You tell me that the weakest among you, if you were innocent and a man of black skin charges you with an infamous murder, that any lawyer, Rosser or anybody else, could keep you from confronting him and nailing the lie?
No lawyer on earth, no lawyer that ever lived in any age or any clime could prevent me, if I were innocent, from confronting a man who accused me wrongfully, be he white or black.
And you, Leo Frank, went in and interviewed Newt Lee down yonder at twelve o’clock, Tuesday night, April 29th. And what did you do? Did you act like a man who wanted to get at the truth, who didn’t know it and wanted to get at the truth? Ah, no. Instead of going into that room and taking up with this negro Newt Lee, the man towards whom you had directed suspicion infamously to save your own neck, a man that you would have seen hung on the gallows in order to save your reputation with the people on Washington Street and the members of the B’nai B’rith, did you make an earnest, honest, conscientious effort, as an innocent employer would with his employee, to get at the truth? No; according to Lee, you hung your head and quizzed him not, but predicted that both Lee and you would go to hell if Lee continued to tell the story which he tells even until this good day: and then in your statement here, try to make it appear that your detective Scott and old John Black concocted a scheme against you and lied as to what occurred on that Tuesday night.
The reason why Frank didn’t put it up to Newt Lee and try to get Newt Lee to tell him how that murder occurred and what he knew about it, was because Frank knew that Lee was innocent, that he was the murderer and that he was adding to the dastardly crime of assault upon the virtue of this girl, was adding to the crime of murder of this girl, another infamous effort to send this negro to the gallows in order to save his reputation and neck. Listen to this—he’s smart, and just listen how, in his statement, he qualifies and fixes it up so that, when we come back with rebuttal, the technical law will protect him: “They (meaning the detectives) stress the possibility of couples having been let into the factory at night”—by night watchmen? No,—”by night Watchman Newt Lee.” Lee had been there but two or three weeks,—three weeks. Frank could have told you that the detectives stressed the fact that couples went in there holidays, Saturdays and at nights, at all times and at any time when other night watchmen were there, but Newt Lee, having been there but three weeks, he effectively shuts off the State from impeaching his statement or contradicting it, and therefore, he tells you that the detectives stressed the fact that couples had been in here while the night watchman Newt Lee, was watching,—and Newt had been there but three weeks. That wasn’t the period, that wasn’t the time.
During that three weeks that old Newt was night watching, there was but one person for whom your passion burned, and that was Mary Phagan. And she wouldn’t meet you, and she didn’t meet you any time during that period that Newt Lee was night watching. But in the summer previous, when Dalton was seen to go there, if it be not true that couples were admitted, why didn’t you make the bold, emphatic, challenging statement that at no time were couples ever admitted? And then you tell me that that’s a good statement and a fair statement and a frank statement?
Now, another thing. Listen to this—I read from the defendant’s statement: “Now, with reference to these spots that are claimed to be blood and that Mr. Barrett found, I don’t claim they are not blood, they may have been, they were right close to the ladies’ dressing room, and we have accidents there, and by the way, in reference to those accidents, the accidents of which we have records are not the only accidents that have happened there. Now, we use paint and varnish around there, a great deal of it, and while I don’t say that this is not blood, it may be, but it could also have been paint; I have seen the girls drop bottles of paint and varnish and have them break there on the floor, I have seen that happen right close to that spot. If that had been fresh red paint or if it had been fresh red blood and that haskoline compound, that soap in it which is a great solvent, had been put on there in the liquid state, it wouldn’t have shown up white, as it showed up then, but it would have showed up either pink or red.”
Now, first, contrast that statement for a moment with this statement with reference to the condition of the floor where Barrett worked. There he says there wasn’t a spot, much less a blood spot,—”looked at the machinery and the lathe, looked at the table on which the lathe stands and the lathe bed and the floor underneath the lathe and there wasn’t a spot, much less a blood spot underneath.”
All right; you say that that wasn’t blood, you say that that haskoline wouldn’t turn that color. In the name of goodness, in the name of truth, I ask you, if that haskoline mixed with that blood on the second floor wouldn’t have produced the identical result that these witnesses have sworn, if it be true, as Mr. Rosser stated, that you don’t attach any importance to the cabbage findings and experiments made in this case, why didn’t you devote a little of your time to bringing before this jury a reputable chemist and a man who could sustain you in that statement? You had that evidence in your possession, or if you were able to bring in these medical experts here to tear down the powerful evidence of Dr. Roy Harris, as eminent an authority as lives in the State of Georgia, in the name of truth and fair play, before you men who ought to have every fact that will enable you to get at the truth, why didn’t you bring one chemist to sustain you? There’s but one answer, and you know what it is. Those spots were blood, they were blood over which had been placed that substance, haskoline, and the color that blood and haskoline would make upon that floor was the identical color found there by the numerous witnesses who saw it. Important? There is no more important fact for you to have shown than that this haskoline, when wiped over blood, would have made a color the like unto which Frank in his statement would have you believe would have been made.
Are you going to accept the statement of this man, with all these circumstances unsupported by chemists or anybody on earth, because they couldn’t get them to come in and testify themselves on that point, as against the evidence of all these witnesses who have told you that that was blood, and against the evidence of Doctor Claude Smith, the City Bacteriologist of the City of Atlanta, who tells you that through a chemical analysis he developed the fact that that was blood?
This defense, gentlemen—they have got no defense, they never have come into close contact in this case, except on the proposition of abuse and vilification. They circle and flutter but never light; they grab at varnish and cat’s blood and rat’s blood and Duffy’s blood, but they never knuckle down and show this jury that it wasn’t blood; and in view of the statement of that boy, Mel Stanford, who swept that floor Friday afternoon, in view of the statement of Mrs. Jefferson, in view of the statement of “Christopher Columbus” Barrett, who tells the truth, notwithstanding the fact that he gets his daily bread out of the coffers of the National Pencil Company, you know that that was the blood of this innocent victim of Frank’s lustful passion.
The defense is uncertain and indistinct on another proposition, they flutter and flurry but never light when it comes to showing you what hole Jim Conley pushed his victim down. Did he shoot her back of that staircase back there? No. Why? Because the dust was thick over it. Because unimpeached witnesses have shown you it was nailed down; because if he had shot her down that hole, the boxes piled up there to the ceiling would have as effectively concealed her body as if she had been buried in the grave, for some days or weeks. Did he shoot her down this other hole in the Clark Woodenware Company’s place of business? Where even if what Schiff says is true, that they kept the shellac there, it would nevertheless have concealed her body a longer time than to put it down there by the dust bin where the fireman and people were coming in through the back door. Did this negro, who they say robbed this girl, even if he had taken the time to write the notes, which, of course, he didn’t —even after he had knocked her in the head with that bludgeon, which they tell you had blood on it, and robbed her, even if he had been such a fool and so unlike the other members of his race, by whom brutal murders have been committed, should have taken time to have tied a cord around her neck, a cord seldom found down there in the basement, according to your own statement, except when it’s swept down in the trash, but a cord that hangs right up there on the office floor, both back there in the varnish room and up there in the front. If he had done all that,—a thing you know that he didn’t do, after he had shot her down in that hole in the Clark Woodenware Company, down there in that wing of the place where they keep this shellac, if they do keep it, why would that negro have gone down there and moved her body, when she was more securely fixed down there ? And why was it, will you tell me, if he shot her down that scuttle hole, that he wrote the notes and fixed the cord, and will you tell me how it happens that, when after this man Holloway, on May 1st, had grabbed old Jim Conley, when he saw him washing his shirt and said “he’s my nigger,”— fifteen days afterwards, when squad number two of the Pinkerton people had been searching through that factory a whole day and right down in that area, the elevator being run, the detectives, both the Pinkertons and the city force had looked around there immediately after the crime, will you tell me how it happened that, if he shot her down that hole, that there was so much blood not found until the 15th of May, and more blood than that poor girl is ever shown to have lost?
Another thing: This man Frank says that “Mr. Quinn said he would like to take me back to the metal department on the office floor, where the newspapers that morning stated that Mr. Barrett of the metal department had claimed he had found blood spots, and where he had found some hair.” Although he had seen in the morning papers that this man Barrett claimed to have seen blood there, before he went back to see it, although this thing tore him all to pieces, and although he was anxious to employ a detective,—so anxious that he phoned Schiff three times to get the Pinkertons down, according to his own statement, Lemmie Qninn had to come and ask him back to see the blood spots on the second floor, found by this man Barrett. Is that the conduct of a man, the head of a pencil factory, who had employed detectives, anxious to assist the police, — saw it in the newspapers and yet Lemmie Quinn had to go and ask him to go back?
nd then he tells you in this statement, which is easy to write, was glibly rattled off, a statement that yon might expect from a man that could plot the downfall of a girl of such tender years as little Mary Phagan, that he went back there and examined those blood spots with an electric flashlight, that he made a particular and a minute examination of them, but strange to say, not even Lemmie Quinn comes in to sustain you, and no man on earth, so far as this jury knows, ever saw Leo M. Frank examining what Barrett said and Jefferson said and Mel Stanford said and Beavers said and Starnes said and a host of others said was blood near the dressing room on the second floor. You know why? Because it never happened. If there was a spot on this earth that this man Frank didn’t want to examine, if there was a spot on earth that he didn’t want any blood found at all, it was on the second floor, the floor which, according to his own statement, he was working on when this poor girl met her death.
Schiff, he says, saw those notes down there and at police headquarters. Frank says he visited the morgue not only once but twice. If he went down there and visited that morgue and saw that child and identified her body and it tore him all to pieces, as he tells you it did, let any honest man, I don’t care who he be, on this jury, seeking to fathom the mystery of this thing, tell me why it was, except for the answer that I give you, he went down there to view that body again? Rogers said he didn’t look at it; Black said he didn’t see him look at it.
Mr. Rosser:
He is mis-stating the evidence. Rogers never said that he didn’t look at the body, he said he was behind him and didn’t know whether he did or not; and Black said he didn’t know whether he did or not.
Mr. Dorsey:
Rogers said he never did look at that body.
Mr. Arnold:
I insist that isn’t the evidence. Rogers said he didn’t know and couldn’t answer whether he saw it or not, and Black said the same thing.
Mr. Dorsey:
I’m not going to quibble with you. The truth is, and you know it, that when that man Frank went down there to look at that body of that poor girl, to identify her, he never went in that room, and if he did look at her long enough to identify her, neither John Black nor Rogers nor Gheesling knew it. I tell you, gentlemen of the jury, that the truth of this thing is that Frank never looked at the body of that poor girl, but if he did, it was just a glance, as the electric light was flashed on and he immediately turned and went into another room.
Mr. Rosser:
There isn’t a bit of proof that he went into another room. I object again, sir, there isn’t a particle of proof of that.
Mr. Dorsey:
If that man Frank ever looked at that girl’s face,—I challenge them to produce the record to show it,—it was so brief that if she was dirty and begrimed and her hair was bloody and her features contorted, I tell you that, if he didn’t know her any better than he would have you believe he knew her, he never could have identified her as Mary Phagan. Never could. And I say to you, gentlemen of the jury, that the reason why this man revisited that morgue on Sunday afternoon, after he had failed to mention the subject of death in the bosom of his family at the dining table, when he tells you that it tore him all to pieces, there was but one reason for revisiting that morgue, and that was to put his ear to the ground and see if at that hour there was any whisper or suggestion that Leo M. Frank, the guilty man, had committed the dastardly deed.
Black didn’t see him, Rogers didn’t see him, Gheesling didn’t see him. One of the earliest to arrive, the superintendent of the factory (Rogers said he had his eye on him) he turned and stepped aside, and he himself said that the sight tore him all to pieces, and he seeks to have you believe that that automobile ride and the sight of that poor girl’s features accounts for the nervousness which he displayed; and yet we find him going, like a dog to his vomit, a sow to her wallow, back to view the remains of this poor little innocent girl. And I ask you, gentlemen of the jury, if you don’t know that the reason Leo M. Frank went down to that morgue on Sunday afternoon was to see if he could scent anything in the atmosphere indicating that the police suspected Leo M. Frank?
He admits his nervousness, he admits his nervousness in the presence of the officers; the Seligs say that he wasn’t nervous, that he wasn’t nervous Saturday night when he telephoned Newt Lee to find out if anything had happened at the factory, that he wasn’t nervous when he read this Saturday Evening Post. He wanted to get out of the view of any man who represented the majesty and dignity of the law, and he went in behind curtains or any old thing that would hide his countenance from those men. I come back to the proposition in the bosom of his family, —notwithstanding he read that Saturday Evening Post out there in the hall Saturday night, this thing kept welling in his breast to such an extent that he had to make a play of being composed and cool, and he went in there and tried to break up the card game with the laughter that was the laughter of a guilty conscience.
Notwithstanding the fact that he was able, Sunday, at the dining table and in the bosom of his family, when he hadn’t discussed this murder, when Mrs. Selig didn’t know that it was a murder that concerned her, when the whole Selig household were treating it as a matter of absolute indifference, if he wasn’t nervous there, gentlemen of the jury, surely he was, as I am going to show you, nervous when he came face to face and had to discuss the proposition with the minions of the law. He was nervous when he went to run the elevator, when he went to the box to turn on the power, and he says here in his statement, unsupported by any oath, that he left that box open because some member of the fire department had come around and stated that you must leave that box open because the electricity might innocently electrocute some members of the fire department in case of fire.
I ask you, gentlemen of the jury, what was the necessity for leaving the box open when a simple turn of the lever would have shut off the electricity and enabled the key to have been hung up in the office, just exactly like old Holloway swore when he didn’t know the importance of the proposition, in the affidavit which I have and which was submitted in evidence to you, that that box was locked and the key was put in Frank’s office? Why don’t they bring the fireman here who went around and gave such instructions? First, because it wasn’t necessary, they could have cut the electricity off and locked the box. And second, they didn’t bring him because no such man ever did any such thing, and old Holloway told the truth before he came to the conclusion that old Jim Conley was “his nigger” and he saw the importance of the proposition that when Frank went there Sunday morning the box was unlocked and Frank had the key in his pocket.
Mr. Rosser:
You say Mr. Frank had the key in his pocket? No one mentioned it, that isn’t the evidence; I say it was hung up in the office, that’s the undisputed evidence.
Mr. Dorsey:
Holloway says when he got back Monday morning it was hung up in the office, but Boots Rogers said this man Frank— and he was sustained by other witnesses—when he came there to run that elevator Sunday morning, found that power box unlocked.
Mr. Rosser:
That’s not what you said.
Mr. Dorsey:
Yes it is.
Mr. Rosser:
You said Frank had the key in his pocket next morning, and that isn’t the evidence, there’s not a line to that effect.
The Court:
Do you still insist that he had it in his pocket?
Mr. Dorsey:
I don’t care anything about that; the point of the proposition, the gist of the proposition, the force of the proposition is that old Holloway stated, way back yonder in May, when I interviewed him, that the key was always in Frank’s office; this man told you that the power box and the elevator was unlocked Sunday morning and the elevator started without anybody going and getting the key.
Mr. Rosser:
That’s not the point he was making, the point he was making, to show how clearly Frank must have been connected with it, he had the key in his pocket. He was willing to say that when he ought to know that’s not so.
The Court:
He’s drawing a deduction that he claims he’s drawing.
Mr. Rosser:
He doesn’t claim that. He says the point is it was easily gotten in the office, but that’s not what he said.
The Court:
You claim that’s a deduction you are drawing?
Mr. Dorsey:
Why, sure.
The Court:
Now, you don’t claim the evidence shows that?
Mr. Dorsey:
I claim that the power box was standing open Sunday morning.
The Court:
Do you insist that the evidence shows he had it in his pocket?
Mr. Dorsey:
I say that’s my recollection, but I’m willing to waive it; but let them go to the record, and the record will sustain me on that point, just like it sustains me on the evidence of this man Rogers, which I’m now going to read.
Rogers said “Mr. Gheesling caught the face of the dead girl and turned it over towards me; I looked then to see if anybody followed me, and I saw Mr. Frank step from outside of the door into what I thought was a closet, but I afterwards found out where Mr. Gheesling slept, or somebody slept, there was a little single bed in there.”
I don’t want to misrepresent this testimony, for goodness knows there’s enough here without resorting to any such practice as that, and I don’t want to mislead this jury and furthermore, I’m not going to do it.
Frank says, after looking at the body, “I identified that little girl as the one that had been up shortly after the noon of the day previous and got her money from me. I then unlocked the safe and took out the pay roll book and found that it was true that a little girl by the name of Mary Phagan did work in the metal plant and that she was due to draw $1.20, the pay roll book showed that, and as the detective had told me that some one had identified the body of that little girl as that of Mary Phagan, there could be no question but what it was one and the same girl.” And he might have added, “as I followed her back into the metal department and proposed to her that she submit to my lascivious demands, I hit her, she fell, she struck her head; to protect my character, I choked her—to protect my reputation I choked her, and called Jim Conley to move her down to the basement, and for all these reasons, because I made out the pay roll for fifty-two weeks during which time Mary had worked there, I know, for these reasons, although I didn’t look at her and couldn’t have recognized her if she was in the dirty, distorted condition,” he tells you in this statement, she really was, “but I know it was Mary Phagan.”
And he corroborates in his statement these detectives, he says down at the undertaking establishment, “went down a long dark passageway with Mr. Rogers following, then I came and Black brought up the rear, Gheesling was on the opposite side of the little cooling table, the table between him and me; he took the head in his hands, put his finger exactly where the wound in the left side back of the head was located” and he seeks to have you believe that he “noticed the hands and arms of the little girl were very dirty, blue and ground with dirt and cinders, nostrils and mouth,—the mouth being open,—nostrils and mouth just full of saw-dust, the face was all puffed out, the right eye was blackened and swollen and there was a deep scratch over the left eye on the forehead.”
He tells in his statement that in that brief glance, if he ever took any glance at all, he saw that the only way in the world to believe him is to say that these men, John Black and Boots Rogers, who have got no interest in this case in God’s world but to tell the truth, perjured themselves to put the rope around the neck of this man. Do you believe it?
Starnes is a perjurer, too. Starnes says “when I called this man up over the telephone I was careful not to mention what had happened” and unless Starnes on that Sunday morning in April was very different from what you would judge him to be by his deportment on the stand here the other day, he did exactly what he said he did. And yet this defendant in his statement said he says “what’s the trouble, has there been a fire?” He says “No, a tragedy, I want you to come down right away;” “I says all right;” “I’ll send an automobile after you,” and Starnes says that he never mentioned the word tragedy, and yet, so conscious, so conscious was this man Frank when Rogers and Black went out there and he nervously twitching at his collar asked “What’s the trouble, has the night watchman reported anything?” and asked them not, “has there been a fire,” but “has there been a tragedy?” But Starnes, the man who first went after Newt Lee, the negro night watchman, because he pointed his finger of suspicion at him,—Starnes, the man who went after Gantt because this defendant pointed the finger of suspicion at him,—Starnes, the man who has been a detective here on the police force for years and years, is a perjurer and a liar; to do what? Simply to gratify his ambition and place a noose around the neck of this man Frank, when he could have gone out after, if the circumstances had warranted it, or if he had been a rascal and wanted to travel along the line of least resistance, Newt Lee or Gantt or Conley.
Another thing: Old Newt Lee says that when this defendant called him Saturday night, a thing that he had never done during the time that he had been there at that pencil factory serving him as night watchman, Newt Lee tells you, although the defendant says that he asked about Gantt, Newt Lee says that Gantt ‘s name was never mentioned, and that the inquiry was “has anything happened at the factory?” You tell me, gentlemen of the jury, that all these circumstances, with all these incriminating circumstances piling up against this man that we have nothing in this case but prejudice and perjury? Newt says he never mentioned Gantt. Frank in his statement says “I succeeded in getting Newt Lee, and asked him if Mr. Gantt had gone.” He instructed this man Newt Lee to go with Gantt, to watch him, to stay with him, and old Newt Lee wouldn’t even let Gantt in that factory unless Frank said that he might go up. He had instructed Lee previous thereto not to let him in for the simple reason he didn’t want Gantt coming down there. Why? Because he didn’t want him to come down and see and talk with little Mary for some reason I know not why; and old Newt Lee stopped this man Gantt on the threshold and refused to let him go up, and this man Frank says “you go up with him and see that he gets what he wants and usher him out.”
And yet, though he had never done any such thing during the time Newt Lee had been up there, he innocently called Newt up to find out, he said, if Gantt had gone and Newt said to find out if everything was all right at the factory; and you know that the reason he called up was to find out if Newt, in making his rounds, had discovered the body of this dead girl.
“Would you convict him on this circumstance or that circumstance?” No. But I would weave them all together, and I would make a rope, no one strand of which sufficiently strong to send this man to the gallows for this poor girl’s death, but I would take them all together and I would say, in conformity with the truth and right, they all make such a rope and such a strand and such a cable that it’s impossible not only to conceive a reasonable doubt, but to conceive any doubt at all.
Frank was in jail, Frank had already stated in his affidavit at police headquarters, which is in evidence, contradicting this statement and this chart which they have made, that he didn’t leave his office between certain hours. Frank didn’t know that his own detective, Harry Scott, had found this little Monteen Stover,—and I quote her evidence, I quote it and I submit it shows that she went in that office and went far enough in that office to see who was in there, and if she didn’t go far enough in, it’s passing strange that anybody in that office,—Frank himself, could have heard that girl and could have made his presence known. Scott, their own Pinkerton detective, gets the statement from Monteen Stover, and he visits Leo M. Frank in his cell at the jail. Frank in order to evade that says, “to the best of my recollection I didn’t stir out of the office, but it’s possible that, in order to answer a call of nature, I may have gone to the toilet, these are things that a man does unconsciously and can’t tell how many times nor when he does it.”
I tell you, gentlemen of the jury, that if this man Frank had remained in his office and was in his office when Monteen Stover went in there, he would have heard her, he would have seen her, he would have talked with her, he would have given her her pay. I tell you, gentlemen of the jury, that if this man Frank had stepped out of his office to answer a call of nature, that he would have remembered it, and if he wouldn’t have remembered it, at least he wouldn’t have stated so repeatedly and unqualifiedly that he never left his office, and only on the stand here, when he faces an honest jury, charged with the murder, and circumstances banked up against him, does he offer the flimsy excuse that these are things that people do unconsciously and without any recollection.
But this man Scott, in company with Black, after they found that little Monteen Stover had been there at exactly the time that old Jim Conley says that that man with this poor little unfortunate girl had gone to the rear, and on May 3rd, the very time that Monteen Stover told them that she had been up there, at that time this Pinkerton detective, Scott, as honest and honorable a man as ever lived, the man who said he was going hand in hand with the police department of the City of Atlanta and who did, notwithstanding the fact that some of the others undertook to leap with the hare and run with the hounds, stood straight up by the city detectives and by the State officials and by the truth, put these questions, on May 3rd, to Leo M. Frank: Says he to Frank: “From the time you got to the factory from Montag Brothers, until you went to the fourth floor to see White and Denham, were you inside your office the entire time?” Answer: “I was.” Again, says Scott—and Mr. Scott, in jail, when Frank didn’t know the importance of the proposition because he didn’t know that little Monteen Stover had said that she went up there and saw nobody in his office—Scott came at him from another different angle: “From the time you came from Montag Brothers, until Mary Phagan came, were you in your office?” and Frank said “yes.” “From twelve o’clock,” says Scott, “until Mary Phagan entered your office and thereafter until 12:50, when you went upstairs to get Mrs. White out of the building, were you in your office?” Answer: “Yes.” “Then,” says Scott, “from twelve to twelve-thirty, every minute during that half hour, you were in your office?” and Frank said “yes.” And not until he saw the wonderful capacity, the wonderful ability, the wonderful devotion of this man Scott to the truth and right did he ever shut him out from his counsel.
No suggestion then that he might have had to answer a call of nature, but emphatically, without knowing the importance, he told his own detective, in the presence of John Black, that at no time, for no purpose, from a few minutes before this unfortunate girl arrived, until he went upstairs, at 12:50, to ask Mrs. White to leave, had he been out of his office. Then you tell me that an honest jury, with no motive but to do right, would accept the statement of this man Frank, that he might have been, these things occur so frequently that a man can’t remember, and by that statement set aside what he said to his own detective, Harry Scott?
Well, you can do it; you have got the power to do it; no king on the throne, no potentate has the power that is vested in the American jury. In the secret of your consultation room, you can write a verdict that outrages truth and justice, if you want to, and no power on earth can call you to account, but your conscience, but so long as you live, wherever you go, that conscience has got to be with you,—you can’t get away from it; and if you do it, you will lose the peace of mind that goes with a clear conscience of duty done, and never again, so long as you shall last upon this earth, though others not knowing the truth might respect you, will you ever have your own self-esteem.
I have already talked to you about this time element. You made a mighty effort to break down little George Epps. You showed that McCoy didn’t have a watch; have tried to show this man Kendley was a liar because he knew the little girl and felt that he knew in his heart who the murderer was. But there’s one witness for the State against whom not a breath of suspicion has been apparent,—we impeached these men Matthews and Hollis by other witnesses besides George Epps and besides George Kendley and besides McCoy, and as to how that little girl got to that factory, gentlemen, this man Mr. Kelley, who rode on the same car with Hollis, the same car that Hollis claims or Matthews claims that he rode on, knew the girl, knew Matthews, tells you and he’s unimpeached and unimpeachable, and there’s no suggestion here, even if you set the evidence of Epps and McCoy and Kendley aside, upon which an honest jury can predicate a doubt that this man Kelley of the street car company didn’t tell the truth when he says that she wasn’t on that car that this man Matthews says she was and she went around, because “I rode with Matthews and I know her and I know Matthews.”
And Mr. Rosser says that he don’t care anything about all this medical evidence,—he don’t care anything about cabbage. I’m not going back on my raising here or anywhere, and I tell you, gentlemen, that there is no better, no more wholesome meal, and when the stomach is normal and all right, there is nothing that is more easily digested, because the majority of the substances which you eat takes the same length of time that cabbage requires. And I tell you that cabbage, corn bread and buttermilk is good enough for any man. I tell you, gentlemen of the jury, that Mr. Rosser’s statement here, that he don’t care anything for that evidence of Doctor Roy Harris about this cabbage which was taken out of that poor girl’s stomach, is not borne out by the record in this case. It wouldn’t surprise me if these able, astute gentlemen, vigilant as they have shown themselves to be, didn’t go out and get some doctors who have been the family physicians and who are well known to some of the members of this jury, for the effect that it might have upon you.
Mr. Arnold:
There is not a word of evidence as to that; it is a grossly improper argument, and I move that that be withdrawn from the jury.
Mr. Dorsey:
I don’t state it as a fact, but I am suggesting it.
Mr. Arnold:
He has no right to deduct it or suggest it, I just want Your Honor to reprove it—reprimand him and withdraw it from the jury; I just make the motion and Your Honor can do as you please.
Mr. Dorsey:
I am going to show that there must have been something besides the training of these men, and I’m going to contrast them with our doctors.
Mr. Arnold:
I move to exclude that as grossly improper. He says he is arguing that some physician was brought here because he was the physician of some member of the jury, it’s grossly unfair and it’s grossly improper and insulting, even, to the jury.
Mr. Dorsey:
I say it is eminently proper and absolutely a legitimate argument.
Mr. Arnold:
I just record my objection, and if Your Honor lets it stay in, you can do it.
Mr. Dorsey:
Yes, sir; that wouldn’t scare me, Your Honor.
The Court:
Well, I want to try it right, and I suppose you do. Is there anything to authorize that inference to be drawn?
Mr. Dorsey:
Why sure; the fact that you went out and got general practitioners, that know nothing about the analysis of the stomach, know nothing about pathology.
The Court:
Go on, then.
Mr. Dorsey:
I thought so.
Mr. Arnold:
Does Your Honor hold that is proper—”I thought so”?
The Court:
I hold that he can draw any inference legitimately from the testimony and argue it—I do not know whether or not there is anything to indicate that any of these physicians was the physician of the family.
Mr. Rosser:
Let me make the suggestion, Your Honor ought to know that before you let him testify it.
The Court:
He says he does not know it, he’s merely arguing it from an inference he has drawn.
Mr. Dorsey:
I can’t see any other reason in God’s world for going out and getting these practitioners, who have never had any special training on stomach analysis, and who have not had any training with the analysis of tissues, like a pathologist has had, except upon that theory. And I am saying to you, gentlemen of the jury, that the number of doctors that these men put up here belie the statement of Mr. Rosser that he doesn’t attach any importance to this cabbage proposition, because they knew, as you know, that it is a powerful factor in sustaining the State’s case and breaking down the alibi of this defendant. It fastens and fixes and nails down with the accuracy only which a scientific fact can do, that this little girl met her death between the time she entered the office of the superintendent and the time Mrs. White came up the stairs at 12 :35, to see her husband and found this defendant at the safe and saw him jump.
You tell me that this Doctor Childs, this general practitioner, who don’t know anything about the action of the gastric juices on foods in the stomach, this man of the short experience of seven years, this gentleman, splendid gentleman though he is, from Michigan, can put his opinion against the eminent Secretary of the Georgia Board of Health, Doctor Roy Harris ? I tell you no.
Now, briefly, let’s run over this nervousness proposition. The man indicated nervousness when he talked to old man John Starnes, when Black went out to his house and he sent his wife down to give him nerve, although he was nearly dressed and she wasn’t at all dressed, he betrayed his nervousness by the rapidity of his questions, by the form of his questions.
But first, before we get to that, he warned old Newt Lee to come back there Saturday at four o’clock, and dutiful old darkey that he was, old Newt walked in and Frank then was engaged in washing his hands. Jim Conley hadn’t come, but he was looking for Conley, and he sent old Newt Lee out, although Newt insisted that he wanted to sleep, and although he might have found a cozy corner on any floor in that factory, with plenty of sacks and cords and other things to make him a pallet, he wanted old man Newt to leave. Why? When Newt said he was sleepy he wanted him to leave so that he could do just exactly what old Jim Conley told you Frank made his promise to do,—he wanted an opportunity to burn that body, so that the City Police of Atlanta wouldn’t have the Phagan mystery solved today, and probably it would not even be known that the girl lost her life in that factory. His anxiety about Gantt going back into that building that afternoon, when he hung his head and said to Gantt that he saw a boy sweeping out a pair of shoes, and Gantt says “what were they, tan or black?” And ah, gentlemen, it looked like Providence had foreordained that this did, long-legged Gantt should leave, not only one pair, but two pairs. “What kind were they,” he said; he gave him the name of one color, and then, as Providence would have it, old Gantt said, “ah, but I’ve got two pair,” and then it was that he dared not say, because he couldn’t then say, that he saw that man also sweeping them out; then it was that he said “all right, Newt, go up with him and let him get them,” and lo and behold, the shoes that this man Frank would have him believe were swept out, both tan and black, were there. Gantt tells you how he acted; Newt tells you how he jumped.
Rogers and Black, honest men when they went out there after Mr. Starnes had talked to him, tell you that he was nervous. Why? Why do you say you were nervous; because of the automobile ride? Because you looked into the face of this little girl and it was such a gruesome sight? I tell you, gentlemen of the jury, and you know it, that this man Frank needed, when he had his wife go down to the door, somebody to sustain him. I tell you that this man Frank, when he had his wife telephone Darley to meet him at the factory, did it because he wanted somebody to sustain him.
I tell you, gentlemen of the jury, that, because he sent for Mr. Rosser,—big of reputation and big of brain, dominating and controlling, so far as he can, everybody with whom he comes in contact, the reason he wanted him at the Police Headquarters, and the reason he wanted Haas, was because his conscience needed somebody to sustain him. And this man Darley! We had to go into the enemy’s camp to get the ammunition, but fortunately, I got on the job and sent the subpoena, and fortunately Darley didn’t know that he didn’t have to come, and fortunately he came and made the affidavit, to which he stood up here as far as he had to because he couldn’t get around it, in which Darley says “I noticed his nervousness; I noticed it upstairs, I noticed it downstairs,” when they went to nail up the door. “When he sat in my lap going down to the Police Headquarters he shook and he trembled like an aspen leaf.” I confronted him with the statement, in which he had said “completely undone.” He denied it but said “almost undone.” I confronted him with the statement that he had made, and the affidavit to which he had sworn, in which he had used the language, “Completely unstrung” and now he changed it in your presence and said “almost completely unstrung.”
You tell me that this man that called for breakfast at home, as Durant called for bromo seltzer in San Francisco, this man who called for coffee at the factory, as Durant called for bromo seltzer in San Francisco, you tell me that this man Frank, the defendant in this case, explains his nervousness by reason of the automobile ride, the view of the body,—as this man Durant, in San Francisco tried to explain his condition by the inhalation of gas,—you tell me, gentlemen of the jury, that these explanations are going to wipe out the nervousness that you know could have been produced by but one cause, and that is, the consciousness of an infamous crime that had been committed.
Old Newt Lee says that when he went back there that afternoon he found that inside door locked,—a thing that never had been found before he got there at four o’clock, a thing that he never had found. Old Newt Lee says that Frank came out of his office and met him out there by the desk, the place where he always went and said “All right, Mr. Frank,” and that Frank had always called him in and given him his instructions. But Newt Lee says that night, when he went into the cellar, he found the light, that had always burned brightly turned back so that it was burning just about like a lightning bug. You tell me that old Jim Conley felt the necessity to have turned that light down? I tell you that that light was turned down, gentlemen, by that man, Leo M. Frank, after he went down there Saturday afternoon, when he discovered that Conley wasn’t coming back to burn the body, to place the notes by the body, that Conley had written, and he turned it down in the hope that the body wouldn’t be discovered by Newt Lee during that night.
Monday evening, Harry Scott is sent for, the Pinkerton man—and it didn’t require any affidavit to hold old Scott down to the truth, though after my experience with that man Darley, I almost trembled in my boots for fear this man Scott, one of the most material witnesses, although the detective of this defendant’s company, might also throw me down. Scott says this man Frank, when he went there Monday afternoon, after he had anxiously phoned Schiff to see old man Sig Montag and get Sig Montag’s permission, had phoned him three times—Scott says that he squirmed in his chair continually, crossed and uncrossed his legs, rubbed his face with his hand, sighed, twisted and drew long deep breaths.
After going to the station Tuesday morning, just before his arrest—if he ever was arrested—just before his detention, at another time altogether from the time that Darley speaks of,—Darley, the man for whom he sent, Darley the man who is next to him in power, Darley the man that he wanted to sustain his nerve—Scott, your own detective, says that he was nervous and pale, and that when he saw him at the factory, his eyes were large and glaring.
Tuesday morning, Waggoner, sent up there to watch him from across the street, says before the officers came to get him, he could see Frank pacing his office inside, through the windows, and that he came to the office window and looked out at him twelve times in thirty minutes,—that he was agitated and nervous on the way down to the station.
I want to read you here an excerpt from the speech of a man by the name of Hammond, when prosecuting a fellow by the name of Dunbar for the murder of two little children, it explains in language better than I can command, why all this nervousness : “It was because the mighty secret of the feat was in his heart; it was the overwhelming consciousness of guilt striving within him; it was nature over-burdened with a terrible load; it was a conscience striving beneath a tremendous crushing weight; it was fear, remorse and terror—remorse for the past, and terror for the future. Spectral shadows were flitting before him”—the specter of the dead girl, the cord, the blood, arose. “The specter of this trial, of the prison, of the gallows and the grave of infamy. Guilt, gentlemen of the jury, forces itself into speech and conduct, and is its own betrayer.”
Mr. Rosser said that once a thief, always a thief and eternally damned. Holy Writ, in giving the picture of the death of Christ on the Cross, says that, when He suffered that agony, He said to the thief, “This day shalt thou be with Me in Paradise” and unless our religion is a fraud and a farce, if it teaches anything, it is that man, though he may be a thief, may be rehabilitated, and enjoy a good character and the confidence of the people among whom he lives. And this man Dalton, according to the unimpeached testimony of these people who have known him in DeKalb and Fulton since he left that crowd back yonder where he was a boy and probably wild and did things that were wrong, they tell you that today he is a man of integrity, notwithstanding the fact that he is sometimes tempted to step aside with a woman who has fallen so low as Daisy Hopkins. Did we sustain him? By more witnesses by far than you brought here to impeach him, and by witnesses of this community, witnesses that you couldn’t impeach to save your life. Did we sustain him? We not only sustained him by proof of general good character, but we sustained him by the evidence of this man, C. T. Maynard, an unimpeached and unimpeachable witness, who tells you, not when Newt Lee was there, during the three weeks that Newt Lee was there, but that on a Saturday afternoon in June or July, 1912, he saw with his own eyes this man Dalton go into that pencil factory with a woman.
Corroboration of Conley? Of course, it’s corroboration. The very fact, gentlemen of the jury, that these gentlemen conducting this case failed absolutely and ingloriously even to attempt to sustain this woman, Daisy Hopkins, is another corroboration of Conley.
But, ah! Mr. Rosser said he would give so much to know who it was that dressed this man Conley up,—this man about whom he fusses, having been put in the custody of the police force of the City of Atlanta. Why, if you had wanted to have known, and if you had used one-half the effort to ascertain that fact that you used when you sent somebody down yonder,—I forget the name of the man,—to Walton County to impeach this man, Dalton, you could have found it out. And I submit that the man that did it, whoever he was, the man who had the charity in his heart to dress that negro up, —the negro that he would dress in a shroud and send to his grave,—the man that did that, to bring him into the presence of this Court deserves not the condemnation, but the thanks of this jury.
Let’s see what Mr. William Smith, a man employed to defend this negro Conley, set up in response to the rule issued by His Honor, Judge Roan, and let’s see now if they are not all sufficient reasons why Conley should not have been delivered into the custody of the city police of Atlanta, though they are no better, but just as good as the sheriff of this county. “Respondent (Jim Conley, through his attorney) admits that he is now held in custody, under orders of this Court, at the police prison of the City of Atlanta, having been originally held in the prison of Fulton County, also under order of this Court, the cause of said commitment by this Court of respondent being the allegation that respondent is a material witness in the above case,—that of The State against Leo M. Frank—in behalf of The State, and it is desired to insure the presence of respondent at the trial of the above case.” So he couldn’t get away, in order to hold him. “Respondent admits that he is now at the city police prison at his own request and instance, and through the advice and counsel of his attorney. Respondent shows to the Court that the city police prison is so arranged and so officered that respondent is absolutely safe as to his physical welfare from any attack that might be made upon him; that he is so confined that his cell is a solitary one, there being no one else even located in the cell block with him; that the key to his cell block and the cell of respondent is always in the possession of a sworn, uniformed officer of the law; that under the instruction of Chief of Police Beavers, said sworn officers are not allowed to permit any one to approach.”
Judge Roan did it,—no reflection on the sheriff, but with the friends of this man Frank pouring in there at all hours of the night, offering him sandwiches and whiskey and threatening his life, things that this sheriff, who is as good as the chief of police but no better, couldn’t guard against because of the physical structure of the jail, Jim Conley asked, and His Honor granted the request, that he be remanded back into the custody of the honorable men who manage the police department of the City of Atlanta.
Mr. Rosser:
No, that’s a mistake, that isn’t correct, Your Honor discharged him from custody—he said that under that petition Your Honor sent him back to the custody where you had him before, and that isn’t true, Your Honor discharged him, vacated the order, that’s what you did.
Mr. Dorsey:
Here’s an order committing him down there first — you are right about that, I’m glad you are right one time.
Mr. Rosser:
That’s more than you have ever been.
Mr. Dorsey:
No matter what the outcome of the order may have been, the effect of the order passed by His Honor, Judge Roan, who presides in this case, was to remand him into the custody of the police of the City of Atlanta.
Mr. Rosser:
I dispute that; that isn’t the effect of the order passed by His Honor, the effect of the order passed by His Honor was to turn him out, and they went through the farce of turning him out on the street and carrying him right back. That isn’t the effect of Your Honor’s judgment. In this sort of case, we ought to have the exact truth.
The Court:
This is what I concede to be the effect of that ruling: I passed this order upon the motion of State’s counsel, first, is my recollection, and by consent of Conley’s attorney —
Mr. Rosser:
I’m asking only for the effect of the last one.
The Court:
On motion of State’s counsel, consented to by Conley’s attorney, I passed the first order, that’s my recollection. Afterwards, it came up on motion of the Solicitor General, I vacated both orders, committing him to the jail and also the order, don’t you understand, transferring him; that left it as though I had never made an order, that’s the effect of it.
Mr. Rosser:
Then the effect was that there was no order out at all?
The Court:
No order putting him anywhere.
Mr. Rosser:
Which had the effect of putting him out?
The Court:
Yes, that’s the effect, that there was no order at all.
Mr. Dorsey:
First, there was an order committing him to the common jail of Fulton County; second, he was turned over to the custody of the police of the City of Atlanta, by an order of Judge L.S. Roan; third, he was released from anybody’s custody, and except for the determination of the police force of the City of Atlanta, he would have been a liberated man, when he stepped into this Court to swear, or he would have been spirited out of the State of Georgia so his damaging evidence couldn’t have been adduced against this man.
But yet you say Conley is impeached? You went thoroughly into this man Conley ‘s previous life. You found out every person for whom he had worked, and yet this lousy, disreputable negro is unimpeached by any man except somebody that’s got a hand in the till of the National Pencil Company, unimpeached as to general bad character, except by the hirelings of the National Pencil Company. And yet you would have this jury, in order to turn this man loose, over-ride the facts of this case and say that Conley committed this murder, when all you have ever been able to dig up against him is disorderly conduct in the Police Court.
Is Conley sustained? Abundantly. Our proof of general bad character, the existence of such character as can reasonably be supposed to cause one to commit an act like we charge, our proof of general bad character, I say, sustains Jim Conley. Our proof of general bad character as to lasciviousness not even denied by a single witness, sustains Jim Conley. Your failure to cross-examine and develop the source of information of these girls put upon the stand by the State,—these “hare-brained fanatics,” as Mr. Arnold called them, without rhyme or reason, sustains Jim Conley. Your failure to cross-examine our character witnesses with reference to this man’s character for lasciviousness sustains Jim Conley. His relations with Miss Rebecca Carson, the lady on the fourth floor, going into the ladies’ dressing room even in broad daylight and during working hours, as sustained by Miss Kitchens. His relations with Miss Rebecca Carson, who is shown to have gone into the ladies’ dressing room, even in broad daylight and during work hours, by witnesses whose names I can’t call right now, sustains Jim Conley. Your own witness, Miss Jackson, who says that this libertine and rake came, when these girls were in there reclining and lounging after they had finished their piece work, and tells of the sardonic grin that lit his countenance, sustains Jim Conley. Miss Kitchens, the lady from the fourth floor, that, in spite of the repeated assertion made by Mr. Arnold, you didn’t produce, and her account of this man’s conduct when he came in there on these girls, whom he should have protected and when he should have been the last man to go in that room, sustains Jim Conley; and Miss Jackson’s assertion that she heard of three or four other instances and that complaint was made to the foreladies in charge, sustains Jim Conley. Darley and Mattie Smith, as to what they did even on the morning of Saturday, April 26th, even going into the minutest details, sustain Jim Conley. McCrary, the old negro that you praised so highly, the man that keeps his till filled by money paid by the National Pencil Company, as to where he put his stack of hay and the time of day he drew his pay, sustains Jim Conley. Monteen Stover, as to the easy-walking shoes she wore when she went up into this man’s Frank’s room, at the very minute he was back there in the metal department with this poor little unfortunate girl, sustains Jim Conley. Monteen Stover, when she tells you that she found nobody in that office, sustains Jim Conley, when he says that he heard little Mary Phagan go into the office, heard the footsteps of the two as they went to the rear, he heard the scream and he saw the dead body because Monteen says there was nobody in the office, and Jim says she went up immediately after Mary had gone to the rear. Lemmie Quinn, your own dear Lemmie,— as to the time he went up and went down into the streets with the evidence of Mrs. Freeman and Hall, sustains Jim Conley. Frank’s statement that he would consult his attorneys about Quinn’s statement that he had visited him in his office sustains Jim Conley. Dalton, sustained as to his life for the last ten years, here in this community and in DeKalb, when he stated that he had seen Jim watching before on Saturdays and holidays, sustains Jim Conley. Daisy Hopkins’ awful reputation and the statement of Jim, that he had seen her go into that factory with Dalton, and down that scuttle hole to the place where that cot is shown to have been, sustains Jim Conley. The blood on the second floor, testified to by numerous witnesses, sustains Jim Conley. The appearance of the blood, the physical conditions of the floor when the blood was found Monday morning, sustains Jim Conley. The testimony of Holloway, which he gave in the affidavit before he appreciated the importance, coupled with the statement of Boots Rogers that that elevator box was unlocked, sustains Jim Conley. Ivey Jones, the man who says he met him in close proximity to the pencil factory on the day this murder was committed, the time he says he left that place, sustains Jim Conley. Albert McKnight, who testified as to the length of time that this man Frank remained at home, and the fact that he hurried back to the factory, sustains Jim Conley. The repudiated affidavit, made to the police, in the presence of Craven and Pickett, of Minola McKnight, the affidavit which George Gordon, the lawyer, with the knowledge that he could get a habeas corpus and take her within thirty minutes out of the custody of the police, but which he sat there and allowed her to make,. sustains Jim Conley. The use of that cord, found in abundance, to choke this girl to death, sustains Jim Conley. The existence of the notes alone sustains Jim Conley, because no negro ever in the history of the race, after having perpetrated rape or robbery, ever wrote a note to cover up the crime. The note paper on which it is written, paper found in abundance on the office floor and near the office of this man Frank, sustains Jim Conley. The diction of the notes, “this negro did this,” and old Jim throughout his statement says “I done,” sustains Jim Conley.
Mr. Rosser:
I have looked the record up, and Jim Conley says. “I did it” time and time again. He said “I disremember whether I did or didn’t,” he says “I did it”—
Mr. Dorsey:
They would have to prove that record before I would believe it.
Mr. Rosser:
He says time and time again “I disremember whether I did or not”; he says “I did it,” page after page, sometimes three times on a page. I’ve got the record, too. Of course, if the Almighty God was to say it you would deny it.
Mr. Dorsey:
Who reported it?
Mr. Rosser:
Pages 496, (Mr. Rosser here read a list of page numbers containing the statement referred to.)
Mr. Arnold:
I want to read the first one before he caught himself, on page 946, I want to read the statement —
Mr. Dorsey:
Who reported it, that’s what I want to know.
Mr. Arnold:
This is the official report and it’s the correct report, taken down by the official stenographer, and he said, “Now when the lady comes I’ll stamp like I did before,” “I says all right, I’ll do just as you say and I did.”
Mr. Dorsey:
He’s quoting Frank here, “and he says now when the lady comes I’ll stamp like I did.”
Mr. Arnold:
“I says all right, I’ll do just as you say, and I did as he said.” He has got it both ways, “I did it,” and “I done it,” you can find it both ways.
Mr. Dorsey:
The jury heard that examination and the cross-examination of Jim Conley, and every time it was put to him he says “I done it.”
Mr. Rosser:
And I assert that’s not true, the stenographer took it down and he took it down correctly.
Mr. Dorsey:
I’m not bound by his stenographer.
Mr. Rosser:
I know, you are not bound by any rule of right in the universe.
The Court:
If there’s any dispute about the correctness of this report, I will have the stenographer to come here.
Mr. Parry:
I reported 1 to 31 myself, and I think I can make a statement that will satisfy Mr. Dorsey: The shorthand character for “did” is very different from “done,” there’s no reason for a reporter confusing those two. Now, at the bottom of this page—I see I reported it myself, and that was what he said, quoting “All right, I’ll do just as you say and I did as he said.” Now, as I say, my characters for “did” and “done” are very different and shouldn’t be confused—no reason for their being confused.
The Court:
Well, is that reported or not correctly?
Mr. Parry:
That was taken as he said it and written out as he said it.
Mr. Dorsey:
Let it go, then, I’ll trust the jury on it.
Maybe he did, in certain instances, say that he did so and so, but you said in your argument that if there is anything in the world a negro will do, it is to pick up the language of the man for whom he works; and while I’ll assert that there are some instances you can pick out in which he used that word, that there are other instances you might pick showing that he used that word “I done” and they know it. All right, leave the language, take the context.
These notes say, as I suggested the other day, that she was assaulted as she went to make water. And the only closet known to Mary, and the only one that she would ever have used is the closet on the office floor, where Conley says he found the body, and her body was found right on the route that Frank would pursue from his office to that closet, right on back also to the metal room. The fact that this note states that a negro did it by himself, shows a conscious effort on the part of somebody to exclude and limit the crime to one man, and this fact sustains Conley. Frank even, in his statement sustains him, as to his time of arrival Saturday morning at the factory, as to the time of the visit to Montags, as to the folder which Conley says Frank had in his hands, and Frank in his statement says that he had the folder.
Conley is sustained by another thing: This man Harry White, according to your statement got $2.00. Where is the paper, where is the entry on any book showing that Frank ever entered it up on that Saturday afternoon when he waited for Conley and his mind was occupied with the consideration of the problem as to what he should do with the body. Schiff waited until the next week and would have you believe there was some little slip that was put in a cash box showing that this $2.00 was given White, and that slip was destroyed. Listen to this: “Arthur White borrowed $2.00 from me in advance on his wages. When we spend, of course, we credit it; there was a time, when we paid out money we would write it down on the book and we found it was much better for us to keep a little voucher book and let each and every person sign for money they got.” “Let each and every person sign for money they got,” says Frank in his statement, “and we have not only this record, but this record on the receipt book.” And notwithstanding that you kept a book and you found it better to keep this little voucher book and let each and every person sign for money they got, notwithstanding the fact that you say that you kept a book for express and kerosene and every other conceivable purpose for which money was appropriated, you fail and refuse, because you can’t, produce the signature of White, or the entry in any book made by Frank showing that this man White ever got that money, except the entry made by this man Schiff some time during the week thereafter.
I tell you, gentlemen of the jury, that the reason that Frank didn’t enter up, or didn’t take the receipt from White about the payment of that money, was because his mind and conscience were on the crime that he had committed. This expert in bookkeeping, this Cornell graduate, this man who checks and re-checks the cash, you tell me that if things were normal that he would have given out to that man White this $2.00 and not have taken a receipt, or not have made an entry himself on some book, going to show it? I tell you there’s only one reason why he didn’t do it.
He is sustained by the evidence in this case and the statement of Frank that he had relatives in Brooklyn. The time that Frank says that he left that factory sustains old Jim. When old Jim Conley was on the stand, Mr. Rosser put him through a good deal of questioning with reference to some fellow by the name of Mincey. Where is Mincey? Echo answers “Where?” Either Mincey was a myth, or Mincey was such a diabolical perjurer that this man knew that it would nauseate the stomach of a decent jury to have him produced. Where is Mincey? And if you weren’t going to produce Mincey, why did you parade it here before this jury! The absence of Mincey is a powerful fact that goes to sustain Jim Conley, because if Mincey could have contradicted Jim Conley, or could have successfully fastened an admission on old Jim that he was connected in any way with this crime, depend upon it, you would have produced him if you had to comb the State of Georgia with a fine-tooth comb, from Rabun Gap to Tybee Light.
Gentlemen, every act of that defendant proclaims him guilty. Gentlemen, every word of that defendant proclaims him responsible for the death of this little factory girl. Gentlemen, every circumstances in this case proves him guilty of this crime. Extraordinary? Yes, but nevertheless true, just as true as Mary Phagan is dead.
She died a noble death, not a blot on her name. She died because she wouldn’t yield her virtue to the demands of her Superintendent. I have no purpose and have never had from the beginning in this case that you oughtn’t to have, as an honest, upright citizen of this community. In the language of Daniel Webster, I desire to remind you “that when a jury, through whimsical and unfounded scruples, suffers the guilty to escape, they make themselves answerable for the augmented danger to the innocent.”
Your Honor, I have done my duty. I have no apology to make. Your Honor, so far as the State is concerned, may now charge this jury,—this jury who have sworn that they were impartial and unbiased, this jury who, in this presence, have taken the oath that they would well and truly try the issue formed on this bill of indictment between the State of Georgia and Leo M. Frank, charged with the murder of Mary Phagan; and I predict, may it please Your Honor, that under the law that you give in charge and under the honest opinion of the jury of the evidence produced, there can be but one verdict, and that is: We the jury find the defendant, Leo M. Frank, guilty! guilty! guilty!
* * *
For further study we recommend the following resources:
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Full archive of Atlanta Georgian newspapers relating to the murder and subsequent trial
The Leo Frank case as reported in the Atlanta Constitution
The Leo Frank Case (Mary Phagan) Inside Story of Georgia’s Greatest Murder Mystery 1913
The Murder of Little Mary Phagan by Mary Phagan Kean
American State Trials, volume X (1918) by John Lawson
Argument of Hugh M. Dorsey in the Trial of Leo Frank
Leo M. Frank, Plaintiff in Error, vs. State of Georgia, Defendant in Error. In Error from Fulton Superior Court at the July Term 1913, Brief of Evidence
The American Mercury is following these events of 100 years ago, the month-long trial of Leo M. Frank for the brutal murder of Miss Mary Phagan, in capsule form on a regular basis on this, the 100th anniversary of the case. Follow along with us and experience the trial as Atlantans of a century ago did, and come to your own conclusions.
Read also the Mercury’s coverage of Week One of the Leo Frank trial, Week Two, Week Three and Week Four and my exclusive summary of the evidence against Frank.
A fearless scholar, dedicated to the truth about this case, has obtained, scanned, and uploaded every single relevant issue of the major Atlanta daily newspapers and they now can be accessed through archive.org as follows:
Atlanta Constitution Newspaper:
http://archive.org/details/LeoFrankC...aper1913To1915
Atlanta Georgian Newspaper:
http://archive.org/details/AtlantaGe...ilToAugust1913
Atlanta Journal Newspaper:
http://archive.org/details/AtlantaJo...toAugust311913
More background on the case may be found in my article here at the Mercury, 100 Reasons Leo Frank Is Guilty.