John Thomas Scopes (August 3, 1900 - October 21, 1970) was an American teacher. The Scopes Trial was an American legal case in 1925 in which a high school teacher, John Scopes, was accused of violating Tennessee's Butler Act, which made it unlawful to teach evolution in any state funded school. The trial was deliberately staged in order to attract publicity to the small town of Dayton, Tennessee. Scopes was unsure whether he had ever actually taught evolution, but he incriminated himself so that the case could have a defendant. He was found guilty and fined $100, but the verdict was overturned on a technicality. William Jennings Bryan, three-time presidential candidate for the Democrats, argued for the prosecution, while Clarence Darrow, the famed defense attorney, spoke for Scopes. The trial set modernists, who said evolution was consistent with religion, against fundamentalists who said the word of God as revealed in the Bible took priority over all human knowledge. The case was thus seen as both a theological contest and a trial on the veracity of modern science regarding the creation-evolution controversy. He died in 1970 at the age of 70.