Another in our series of new transcriptions of contemporary articles on the Leo Frank case.
Atlanta Georgian
July 29th, 1913
Outwardly Quiet and Singularly Lacking in Excitement, Frank Trial is Enactment of Grim Drama.
By JAMES B. NEVIN.
One of the most commonplace things in the world—crime—is riveting the attention of Atlanta and Georgia to-day.
Crime is almost as commonplace as death—and yet death, in a thousand ways, never is commonplace at all.
If I were a stranger in Atlanta and should walk into the courthouse where Leo Frank is being tried for the murder of Mary Phagan, doubtless I should be utterly astounded to discover what I had walked into.
That pale-faced, slight, boyish-looking party over there—the one sitting beside the massive frame of Luther Z. Rosser and the well-groomed person of Reuben Arnold—I should be shocked, I am sure, to learn that he stands charged with one of the blackest, most inhuman and most unspeakable crimes in all Georgia’s somewhat long and varied catalogue of crime.
Yet that is the truth—Leo Frank is answering to the charge of the Grand Jury, and he has pleaded not guilty.
Crime and wrongdoing began, of course, when Mother Eve, through no motive other than curiosity, and without malice aforethought, either expressed or implied, bit a small and toothsome morsel from the first apple.
Cain performed the first murder not so very long afterward.
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