Sunday, 26th October 1913 Next Frank Trial May Be Held In Chatham County

Search for:

Reading Time: 11 minutes [1819 words]

Believing Their Client

Will

Secure Another

Chance,

Lawyers Declare

Savannah

Desirable Place.

WITH BITTER

SARCASM

RUBE ARNOLD

ARRAIGNS

PROSECUTION'S

TACTICS

Attributes Conviction to

Race

Persecution, Biased

Jury

And Corrupt

Witnesses.

Dorsey Next, Then

Hooper

Rosser Concludes.

So confident are they of success in their efforts to gain a new

trial, counsel for Leo M. Frank's defense already are looking

forward to savannah as the city in which to stage the anticipated

second arraignment of their client.

The defense was in high spirits yesterday afternoon over the

force and strength of Mr. Arnold's second-day argument before

Judge Roan, in the state library. Upon adjournment at 4 o'clock in

the afternoon Messrs. Arnold and Rosser left the capitol, frankly

expressing their expectation of securing a new trial.

If a new trial is granted on grounds of prejudice and mob

feeling, there will unquestionably be a change of venue. In this

case, Savannah is decided upon by the defense as being the most

logical place in which to hold a second trial. The decision upon a

change of venue will be reached by attorneys and the presiding

judge in conference.

Looking to Savannah.

It is said that an investigation is being promoted even this

early into Savannah as a logical place for change of venue, which

will probably be brought about in case of a new trial. Neither Mr.

Rosser nor Mr. Arnold would verify this rumor.

They said to a Constitution reporter, however, that Savannah

was a desirable place in which to hold a second trial, and that in

all probability, the venue would be changed to that city. Its

distance from Atlanta and the natural lack of interest the people

had likely taken in the Frank case would make it the logical point,

they intimated.

There would be no fever of excitement, no prejudice, no

fanaticism, as has been noted locally, they said.

In case a new trial and change of venue are granted, the

task of prosecution will be upon the shoulders of the solicitor

general of the circuit to which the venue has been shifted. In this

event, it will be merely a matter of courtesy on the part of the

solicitor of the new circuit to grant Solicitor Dorsey the privilege

to prosecute.

The defense of Frank, it is rumored, will try to balk this in

case they are successful, by pleading that Dorsey was unfair in

his tactics of prosecution Frank, and that it would be unjust for

him to participate in the new trial. This, however, has not been

verified.

Arnold Charges Race Persecution.

Perhaps the most dramatic utterance in Colonel Arnold's

speech Saturday was his declaration that the Frank trial was akin

in many respects to the crucifixion of Christ.

It is the most horrible persecution of a Jew since the death

of Christ, he said.

Through his argument frequent and wide reference was

made to racial prejudice which he alleged existed poignantly in

the trial of his client, and, to which he attributed the greatest

effect in Frank's conviction.

Everywhere, he spoke, you heard those who believed in

his guilt refer to him as that damned Jew.' NO one spoke of the

merits of the case. It was always, that damned Jew,' and nothing

else.

Because of repeated reference to certain evidence

submitted by the prosecution, Mr. Arnold was forced to

discontinue his speech when a number of women attaches of the

state library appeared in the room to engage in their duties. The

hearing was then continued until 9 o'clock Monday morning.

Assails Detectives.

Much of Arnold's speech was devoted to attacks upon

Solicitor Dorsey and the detective department, who, he said,

hounded Frank like a pack of wolves, driven on by prejudice and

fear that if they shifted to a new trial, public opinion would cause

them disaster.

If there ever was a case in which the seine of prosecution

was sent out to drag in the ooze and slime of degeneracy, it was

in the Frank trial. Look at Dalton, for instance. He even had a face

like a mud cat. You could tell from his very face and speech and

deportment that his habitat was the mud.

They put him on the stand to bolster up the story of the

diabolical Conley. Dalton, the filthy, assisting the unutterable

Conley. The only reason Dalton's story was believed was because

of the highly receptive attitude of the jury mind, which was willing

and ready to believe anything against the defendant, against

whom they and much of the public was prejudiced.

Dalton begins as a thief and winds up as a moral ferret"

and, sadly, is proud of the fact when he tells his miserable story.

Your honor unfortunately erred in letting in such testimony,

produced by such a person as Dalton. You must remember that

Frank was being tried on purely a lone issue, and that issue

alone.

Says State's Witnesses Rehearsed.

Then, there was Dewey Howell, the little 15-year-old girl

who had been sent to the home of the Good Shepherd in

Cincinnati. After much hullabaloo and mystery, she went on the

stand and testified that she had seen Frank talking to Mary

Phagan and that he had put his hand on Mary's shoulder.

We didn't cross-examine her. Neither did we cross-examine

any of the other character witnesses introduced by the state.

These witnesses

Continued on Page Three.

PAGE, COLUMN 2

were all hostile to Frank. They were coached, rehearsed, prepared

to tell their little tales, and, had we cross-examined them, there is

no telling on God's earth what they would have been ready to tell.

The Lord only knows what fabrications they would have put

before the court.

The prosecution had a regular school for training and

rehearsing its witnesses, and whoever was the most perfect"

remembered his or her story the best"was put at the head of the

class. Therefore, we would have made a very, very disastrous

mistake in cross-examining any of them.

The state, in obtaining its witnesses, gave a bid to the

discharged employee, the men or women who hated wealth and

was willing to defeat it in the spirit of the anarchist, and the

basely ignorant persons who were prejudiced against the Jew.

Defense Was Trapped.

We were trapped. We were between a conspiracy hatched

up by Dorsey and his colleagues, the detectives, and a jury

untrained in weighing the evidence and too frightened to do so

had they been properly trained. Sure there was a conspiracy. It

takes no power of divination to see that.

Why, during those old barbaric days of England, when a

man was hanged for a list of 180-crimes that ran everywhere

from stealing a handkerchief to committing murder, you would

have found just such men as Dorsey and the police and

detectives of Atlanta crying and yelping for the blood of the poor

man on trial.

This veneer of civilization is mighty thin. It is thin on all of

us. You don't have to scratch down deep before you find the

barbarian in any of us. We all have primeval instincts. We haven't

evolved so far that there isn't much of the heathen smoldering in

our nature and crying for outlet.

Capital Punishment Going.

Fifty years from today capital punishment will be abolished.

Time rights all things. It is only evolution that civilizes us"growth

"that's all. It's slow, but it's sure. Remember, we use to have

hairy backs and no language and tails that clung to limbs and

held us in bed on a limb.

Some people say we are getting worse. But it's not true. We

are not. We are really getting better. It is true that we go through

some frenzied periods of process now and then which gives these

calamity howlers a chance to say we are getting worse, but they

always end for good.

We will soon lose all the fangs of savagery, the chief one of

them being capital punishment.

The trial of Leo Frank, gentlemen, is a reversion back to

barbarism"one of the worst instances of reversion I have ever

seen. There was something psychological about the situation. It

reminded me of a wagon running downhill. The further it traveled

the greater momentum it gained.

Make Sport of Dr. Harris.

Now, I'm coming to something in the case that causes me

to laugh and feel sympathetic at the same. I am thinking of poor

old Doc Harris"Roy Harris"the man who can look at a corpse

and tell by the complexion of the nose the date of birth, religious

beliefs and entire history. Wasn't he a peach? He can't do you any

good when you're alive, but he can certainly hold some autopsy

on you when you pass beyond the pearly gates. That is,

considering you go there.

If I were sick and saw Harris coming up the front steps, I'd

say: Wife, put crepe on the door, order my shroud and send for

the cheapest undertaker in town. He's a lallapaloosa. No wonder

that peach.' Miss Daisy Hopkins, the fairest of the fair"according

to one Mr. Jack Dalton"could sit in the witness stand perfectly

still. Old Doc Harris had just been in it.

Harris lives just two doors above me. I had a case

pertaining to the death of old Uncle Josh Crawford some time ago,

and the first thing I knew Doc Harris had old Uncle Josh, who'd

been dead for years, up in his cellar, grinding him up in a sausage

mill. If I'd have known it at the time, I'd have moved from the

neighborhood.

Your honor, we are not asking for so much as a new trial as

we are asking for a trial, a real trial, a fair trial, which we didn't

get. We deserve a trial. Justice itself demands that we have one.

You cannot allow the stream of purity to be polluted from which

justice flows.

Some of these jurors have said that they were not

influenced by the crowds and the demonstrations. Justice,

however, says that you cannot take their opinions, that you must

take the effect of such incidents as you see them yourself. Your

honor has got to give a new trial simply on this one point if

nothing else.

Calls Jury Jaybirds.

The jurors would naturally say that they were not affected.

The jury, itself, I am afraid, did not feel as jurors should have felt.

Why, when Dorsey was feeding poison to the court indirectly

because he would not be allowed to do it directly, those twelve

jaybirds say in the jury box with gaping mouths, gulping down

with avidity everything that was said and done.

The trial of Frank was the unfairest, the most injurious, the

most diabolical on record. There never was a persecution of a Jew

go stinking since the crucifixion of Christ.

Most of Arnold's morning argument was devoted to bitter

arraignment for Solicitor Dorsey for the solicitor's alleged attitude

toward Frank and for this tactics, which Arnold termed nasty and

unfair.

At one time the speaker declared that a tramp would have

been surer of justice and a fairer trial than Frank. This, he said,

because of prejudice and feeling against Frank because he was a

Jew.

He accused Dorsey of having brought in every conceivable

crime tot ry the defendant on the lone charge of murder, and that

these tactics were employed merely to prejudice the jury. And,

he said, to tell the truth. I don't think it required much effort to

prejudice that particular jury.

Rosser to Conclude.

Mr. Arnold also dwelt at length upon the murder notes that

were found beside the body. He declared that no white man,

especially an intellectual man of Frank's type, could have

composed the notes. Also that it should be proof conclusive of

Conley's guilt when it was discovered that the notes were in his

handwriting and language.

Mr. Arnold will resume his argument Monday morning at 9

o'clock in the state library, where the entire hearing is being held.

He will be followed by Solicitor Dorsey and Frank Hooper will then

speak for the state. The concluding speech will be made by

Colonel Rosser.