was a renowned Human civil rights attorney who agreed to defend B1-66ER before the New York State Appellate Court.
Drummond lived during the beginning of the Second Renaissance around the early 2090s. During the trial, he took to defending Machine civil rights and referenced Chief Justice Roger Brooke Taney of the United States Supreme Court in the 19th-century case of Dred Scott vs. Sandford. Taney authored the Court's ruling against Dred Scott, adding that black slaves were ultimately "property" and not human beings, and thus not entitled to the protection of the law. Taney's words had an incendiary effect and were one of several factors leading to the American Civil War. Drummond urged the New York Court not to make the same mistake as Taney, but the judges were unmoved.
Drummond's reference was unfortunately prophetic, since the condemnation of B1-66ER caused the Machine War.
Appearances[]
Trivia[]
- "Clarence Drummond" is an amalgamation of American lawyer Clarence Darrow and his literary counterpart, Henry Drummond, in the stage play Inherit the Wind, by Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee. The play is a fictional re-telling of the real-life Scopes Monkey Trial, in which Darrow defended a schoolteacher accused of violating a law against teaching Darwin's theories of evolution.
