Woodward-Broyles Breach Widens

Another in our series of new transcriptions of contemporary articles on the Leo Frank case.

The Atlanta Georgian

Friday, July 18, 1913

REVERSAL OF VERDICTS IS DENIED BY JUDGE

Apologizes Also to Porcine Family for Likening Woodward’s Legal Knowledge to Theirs.

Recorder Nash Broyles penned a polite note of apology to the whole hog family Friday.

With the same hand he picked up the cudgels with which again to belabor his honor, Mayor Woodward.

The Mayor, quoth the recorder, was the author of a ridiculous and absurd falsehood and it was a regrettable libel upon Mr.Hog to have to submit to a comparison with Atlanta’s Mayor.

As for the Mayor, he declared he was tired of wasting verbiage on the Recorder and that he would have nothing more to say in their quarrel. He intimated, however, that he had it in his mind to override the Recorder again by pardoning another prisoner.

Here are Recorder Broyles’ comments on the Mayor:

Apologizes to Porcine Family.

“I care nothing for the Mayor’s abuse. Condemnation from such a character should be considered praise. But when he says that he [sic] Court of Appeals on May 23, 1913, reversed me in ten cases and sustained me in seven, he tells such a ridiculous and absurd falsehood that I now apologize to the hog to which I referred yesterday when I said the Mayor knew less about law than a hog does about political economy.

“The idea of the Court of Appeals passing one day upon seventeen cases appealed from the Recorder’s Court of Atlanta!

“The records of that court will show that on an average there are not seventeen cases a year carried to the Court of Appeals, and they will also show that that court has sustained me in ten cases where it has reversed me in one.

Sees Attempt to Evade Issue.

“But the Mayor is, as usual, trying to sidetrack the issue between us. That issue is not my ability as a lawyer or a judge. I am content to let my record speak for me, but the issue is that the Mayor is protecting and pardoning the habitual and confirmed criminals of our city; is obstructing and defeating justice in our courts and impeding the officers of the law in their attempt to check crime in our city.

“And this is the issue on which the people at the next election will call him to account.”

Mayor Woodward retorted that he had concluded his comments on Recorder Broyles, but that he practically had decided again to overrule the Recorder and issue another pardon.

Plans to Give New Pardon.

The situation is possible only because Judge Broyles made a mistake and imposed a sentence of 20 instead of 29 days, which puts the case in the jurisdiction of the Mayor.

G. Poulus, who runs a restaurant on Alabama street, was fined $100 and sentenced to 30 days in the stockade. The story that has reached Mayor Woodward is that Poulus discharged a negro boy and that the negro boy, being angry, reported Poulus to the police as selling beer. Poulus says he only orders beer from adjoining saloons and keeps it in his ice box for his customers.

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The Atlanta Georgian, July 18th 1913, “Woodward=Broyles Breach Widens,” Leo Frank case newspaper article series (Original PDF)