Another in our series of new transcriptions of contemporary articles on the Leo Frank case.
Atlanta Georgian
August 4th, 1913
By JAMS B. NEVIN.
When a prospective juryman is on his voir dire in a given criminal case, he is asked if his mind is perfectly impartial between the State and the accused.
If he answers yes, he is competent to try the case, so far as that is concerned. If he answers no, he is rejected.
How many people in Atlanta and Georgia, having heard part of the testimony in the Frank case, still feel themselves to be perfectly impartial between the State and the accused?
How many people, having heard part of the evidence, still have refrained from expressing an opinion as to the guilt or innocence of Frank?
Not many, I take it—and yet, that jury is supposed to be perfectly poised and as yet impartial between the State and the accused, notwithstanding the State’s evidence thus far delivered, and the presumption of innocence legally established in behalf of the defendant.
I venture the opinion that nothing developing in the Frank trial last week so profoundly weighed upon the minds of the people over Sunday as the question of the digestibility of boiled cabbage—nice, greasy, palatable, if often shunned, boiled cabbage!
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