Early Life
Murphy was born in Harbor Beach, Michigan, then known as "Sand Beach", in 1890. His Irish parents, John T. Murphy and Mary Brennan, raised him as a devout Catholic. He followed in his father’s footsteps by becoming a lawyer. He attended the University of Michigan Law School, and graduated with a BA in 1912 and LLB in 1914. He was a member of the Sigma Chi Fraternity and the senior society Michigamua. Murphy was stricken with Diphtheria in the winter of 1911 but was allowed to begin his course in the Law Department from which he received his LL.B. degree in 1914. He performed graduate work at Lincoln's Inn in London and Trinity College, Dublin, which was said to be formative for his judicial philosophy. He developed a need to decide cases based on his more holistic notions of justice, eschewing technical legal arguments. As one commentator wrote of his later supreme court service, he "tempered justice with Murphy."
He served in the U.S. Army during World War I, achieving the rank of Captain with the occupation Army in Germany before leaving the service in 1919.
Murphy opened a private law office in Detroit and soon became the Chief Assistant United States Attorney for the Eastern District of Michigan. He opened the first civil rights section of a U.S. Attorney's office.
He taught at the University of Detroit for five years.
Murphy served as a Judge in the Detroit Recorder's Court from 1923 to 1930, and made many administrative reforms in the operations of the court.
While on Recorder's Court, he established a reputation as a trial judge. He was a presiding judge in the famous murder trials of Dr. Ossian Sweet and his brother, Henry Sweet in 1925 and 1926. Clarence Darrow, then one of the most prominent trial lawyers in the country, was lead counsel for the defense. After an initial mistrial of all of the black defendants, Henry Sweet – who admitted that he fired the weapon which killed a member of the mob surrounding Dr. Sweet's home and was retried separately – was acquitted by an all-white jury on grounds of the right of self-defense. The prosecution then elected to not prosecute any of the remaining defendants. Murphy's rulings were material to the outcome of the case.
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