Another in our series of new transcriptions of contemporary articles on the Leo Frank case.
Atlanta Georgian
August 18th, 1913
By JAMES B. NEVIN.
It is rather an extraordinary thing that on this Monday, the beginning of the fourth week of the most remarkable murder trial ever held in Georgia, the interest should be in nowiseabated or lessened, and that the opening of court to-day saw the biggest, hungriest and most insistent crowd of curious spectators yet on hand at the opening of court.
Far from letting go the Phagan mystery, the public to-day seems to be gripping it even more eagerly than ever before.
Opinion still is widely divided as to the guilt or innocence of Leo Frank, and there have been many switches of conclusion and reversals of theory, pro and con, within the past week, and no doubt there is much more of the same sort of thing to come.
People to-day believe Frank guilty who started out believing him innocent, and the rule is working right around the other way, moreover!
Despite the many things that have been said and the countless things that have been written of the Frank trial and all that led up to it, it remains, on the threshold of its fourth week, the most absorbing melodrama ever enacted in Atlanta—the most bitterly fought and the most uncompromisingly contested trial known to the criminal history of the State of Georgia.
The principal parties to the case are, of course, Mary Phagan, the dead girl; Leo Frank, the defendant at bar, and Jim Conley, the grimly accusing negro.
Four months ago no one of these people was known to many Georgians.
Mary Phagan, a sweet little working girl, had a circle of perhaps a hundred friends—not 1 per cent of the population of Atlanta ever had heard of her.
Frank Little Known.
Leo Frank, the superintendent of the National Pencil Factory, was hardly known by very many more people—he had a business and college acquaintance, and a limited circle of social intimates. Not more than 2 or 3 per cent of Atlanta’s population ever had heard of him.
Jim Conley, the negro, more than well known in police circles, along the way of the “Butt In” bar in Peters street, and a familiar figure enough along Darkest Decatur, numbered among his respectable acquaintances not more than 50 people—if nearly so many—perhaps.
Now—less than four months after the terrible deed enacted in the pencil factory on Saturday, April 26—there is not a hamlet, a crossroads store or a country or city home in all Georgia that has not heard of every party to the sordid story, and that has not discussed everyone of them, together and singular, from every point of view imaginable!
It is more than morbid curiosity upon the part of people that prompts this great and never-flagging interest in the Phagan case—it is more than the mere fascination of crime that links the heart and mind of the people to it.
In the case of Leo Frank there is that indescribable element we call “human interest,” that vague and elusive thing that tugs at the heart-strings and nags at the conscience—there is the knowledge upon the part of the public that a monstrous crime has been committed, and that responsibility for it must be fixed, no matter the cost and no matter the effort!
The public does not clamor for Leo Frank’s life so much, nor for Jim Conley’s—it demands that responsibility for Mary Phagan’s brutal murder be fixed, and it will not be satisfied until that responsibility IS fixed.
At the same time, I believe—and I have believed all along—that the public wants to see justice done and fair play indulged in.
If Frank is not guilty he has been punished already beyond reason or reparation. He should be turned loose, with every amend decency and mistaken zeal may summon to their embarrassed effort at righting a frightful wrong.
If, however, he is guilty, and that is shown, then the inconvenience and discomfort accorded him thus far will matter little, if anything.
It is a tremendously big game the lawyers are playing in the stuffy little courtroom in the old City Hall Building.
One one side is the majesty of the law of the land, that must be maintained at any and all cost—that majesty of the law that may be invoked in behalf of the humblest no less than the highest. On the other hand is the defendant—an abstract thing in the sight of the law.
On one side is the great State of Georgia, calling for a “tooth for a tooth and an eye for an eye”—on the other side are those guaranteed rights of citizens, embodied in Frank, that must not be challenged lightly or without complete and compelling reason.
It is a Big Game.
It is a big game—it involves that most precious of all gifts of God, a human life, and a human reputation, a home and the happiness thereof. It is a game, nevertheless, that involves on the contrary a sinister charge of utter unworthiness upon the part of the man who still protests his rights to these precious gifts, jealously given of a Divine Power, and as jealously guarded by His laws, no less than by the laws of human beings.
One can not get away from the conclusion, cited many times, that, after all is said and done, Frank’s character will determine the verdict in the case now on trial.
His character will be found to be his greatest asset and his most sure dependence, in this his hour of pressing peril—as his lack of it, if shown, must prove to be his final and everlasting damnation.
Frank, by injecting his character in issue, has challenged the worst upon the part of the State.
He has cited scores of witnesses to uphold it—he has made a brave and maybe an abundant, showing.
The State, however, says it will break down that character—that it will show Frank’s unspeakable depravity, even as charged glibly and smugly by the negro, Conley, as yet uncorroborated by any person the most abandoned would care to believe.
If the State can do this thing—
Can it be possible that Frank, through all these years, has been leading a double life?
Can it be true that he has, while professing to be an honorable and upright man, a faithful husband, a dutiful and worthy son, a deserving and decent friend among his neighbors and his kind, nevertheless been, really, a moral degenerate, an ignoble and deceitful creature—and can it be that these things, so long and so cleverly concealed, at last led him to murder?
The State’s Contention.
The State holds that his family circle, his intimate social acquaintances, and his business associates, would, as a matter of fact, be the last people in the world to know the truth of Frank’s double life—for, say they, Frank would employ every artifice and summon to his aid every possible device to keep those very people from discovering the truth concerning him.
This, so the State contends, is precisely what Frank did do—and in that way they justify his alleged intimacy with Conley and his quick calling upon Conley for help, when eventually he found himself with the blood of a human being on his guilty hands.
The State is asking a good deal when it asks the public to believe this of Frank, in the light of the evidence of his good character tendered last week, and it hardly is possible that the public WILL believe it, unless the State makes its charges crystal clear.
Men will ask themselves—and will ask themselves wisely—whose reputation is safe, if it may be brushed away and broken down by the uncorroborated word of such a creature as Conley?
But, Conley uncorroborated in one thing—while Conley corroborated is quite and altogether another!
The State is yet to be heard in rebuttal of Frank’s character witnesses—and so judgement must be suspended pending their revelations.
The only point is—and it has been an evident point so long that to reemphasize it seems trite—the State must make good on its sinister charge of perversion and degeneracy upon the part of Frank, or its case will be greatly weakened, perhaps beyond repair.
I have an idea that Frank’s statement on the stand may weigh heavily in the minds of the jury.
Frank the Star.
Indeed, it is not improbable that the very best jury speech and jury argument put forth in defense of Frank, with all due appreciation and respect of and for Mr. Rosser and Mr. Arnold, will be made by Leo Frank himself!
His statement, although not sworn to, will carry an appeal that hardly can be framed of other lips—either that, or it will fall flat and stale and of no consequence whatever.
The trial long ago resolved itself into a matter of Frank vs. Conley.
It is the defendant’s word against the negro’s.
Both have self interest in the verdict—the life of one or the other must pay the forfeit of Mary Phagan’s murder.
The forthcoming statement of Frank, and the rebuttal of the character witnesses, constitute the two events ahead that may, within themselves, make or mar this case, as one may come to view it eventually.
And it is this situation, no doubt, that holds up the interest to-day, as the fourth week begins—for, despite all that has gone before, the case is not yet nearly ended, and there still remains many things undetermined.
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