Another in our series of new transcriptions of contemporary articles on the Leo Frank case.
Atlanta Georgian
August 6th, 1913
By O. B. KEELER.
The impression persists that courtroom crowds are made up in the main of two classes, as follows:
(1) People who take it for granted that any person being tried on any charge in any court is guilty, and then some.
(2) People who are constitutionally incapable of believing anybody is guilty of anything whatever.
That is one powerful impression gained at the Frank trial. It is an impression sticking out pointedly in the wake of the Thaw trial, and the Nan Patterson trial, and the Beatty trial, and the Hyde trial.
All three of the Hyde trials, in fact.
Never an Opinion Altered.
At the risk of being convicted of exaggeration in the first degree, the writer, who was rather intimately associated with the celebrated poison case, would estimate that 18,397 persons expressed in his hearing what they insisted were unalterable opinions as to the guilt or innocence of the accused physician before the jury in the first trail had been impaneled.
And of the 18,397 (estimated) not one single instance is recalled of one single opinion being altered.
The fact that the physician was convicted on his first trial made not the least difference to those who believed him innocent.
Court Ruling Mattered Not.
The fact that the Supreme Court reversed and remanded the case for further trial made not the least difference to those who voted guilty.
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