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THE TRIAL OF LEO FRANK 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
REUBEN R. ARNOLD 
 
THE 
 
 TRIAL OF LEO FRANK 
 
 REUBEN R. ARNOLD’S 
 ADDRESS TO THE COURT IN 
 HIS BEHALF 
 
 INTRODUCTION BY ALVIN V. SELLERS 
 
 Baxley, Ga. 
 
 CLASSIC PUBLISHING CO. 
 
Copyright, 1915, by 
 
 ALVIN V. SELLERS 
 
 THE TROW PRESS. 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
Introduction 
 
 O N Saturday, April 26, 1913, Mary Phagan 
 left her Bellwood home—two miles away— 
 to go to the office of the National Pencil 
 Company in Atlanta, Ga., to collect the wages due 
 her for some work she had done as an employee of 
 the company; and then, perchance, to mingle with 
 friends in the holiday crowds of that throbbing city. 
 
 It was just before noon on this Confederate Memo¬ 
 rial Day that this girl of youth and beauty went away 
 from that suburban home to which she was, alas! to 
 return no more forever. 
 
 Her lifeless body was found early Sunday morn¬ 
 ing in the basement of the pencil factory in the very 
 center of that Southern metropolis. There were 
 marks of violence upon her person, and a cord was 
 tightly drawn around her neck. She had died of 
 strangulation. 
 
 By the body were found two notes purporting to 
 have been written by the girl herself as she lay—a 
 stricken prisoner—in that dark cellar of gloom and 
 desolation. 
 
 Human reason rebelled at the weird suggestion 
 
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 Duke U. Law Library 
 
Introduction 
 
 elusion was irresistible that the writer and the mur¬ 
 derer were one. 
 
 Leo M. Frank, the superintendent of the factory, 
 stated that this little girl came to his office on the 
 second floor of this factory building that early after¬ 
 noon for her wages, that he gave her the amount due 
 her, that she immediately left the office and that he 
 saw her no more. 
 
 Searches for the girl’s meager purse were vain and 
 unavailing and the mystery of the murder deepened 
 as the days wore away. 
 
 Specimens of various parties’ handwriting were 
 obtained and compared with the notes—with a re¬ 
 lentless resolve to find the one who had destroyed 
 that pure and radiant life in the bloom of its stainless 
 morning. 
 
 Jim Conley, a negro employee of the factory, when 
 asked for a specimen of his handwriting, proclaimed 
 his inability to write. Written evidence, however, 
 was found to the contrary and Conley, confronted 
 with this proof, eventually admitted writing the 
 notes, but said he wrote them for his employer Frank 
 on the day before the girl was killed. He asserted 
 that he was innocent of the murder and that he was 
 not even at the factory on the day it was committed. 
 
 Frank was indicted by the Grand Jury and his trial 
 began on July 28, 1913. Solicitor General Hugh M. 
 Dorsey, assisted by E. A. Stephens and F. A. Hooper, 
 
 6 
 
Introduction 
 
 appeared for the State. Luther Z. Rosser, Reuben R. 
 Arnold and Herbert Haas represented the defendant. 
 
 At the trial Conley testified that he was at the fac¬ 
 tory on this Saturday afternoon, that he saw Mary 
 Phagan enter and go up the stairway that led to the 
 second floor, that presently he heard a scream; and 
 that soon thereafter Frank told him he had approached 
 her, she had resisted, he had struck her and she had 
 fallen. He stated further that he and Frank carried 
 the body down into the cellar and that he later went 
 up into Frank’s office where he, at Frank’s request 
 and dictation, wrote the notes that were afterwards 
 found by the body of the dead girl. 
 
 Conley readily admitted that much of his evidence 
 conflicted with previous affidavits he had made, but 
 insisted that he was now telling the truth. 
 
 The defense contended that Conley’s story was a 
 fabrication; that Frank had no knowledge of the crime 
 and had no motive to murder; that Conley himself 
 killed the girl when she came down the stairs with her 
 purse in her hand, and that after the evidence began 
 to accumulate that he had written the notes he felt 
 compelled—in order to save himself—to charge their 
 origin to another and allege that he, not Conley, was 
 the perpetrator of the deed. 
 
 Many witnesses were sworn by each side and the 
 trial had entered its fifth week before it was con¬ 
 cluded. 
 
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 Duke U, Law Libl&tv 
 
Introduction 
 
 Frank was convicted and sentence of death pro¬ 
 nounced upon him. A motion for a new trial was 
 made by his counsel, and the hearing of this motion 
 took place later before the trial judge, Hon. L. S. 
 Roan. 
 
 The address which follows was delivered at that 
 hearing by Reuben R. Arnold, one of the most bril¬ 
 liant of Southern orators and one of the great lawyers 
 of this great Union of States. 
 
 I am sure that all who appreciate forensic eloquence 
 and like to read and study the masterpieces of the 
 bar, will welcome the publication of Mr. Arnold’s 
 presentation of his client’s defense in the South’s most 
 noted criminal case. 
 
 Alvin V. Sellers. 
 
 Baxley, Ga., 1915. 
 
 8 
 
THE TRIAL OF LEO FRANK 
 
 Speech of Mr. Arnold 
 
 M AY It Please Your Honor: 
 
 It takes thirteen jurors to murder a man 
 in cold blood. So that I feel I am not only justified 
 but required, by the scope of Your Honor’s authority 
 and duty and the tremendous responsibility that rests 
 upon you, to argue to the court the facts of this un¬ 
 usual case, and to give the reasons why the verdict of 
 guilty should be set aside and a new trial granted. 
 
 In many respects, this is an unusual case. Unfor¬ 
 tunately, murder is a frequent crime. The example 
 of Cain is too often followed in this vale of tears, and 
 this very community has had many killings that were 
 horrible to contemplate. 
 
 That fact does not mitigate this offense, of course, 
 in any degree—and this was an atrocious deed—but 
 I do say, that while we have seen murder here as cruel 
 as this, we have had no such trial as this. 
 
 The feeling here grows out of something over and 
 beyond the mere facts of the crime, and if you will 
 look down a little under the surface you will find the 
 cause to be the one that has run down the ages and 
 shed innocent blood for twenty centuries. 
 
 9 
 
The Trial of Leo Frank 
 
 A trial is going on to-day in Russia that parallels 
 this case. A Jew is there being tried for a ritual 
 murder of a thirteen-year-old boy. The naked evi¬ 
 dence against him makes a terrible case; but the civil¬ 
 ized world stands aghast at it, looks upon it with 
 horror, and knows that the attempt to connect that 
 man with the murder is but the hideous appearance 
 again of that racial prejudice that has reflected no 
 credit for two thousand years upon the race to which 
 Your Honor and I belong. 
 
 I feel, Your Honor, that the time is coming when 
 the whole human race will be one great brotherhood. 
 Some day all of this prejudice will cease to exist. 
 That day is already here with enlightened people; 
 and it is here with some of the benighted part of the 
 population when they allow their better feelings to 
 prevail. 
 
 We have the best people on earth in this Southern 
 country. We are really the only American part of 
 this Republic; and I know that when our people 
 finally think and feel on a subject like this they will 
 come to a decision divested of all prejudice and find 
 only truth. 
 
 As long, though, as there is an element pushing itself 
 into a courthouse to disgrace the community by 
 applause and demonstration, a great many people are 
 going to take that as manifestation of the public senti¬ 
 ment. They forget the thousands of good people who 
 are up in the offices, in the shops, in the stores. They 
 take it for granted that the public sentiment is shown 
 
 io 
 
Mr. Arnold's Address to the Court 
 
 by the acts of those persons who have nothing to do 
 except to crowd into a courthouse where a poor fel¬ 
 low is on trial for his life, and who cheer, and whose 
 faces light up with smiles when he is found guilty, 
 and who rejoice and shake hands with each other and 
 throw up their caps in glee over the fact that a man 
 is sentenced to die. That was the spirit that clung 
 to the Frank trial. 
 
 I was reading in this morning’s newspaper an article 
 from the pen of a writer who was undertaking to 
 account for congregations of men—mobs, we call 
 them—perpetrating deeds of atrocity when ordinarily 
 and naturally a man as an individual is kind. He 
 said the spirit of the mob was not the spirit of any 
 one mind, but the fusion of many and their effect 
 upon each other, just as you mix many chemicals and 
 produce a result different and apart from the quality 
 of any one chemical that entered into the mixture. 
 
 And how deadly is the spirit of the mob! When 
 the great War President Lincoln was assassinated— 
 cruelly killed by a fanatic who represented naught 
 but his own disordered brain—so wild were the people 
 in civilized Washington, the seat of government, of 
 enlightenment, of culture, that they committed a 
 crime which compared with the assassination itself. 
 They put to death six or seven people charged with 
 being members of a conspiracy to assassinate the 
 President. Among those put to death was a poor 
 woman, Mrs. Surratt, admitted now by everybody, 
 North and South, to have been guiltless of the crime. 
 
 n 
 
The Trial of Leo Frank 
 
 Sentiment, prejudice, excitement, had taken the place 
 of justice. 
 
 And so it was when Frank was tried! An intense 
 prejudice on the part of ignorant people sometimes 
 overlaps that class and spreads into other circles by 
 the mere fact of its existence. 
 
 Your Honor, there should have been but a single 
 question in the Frank case, and there should have 
 been no feeling in arriving at the truth. I never 
 could understand how anybody could be prejudiced 
 about ascertaining a fact. Why should there be any 
 feeling in simply determining the question, Did A kill 
 B? Yet we were so overwhelmed with it that all 
 energies were bended in an effort to overcome the 
 influence of the crowd that piled around us, blocked 
 our way from and to the court, applauded in and out 
 of court, and scowled menacingly at Frank. The 
 looks of murder that appeared in human eyes reached 
 court, lawyers, witnesses, jurors. 
 
 Argument was lost upon that jury. Proving facts 
 was but casting pearls before swine. There they sat, 
 huddled like twelve sheep in the shambles. Talk to 
 me about those jurors not having been influenced by 
 such surroundings! They may not know they were. 
 Nor did the rabbit that ran through the briar patch 
 know which briar scratched and which did not. 
 
 I venture to say if this case had been tried where it 
 had never been heard of before, without the feeling, 
 the prejudice and excitement which clustered about 
 it here, with Your Honor as the judge, and before 
 
 12 
 
Mr. Arnold’s Address to the Court 
 
 a fair and impartial jury with minds unstained by 
 whispered lies and white as unsoiled sheets of paper, 
 there would not have been a moment’s hesitation 
 about the verdict. 
 
 Why should there be? Was ever a case heard of 
 before where the only witness on whose testimony the 
 conviction rested was a party to the crime, both before 
 it was committed, by watching, and after it was com¬ 
 mitted, by helping to conceal the body; was a crimi¬ 
 nal of the lowest type and as absolutely devoid of con¬ 
 science as a man-eating tiger; one who lied in writing 
 four different times, and who never confessed any¬ 
 thing about the crime until the dead evidence was 
 discovered on him that he had written the notes that 
 accompanied the body; who admitted he lied many 
 times in his affidavits; and where, after he made his 
 last affidavit, the story that he brought into court was 
 so unlike it that you could hardly recognize any points 
 of similarity; and where he changed his story seven 
 different times when he went over the subject with the 
 Solicitor General? 
 
 As my lamented friend Charlie Hill used to say, 
 “Did ever one hobble to a verdict on such a rotten 
 pair of crutches?” Does Your Honor believe that a 
 worm that crawls in the dust would have been con¬ 
 victed on such testimony under ordinary and usual 
 circumstances? 
 
 Admitting he lied scores of times in matters of sub¬ 
 stance and in immaterial matters, a criminal from 
 birth practically, without character, without stand- 
 
 13 
 
The Trial of Leo Frank 
 
 ing, with every motive to lie, with his own neck to 
 save, Conley was so plastered over with contradic¬ 
 tions that it’s monstrous to argue his testimony. 
 
 And yet people say he stayed on the stand three 
 days without breaking down! He did stay there 
 physically three days, and all the wretch would say 
 when you got him outside of the story he was fixed 
 and prepared on was “I don’t know,” or “I lied about 
 that,” or “I don’t remember.” You can teach a 
 parrot, “Polly wants a cracker,” and he will say it six 
 months, and he won’t break down on it either unless 
 you take a club and knock him down. 
 
 An idea seems to be abroad that a lawyer has to 
 hypnotize a witness and get him to talk in a trance 
 before he is discredited. If a witness’s testimony is 
 unreasonable or unbelievable, that witness is broken 
 down in the legal sense. If Rosser’s bombardment 
 didn’t finish Conley, then there was no way it could 
 be done except by cleaving him with a battle-axe. 
 
 There are many parts of the record here showing 
 what marvelous assistance Conley had in the prepa¬ 
 ration of his story before he was ever brought into 
 court to testify. When Conley told something that 
 didn’t fit in with the undeniable facts of the crime, the 
 undisputed logic of the situation, his attention was 
 promptly called to it by these officers who had him 
 in charge and were nursing him, and the story was 
 changed; when he made a statement that did not cor¬ 
 respond with the views held by the police the tale was 
 reconstructed. 
 
 i4 
 
Mr. Arnold's Address to the Court 
 
 Left alone, the negro spread out over the whole 
 territory of asininity; but they took his story like 
 you would take a rough piece of timber and fashion 
 it over with the power of machinery. I have counted 
 in this record twenty-nine lies that Detective Scott 
 testified Jim Conley told to him and Detective Black 
 that they got him to correct. Twenty-nine lies that 
 they prevailed upon him to change! Not little, 
 technical lies, but big, fat, substantial lies. This 
 is not a mere conclusion of mine. The record is 
 the proof. 
 
 Your Honor remembers from the evidence how the 
 negro’s story grew. When the search was on to find 
 the writer of the notes there was no doubt in any¬ 
 body’s mind, of course, that the writer of the notes 
 was the murderer of the girl. That fact would admit 
 of no dispute. Conley was denying that he could 
 write. The discovery was made, however, that he 
 could write and the evidence gathered that he was 
 the author of the notes. Conley saw no way to save 
 his miserable neck except to say he had written them 
 for some one else. 
 
 Frank had been held under suspicion. One bank 
 official of the city had even said that a comparison of 
 the notes with the handwriting of Frank indicated 
 they were written by him. Many stories of unknown 
 origin were circulated everywhere. The cry rang out, 
 
 “The d- Jew did it.” Slanders against Frank 
 
 were poured in the people’s ears. He was locked up 
 in jail and had no chance to meet them. The seeds 
 
 I S 
 
The Trial of Leo Frank 
 
 of prejudice were sown broadcast and Frank was con¬ 
 demned in the public mind. 
 
 Conley saw this and he saw his own life trembling 
 in the balances. He was compelled to say that some 
 one else was the real author of the notes or else give 
 up his life; and he named Frank as the man. He 
 said he had done the writing at Frank’s dictation on 
 Friday —the day before the murder. 
 
 Well, of course, that was a ridiculous, unreasonable 
 lie. Mr. Dorsey does not contend that the killin g 
 was premeditated, that Frank knew on Friday he 
 was going to kill the girl on Saturday. But Conley, 
 in his savage ignorance, saw not the unreasonableness 
 of the story and insisted that he had done the writing 
 on Friday. 
 
 Now, what happened? Let me read from Scott’s 
 testimony. Scott says: 
 
 We talked very strongly to Conley. We saw him on 
 May 27th in Chief Lanford’s office. We talked to him five 
 or six hours. We tried to impress him with the fact that 
 Frank would not have written those notes on Friday; that 
 that was not a reasonable story. That showed premedita¬ 
 tion, and that would not do. We pointed out to him why 
 the first statement would not fit. We told him we wanted 
 another statement. He declined to make it. He said he 
 had told the truth. On May 28th Chief Lanford and I 
 grilled him for five or six hours again, endeavoring to make 
 clear several points which were far-fetched in his state¬ 
 ment. We pointed out to him that his statement would 
 not do and would not fit. He then made us another long 
 statement. 
 
 16 
 
Mr. Arnold's Address to the Court 
 
 On May 29th we had another talk with him; talked with 
 him almost all day. Yes, we pointed out things in his story 
 that were improbable, and told him he must do better 
 than that. Anything in his story that looked to be out 
 of place we told him wouldn’t do. 
 
 Great God! It sickens me. I shudder to think of 
 the deeds perpetrated in this case—the methods used 
 to bring this man to his destruction. 
 
 Take the Minola McKnight episode. Mr. Dorsey 
 says: 
 
 I honor the way they went after Minola McKnight. 
 
 Now, let us see what his standard of honor is. 
 Here was a poor, humble, negro woman, an employee 
 of Frank’s household: the husband who had sworn to 
 protect her had turned against her and she was help¬ 
 less and alone. She is taken down to Mr. Dorsey’s 
 office, and there she makes a full statement showing 
 that she knows nothing incriminating against her 
 employer. That is sworn to and the Solicitor has it 
 : .n writing. 
 
 Now, Dorsey honors the fact that later the detec- 
 ives get her and bring her back to his office, where she 
 s confronted with her husband, who tries to get her 
 0 agree that the stories he is telling are true. Dorsey 
 lonors the fact that when she refused to agree they, 
 n flagrant violation of law, and in a way that never 
 rould have been perpetrated on a man who could 
 ssert his rights, took her to the station house with- 
 ut warrant or charge of crime, and there compelled 
 
 17 
 
The Trial of Leo Frank 
 
 her, behind iron bars, in tears, and before uniformed 
 and armed officers, brass buttons and pistols, to agree 
 that the villainous lies her husband told were true. 
 That’s what he honors: and it seems the jury and 
 the crowd honored it, too. Was this a mere technical 
 right that was violated? Not so; and yet, without 
 technical rules, Might would always triumph over 
 Right. Our race has experimented in government 
 for centuries, not as vassals, but as sovereigns; and 
 certain laws that have stood the test of time have 
 been adopted to guide us between governmental 
 tyranny on the one hand and anarchy on the other. 
 Technicalities they may be, but if they are destroyed 
 one may as well camp out in the woods and let the 
 strongest man prevail. They are the refined wisdom 
 of the ages. 
 
 Hear Dorsey again: 
 
 I don’t know whether they want me to apologize for 
 that or not, but if you think that finding the red-handed 
 murderer of a little girl like this is a ladies’ tea party, and 
 that the detectives should have the manners of a dancing 
 master, and apologize and palaver, you don’t know any¬ 
 thing about the business. 
 
 Oh, no, we didn’t expect that; but we did expect 
 them not to violate the criminal laws of the country; 
 we did expect them, when a witness had had a full 
 and fair chance to make a statement, to let her alone; 
 not to violate the laws of God and man, and put the 
 thumbscrews and torture to her and lock her in a 
 
 18 
 
Mr. Arnold's Address to the Court 
 
 prison cell to make her change her statement. We 
 did expect that; and you wouldn’t have had to balk 
 at tea parties either: you could have gone further 
 than that. 
 
 May it please Your Honor, those are some of the 
 methods that have been used against the man over 
 yonder in that jail who is condemned to death on as 
 base a fabrication as was ever constructed in darkest 
 Russia. 
 
 Your Honor, I speak plainly because I am so con¬ 
 stituted by Nature that I cannot call a spade any¬ 
 thing except a spade. I am looking through all 
 the surrounding paint and varnish to see the hideous 
 thing inside of this prosecution, and it sickens me to 
 think that man in jail is in peril from such methods. 
 
 There is no evidence against him in this case except 
 such as comes from Jim Conley, that prince of liars. 
 You could no more impeach Conley by showing he 
 had lied than you could saturate a duck by pouring 
 water down its back. He is impervious to a charge of 
 lying. He will admit it any day in the week. 
 
 But Mr. Dorsey, realizing what a burden Conley is 
 for him to carry, says Conley is not the only evidence 
 in the case. For instance, he says the expression, “It 
 is too short a time since you left for anything startling 
 to have developed down here,” in a letter written by 
 Frank on the day of the tragedy, shows guilt. Ex¬ 
 pressions of this character are extremely common in 
 letters; but Mr. Dorsey says it proves that something 
 startling had happened and that the writer had killed 
 
 i9 
 
The Trial of Leo Frank 
 
 Mary Phagan. That deduction of Mr. Dorsey’s is 
 just as sound as any other he has drawn. 
 
 In this letter, which was written on Memorial Day 
 to Frank’s uncle, himself a Confederate Soldier, the 
 writer also refers to the “thin gray line of veterans 
 braving the chilly weather to honor their fallen com¬ 
 rades.” I would be glad to hear even an Arab of the 
 desert speak kindly of these men, but Mr. Dorsey sneers 
 at this tribute Frank paid the old soldiers in gray. 
 
 Everything that Frank did has had an unfair con¬ 
 struction placed upon it, and is looked upon as a cir¬ 
 cumstance of guilt and sufficient reason for his con¬ 
 demnation. 
 
 It reminds me of the fable of the wolf and the lamb. 
 The wolf was going to kill the lamb for muddying the 
 water. “But,” said the lamb, “you are drinking 
 above me in the run of the stream.” “Well,” said 
 the wolf, “I don’t care; your grandfather muddied it 
 once and I am going to get you anyhow.” 
 
 Mr. Dorsey also refers to the telegram sent by 
 Frank on Monday to Adolph Montag, telling him of 
 the fin ding of the body in the cellar of the pencil 
 factory. Dorsey says: 
 
 In factory? In factory? No, “in cellar.” Cellar where? 
 “Cellar of pencil factory.” 
 
 There was no sense in all this talk of Mr. Dorsey’s 
 but there was plenty of sound and that was satis¬ 
 factory to the jury. 
 
 Yes, she had been found in the “cellar of the pencil 
 
 20 
 
Mr. Arnold's Address to the Court 
 
 factory.” The police had come for Frank and carried 
 him down there. The story would be in all the 
 papers. Many rumors were being started. Frank, 
 the superintendent of the factory, wired Montag, one 
 of the owners of the factory, telling him of the tragedy 
 and asking him to assure his uncle he was all right in 
 case he asked. 
 
 Is there anything incriminating here? No fair 
 mind can find it. But all Dorsey had to do with 
 that gang of wolves out there in the audience was to 
 turn and look at them and they would beam on him 
 with bloody satisfaction. They were trying to take 
 the life of a fellow creature in holiday fashion and 
 Frank was the butt end of that Roman holiday. 
 
 Again, they say that when Helen Ferguson received 
 her pay on Friday she also asked for Mary Phagan’s 
 pay envelope and that Frank refused to give it to her. 
 Even if this had happened it would have been no 
 evidence of guilt and would have proved nothing. 
 It was not usual to give one person’s pay envelope to 
 another except on proper request. 
 
 But it is overwhelmingly a mistake. In the first 
 place the evidence shows that on Friday Frank did 
 not pay off the employees but that Schiff did. 
 Furthermore, Magnolia Kennedy testified that she 
 was with Helen Ferguson when they both received their 
 pay, that they received their envelopes from Schiff, 
 not from Frank, that they left the factory together 
 and that the witness Ferguson did not ask for any¬ 
 body’s pay except her own. 
 
 21 
 
The Trial of Leo Frank 
 
 Further, Mr. Dorsey says that when these notes 
 that were found by the body of the dead girl were 
 shown to Frank, he should have then and there said: 
 “This is the writing of James Conley.” 
 
 Frank, locked up in his prison cell, did not know 
 at that time that Conley was denying he could write, 
 and had no reason to think that specimens of Conley’s 
 handwriting had not already been compared with the 
 notes. None of these officers had told Frank that 
 Conley claimed he could not write. 
 
 Moreover, Frank did not know the handwriting of 
 Conley and there is no proof that he did. It is true 
 that he . had seen Conley’s writing but there was no 
 individuality about it sufficient to impress itself upon 
 one’s memory. Even between these two notes them¬ 
 selves there is little similarity. You could not testify 
 they were written by the same man. 
 
 While there are classes of people—professors of 
 penmanship, bank tellers, etc.,—who seem to store 
 away an impression of handwriting in the mind and 
 recognize it when they see it again as if it were a 
 human face, yet to most people there is only a gener¬ 
 ality about handwriting and seldom indeed it is that 
 one retains a mental picture of the writing of the 
 average negro. Why, even Mr. Berry, the bank teller 
 who studied those notes and who studied the hand¬ 
 writing of Newt Lee, named Lee as their author. 
 
 Holloway, Darley, Schiff, Wade Campbell and 
 others had also seen Conley’s writing, but it never 
 occurred to them when they looked at the notes that 
 
 22 
 
Mr. Arnold's Address to the Court 
 
 they were written by Conley. Surely, if this is a cir¬ 
 cumstance of guilt it is as strong against these men as 
 it is against Frank. Mr. Dorsey, though, does not 
 claim that they had any part in the killing of this 
 child. Moreover, Frank did not know that Conley 
 had been to the factory on this holiday. No one 
 seemed to have seen him. Mrs. White had said she 
 saw some negro about the stairway; and, according 
 to Detective Scott’s evidence, Frank gave him this 
 information on Monday following the tragedy. What 
 more could Frank have done? And would he have 
 done that if he had been Conley’s accomplice? 
 
 But they say Frank was so excited and nervous over 
 the murder on Sunday morning that he “trembled 
 like an aspen.” If he was nervous it was the sight of 
 the dead girl and the discovery of such a tragedy 
 enacted in the factory under his charge that made him 
 nervous. He was not nervous on Saturday afternoon 
 when he prepared the financial sheet that the fore¬ 
 most experts of the South say would require several 
 hours’ work. It has been overwhelmingly established 
 that he did that work on Saturday afternoon, and yet 
 there is not a trace of nervousness in all that mass of 
 figures, in all that intricate, complicated work. A con¬ 
 sciousness of guilt would have made him nervous 
 then. But there was no nervousness then, for he 
 knew not at that time that the corpse of the little girl 
 was down there in the basement beneath him. 
 
 And yet on such argument as that, and amid such 
 surroundings as those, an innocent man is condemned 
 
 23 
 
The Trial of Leo Frank 
 
 to die! There is not a proven circumstance in this 
 case that cannot be shown to the satisfaction of any 
 reasonable man that it is not a circumstance of 
 guilt on the part of this defendant. 
 
 Why, may it please Your Honor, the physical facts 
 of this case show that this crime could not have been 
 committed by Leo M. Frank. The parents of the 
 little Phagan girl swore she left Bellwood—out there 
 two miles from the city—at 11150 a . m . That little 
 State’s witness Epps says he got on the car with her. 
 Neither the conductor nor the motorman saw him, 
 but he says he got on with her and got off at Forsyth 
 and Marietta Streets at 12:07. Detective Starnes 
 says it took him from three and a half to four minutes 
 to walk from that point to the pencil factory. 
 
 According to the State’s own witness, therefore, the 
 little girl could not possibly have reached the pencil 
 factory sooner than ten and one half minutes after 
 twelve. Epps was the first witness the State put up, 
 and the State soon realized he had crushed their case, 
 and began to wriggle to get away from their own 
 testimony. 
 
 The motorman says she rode all the way around 
 Broad Street to Hunter Street and got off there at 
 12:10. According to this evidence she would not 
 have reached the pencil factory before 12:12. Now, 
 the schedule of the street car is shown in corroboration 
 of the evidence as to the time the car arrived in the 
 city; and what does the State do? They put up a few 
 street car men who said they sometimes came in ahead 
 
 24 
 
Mr. Arnold's Address to the Court 
 
 of time, though they said it was unusual to do so, 
 was against the rules and they got demerited for it. 
 Moreover, not one of the witnesses said that on this 
 day, April 26th, the car came in ahead of time; and 
 the men that were on the car, the motorman, the 
 conductor and George Epps, all say it got in from 
 12:07 to 12:12. 
 
 Does Your Honor, in all of your experience before, 
 ever remember three positive witnesses who were 
 there when a thing occurred, one of them a witness of 
 the State—all put into the discard because at some 
 other time the thing had happened differently from 
 the way it happened then? Their whole case jails 
 absolutely to the ground if she got of the car as late as 
 12:07. 
 
 [The Court:] Why, Mr. Arnold? 
 
 [Mr. Arnold:] I’ll show you why. Monteen Stover, 
 the State’s witness, gets there at 12:05. She looks to 
 see the time as she had been trying to get there by 
 twelve. She waited in the hall five minutes and 
 left at 12:10. Their star witness, Jim Conley, says 
 Mary Phagan came in before Monteen Stover came 
 in. Your Honor, can they play fast and loose with 
 us? Can they put up a witness and prove a certain 
 time by the minute and then cast that witness out of 
 the case just because it conflicts with some other part 
 of their case? Miss Hall, an unimpeached witness, 
 left at 12:02. So that the little Phagan girl, accord¬ 
 ing to the State’s theory, could have gotten there only 
 between 12:02 and 12:05. And yet, according to the 
 
 25 
 
The Trial of Leo Frank 
 
 evidence of the motorman and conductor, the car on 
 which she rode to town that day had not come in at 
 that time. 
 
 These are cold, unanswerable facts. Either J im 
 Conley lied or he told the truth. They are com¬ 
 mitted to him. Jim Conley says Mary Phagan had 
 gone up to Frank’s office, had gone back to the metal 
 room and he had heard her scream before Monteen 
 Stover came in, and the Stover girl came in at 12:05. 
 
 Oh, my! They don’t give Frank much time to do 
 this deed. Do you believe all that struggle would 
 have ended with just one scream? Monteen Stover 
 stayed there quietly five minutes. Don’t you sup¬ 
 pose she would have heard some kind of noise? Isn’t 
 it remarkable that Frank didn’t go out while she was 
 there if he had finished the job? And if it was still 
 going on while she was there, isn’t it remarkable that 
 she heard nothing? 
 
 Monstrous fabrication! Putting up clocks, putting 
 up street car schedules, almost changing the sun in its 
 course, to convict this man! 
 
 Now, suppose she got there at 12:10 or 12:12. 
 Quinn says he saw Frank at 12:20. Mrs. White says 
 she saw him in his office at 12:3o. He is seen by men 
 upstairs just before he goes to dinner at 12:50. Then 
 comes in the time that this negro claims the body 
 was moved. 
 
 Let us see how this claim is borne out. Bear in 
 mind, the moving of the body could not have begun 
 much before one o’clock, because White and Denham 
 
 26 
 
Mr. Arnold's Address to the Court 
 
 say Frank was upstairs talking to them, between 
 12150 and 1 :oo, and the negro himself claims the mov¬ 
 ing of the body began at four minutes to one and was 
 -completed by half past one. 
 
 Now, we are getting down to the very vitals of the 
 case, and the moving of the body is as much a part 
 of the case as the very murder. If Conley has lied 
 about that, he has lied about it all. 
 
 Conley says Frank left not sooner than 1:30. 
 Harlee Branch says, that from the time the negro 
 took, in his pantomime demonstration—where he went 
 over with the officers the various things that he says 
 were done that day—it could not have been finished 
 before 1:30. Dr. Owens says the same thing. There 
 is no conflict about it. And the negro could not have 
 been mistaken as to its being as late as four minutes 
 to one, because Denham and White are seeing Frank 
 and talking to him upstairs as late as 12:50, and it 
 was evident that under the State’s theory it must 
 have been after that that the moving of the body 
 started. The Solicitor General contended that he was 
 getting Mrs. White out of the building for that very 
 purpose. There can’t be any mistake about the 
 time; there have been too many experiments made. 
 
 Branch said that Conley in his pantomime demon¬ 
 stration went through very rapidly, and he estimates 
 that the things Conley said he and Frank did would 
 have taken fifty minutes; that would have put it 
 twenty minutes to two. Dr. Owens said they went 
 through the demonstration in thirty-four minutes. 
 
 27 
 
The Trial of Leo Frank 
 
 Bear in mind, after they moved the body, they 
 came up into Frank’s office and wrote the notes, and 
 Owens didn’t include the time that Conley says he 
 was concealed in the wardrobe. Scott swore it took 
 him three to five minutes to write one note; he saw 
 him write it. And remember that in writing this 
 note he was just copying one he had already seen. To 
 make it up and write it as he says he and Frank were 
 doing, would certainly have taken another three to 
 five minutes at the very least calculation. He wrote 
 four notes—twelve minutes—and stayed in the 
 wardrobe eight minutes. That makes twenty minutes, 
 outside of moving the body from that metal room 
 down into the basement, running up the elevator, 
 and so forth. Tell me he could have done it even in 
 thirty-five minutes? It was a physical impossibility. 
 
 Now, there is the case. It is either true or false. 
 Did Frank stay there until half past one at the very 
 lowest calculation? If we prove him out of there by 
 credible evidence, five, ten, or fifteen min utes before 
 that time, the State’s case falls to the ground. I 
 don’t believe he could have gotten home even by two 
 o'clock if he had done all the negro said he did. 
 
 Mr. Dorsey criticizes us for saying that Frank left 
 the factory at one o’clock and refers to a statement 
 Frank made at the station house, on the second day 
 after the crime, indicating that he left at about i :io. 
 He did estimate the time to be “about 1:10.” Well, 
 suppose you take it “about 1:10.” From the pencil 
 factory to the corner where this Kern witness—a 
 
 28 
 
Mr. Arnold's Address to the Court 
 
 young girl, unimpeached—says she saw him at 1:10 
 or i:11, is only about one and a half or two minutes’ 
 walk. The evidence shows that if he had left there 
 at 1:07 or 1:08 he could have got to where this girl 
 saw him at 1 :io. Is there any dispute about that? 
 
 Frank says in his statement that his best judgment 
 is he left at about one o’clock. He doesn’t claim to 
 have timed it to the minute; he had no reason to do 
 so; but after carefully thinking of everything that 
 happened before and afterwards, his opinion is he left 
 at about one o’clock. 
 
 Now, 1 :o8 is “about one o’clock.” Suppose he left 
 at 1:08. He could have reached the comer where 
 this witness says she saw him at 1 :io. It takes that 
 street car approximately ten minutes to go from that 
 corner to where Frank lives. Mrs. Levi says she 
 saw Frank get off the car at his home at 1:20. Mrs. 
 Levi is no kin to Frank. She was looking for her son 
 on that car and saw Frank get off instead. And 
 Albert McKnight, the State’s prize witness, and his 
 wife both testify they saw him at his home at 1 130. 
 
 How can these things be answered with common 
 sense? Your Honor, this is not a case of believing the 
 defendant to be innocent; we are demonstrating his 
 innocence. 
 
 We have shown that the little Phagan girl didn’t 
 get to the factory at a time when he could commit 
 the crime, according to Conley. We have shown that 
 Frank left there before the moving of the body had 
 ever been completed, as Conley claims. That is why 
 
 29 
 
The Trial of Leo Frank 
 
 we had that alibi chart made, but it fell on deaf 
 ears. 
 
 Argument and demonstration are worthless against 
 a vicious mob. Throw truth to the winds! All that 
 is needed is a pack of wolves surrounding the jury, 
 thirsting for blood. How strange it is that people 
 sometimes reach such savage depths! 
 
 Once down here at the county jail I saw a negro 
 hanged. Peter Daniels was his name. Such a dread¬ 
 ful spectacle I hope never to see again. The poor 
 creature asked time to pray, and he prayed long and 
 loud. He then asked to have an old colored woman 
 who was present come up and sing, “Swing Low, 
 Sweet Chariot,” and they raised their tremulous voices 
 in that song. They sang one verse, two verses, three 
 verses; the poor wretch trying to prolong it as much 
 as possible, and then he pretended to fall down in a 
 faint and they had to literally hold him up to hang- 
 him. When the negro was praying there was a mur¬ 
 mur from some of those present and I heard them say, 
 “He is only praying for time; let’s go ask the sheriff 
 to hurry up with the hanging.” That was their spirit. 
 The lowest passion of the human breast is this thirst 
 for blood. 
 
 The only way, perhaps, these elements of character 
 can be overcome, is to let Time re-make the man. 
 Just as in every seven years the whole human system 
 is said to change—blood, bone, fleshy tissue and all— 
 so it is that a man may change mentally and morally 
 with the passing of the years. 
 
 3 ° 
 
Mr. Arnold's Address to the Court 
 
 The trial and conviction of Leo M. Frank on the 
 testimony of Jim Conley, shows what results may 
 sometimes be produced when you have a ground¬ 
 work of prejudice, ignorance, passion and excitement 
 to build on as you wish. 
 
 On one side is a man of education, of prominence, of 
 responsibility, of character, whose ancestors are peace¬ 
 ful people; a man who could have no motive to mur¬ 
 der except the far-fetched claim of the Solicitor. On 
 the other side is a negro with a long criminal record, 
 besotted with liquor, proven to have been at the very 
 place where he could with lightning-like rapidity grab 
 the girl, and in the struggle with her render her un¬ 
 conscious, rob her and throw her into the cellar; and 
 afterwards go down there and write the notes that 
 were found by the body, that are a part and parcel 
 of the murder, and prove themselves to have been 
 conceived in none but an ignorant, savage mind. 
 
 The elevator shaft was there, open and yawning, 
 right in that dark area where the stairway ends. 
 That is the place where the evidence shows Conley 
 was. Conley was hard up for money. The little girl 
 had a purse which has never been found. It has not 
 been found because Conley stole it; and the little girl 
 was found down in the cellar because Conley threw 
 her there. 
 
 The circumstances of guilt in this case point not to 
 Frank but to Conley. There is no evidence that 
 Frank had anything to do with this murder except 
 from the negro himself. 
 
 3 1 
 
The Trial of Leo Frank 
 
 In other words, you get dead evidence on a man, 
 physical evidence showing he was at the scene of the 
 murder and that he hid the body; he is a debased 
 character, has told a dozen lies about it, and has con¬ 
 fessed a part of the crime. Yet, in order to excuse 
 and clear himself, he brings a decent, respectable man 
 into it, and he —and he alone —places upon that man 
 the vile charge of perversion:—a good life to count for 
 nothing and the circumstances of the case to count for 
 nothing. Conley, on the one hand, is not even in¬ 
 dicted for the crime; and Frank, on the other, is sen¬ 
 tenced to be hanged. It is enough to shock the con¬ 
 science of humanity! 
 
 But Mr. Dorsey says, Conley is sustained by some 
 facts and circumstances in the case. Let us see now 
 what Dorsey says it is that sustains Jim Conley. 
 
 Mr. Dorsey says: 
 
 Our proof of general bad character, the existence of 
 such character as can reasonably be supposed to cause 
 one to commit an act like we charge, sustains Jim Conley. 
 Our proof of general bad character as to lasciviousness, 
 not even denied by a single witness, sustains Jim Conley. 
 Your failure to cross-examine and develop the source of 
 information of these girls put upon the stand by the State— 
 these ‘‘ hair-brained fanatics, ’ ’ as Mr. Arnold calls them with¬ 
 out rhyme or reason—sustains Jim Conley. Your failure 
 to cross-examine our character witnesses with reference to 
 this man’s character for lasciviousness, sustains Jim Conley. 
 
 Now, listen to that! A boy on the street who had 
 heard a group of men say, “Why, I believe Frank is 
 
 32 
 
Mr. Arnold's Address to the Court 
 
 a pervert; I believe Frank killed the girl; I believe 
 Frank was lascivious,” could come in and swear to 
 the same bad character that these girls swore to, and 
 that would sustain Jim Conley according to Mr. 
 Dorsey. That would sustain him in his story about 
 finding the body and in his grotesque tale about the 
 notes. 
 
 These girls didn’t have to know anything against 
 Frank. All they had to do was to swear what they 
 had heard. They could have been loaded with five 
 thousand slanders. That was little compared with 
 what was done with Minola McKnight and Jim Con¬ 
 ley. They found Conley a rough mass of wood and 
 shaped him into an article symmetrical and polished. 
 
 In the name of fairness, in the name of high-toned 
 procedure, in the name of the gentle men of this good 
 country, and the old fathers of the State, Ben Hill, 
 Bob Toombs, Alex Stephens—in the name of men that 
 would have scorned to tread upon a worm, what would 
 you say of a proceeding of this sort in Georgia? 
 
 These witnesses knew nothing against this man ex¬ 
 cept wild, vague rumors, and yet every question we 
 would have asked on that line would have been used 
 before that gaping mob against us. 
 
 Does our failure to cross-examine them sustain Jim 
 Conley in his monstrous tale about the murder? Why, 
 if you can sustain an accomplice that way, all you 
 have to do is to get out a little gossip about a man, 
 and get a few people to hear that gossip, and let them 
 get confused in their minds about the time when they 
 
 33 
 
The Trial of Leo Frank 
 
 heard it—whether before or after the commission of 
 the crime—and put them on the stand and let them 
 say the man’s reputation is bad. In other words, 
 you might charge a man with a crime at the North 
 Pole, and witnesses who swore his character was bad 
 at the North Pole would sustain a man who swore he 
 committed a crime at the North Pole. That’s just 
 his argument exactly. Why, anything sustains ac¬ 
 cording to that. Mr. Dorsey might just as well argue 
 that Frank had hands, that he could have tied a knot 
 in a rope and could have choked a girl to death; that 
 sustains Jim Conley. Frank has legs, he has hands, 
 he could have pulled the elevator rope and gone down 
 to the basement. That sustains Jim Conley if Dor¬ 
 sey’s reasoning is good. 
 
 The defense put up numbers of witnesses—upright, 
 ho.norable people—who had associated with Frank in 
 his daily life, people who knew him well and had 
 elected him president of a grand charitable organiza¬ 
 tion here, and these people testified that his character 
 was good. 
 
 But let’s go on with what Dorsey says sustains 
 Conley. He says: 
 
 His relations with Miss Rebecca Carson—he is shown 
 to have gone into the ladies’ dressing room even in broad 
 daylight and during work hours, by witnesses whose 
 names I cannot recall right now—sustains Jim Conley! 
 
 Where did these witnesses come from? They came 
 from the same hands that handed Jim Conley to the 
 
 34 
 
Mr. Arnold's Address to the Court 
 
 court. They came from hands that were bold enough 
 to take Minola McKnight and endeavor to warp her 
 testimony. Class hatred was played on here—the 
 discharged employee class. They played on the 
 enmity the poor feel against the wealthy—they gave 
 a bid to discontent. 
 
 Those little girls who had been discharged—doubt¬ 
 less discharged by this Miss Carson, a forelady, and 
 glad to say anything against her—testify that in 
 broad daylight, during work hours, Frank went into 
 a room with her and shut the door. The proof shows 
 there was no lock on the door. 
 
 Suppose he did go in there and shut the door. He 
 may have wanted to talk with her about the work. 
 He may have wanted to go over the question of 
 whether the girls were flirting from that room—a 
 thousand and one things he may have wanted to talk 
 with her about. 
 
 It is horrible that in work hours, in broad daylight, 
 a man in charge of a factory couldn’t take the fore¬ 
 lady of a department into a room without any lock 
 to it, and shut the door, without such a vicious con¬ 
 struction being placed upon the act. 
 
 Now, Dorsey says that sustains Jim Conley. 
 
 Again, he says: 
 
 Your own witness, Miss Jackson, who says that this 
 libertine and rake came when those girls were in there 
 reclining and lounging after they had finished their piece¬ 
 work, and tells of the sardonic grin that lit his counte¬ 
 nance, sustains Jim Conley. And Miss Jackson’s asser- 
 
 35 
 
The Trial of Leo Frank 
 
 tion that she heard of three or four other instances, and 
 that complaint was made to the foreladies in charge, sus¬ 
 tains Jim Conley. 
 
 Now, as I understand this Miss Jackson, she says 
 Frank put his head in the door of the lounging room; 
 and she said also (I believe she is the one who said it) 
 that whenever those girls were lounging and loafing 
 in there and Frank came in, they all proceeded to 
 their work, too. A man who employs scores of 
 women has to be around them occasionally in justice 
 to himself to see that they are doing their duty, even 
 though they complain of his presence. The sardonic 
 grin is Mr. Dorsey’s conclusion: none of these girls 
 testified to it. It is perfectly apparent that Frank, on 
 these occasions, was attempting no familiarity with 
 these girls but was only trying to see that they did 
 their work, and were not idling their time away. 
 Surely a woman isn’t so absolutely sacred that you 
 can’t ask her to perform her contract as she has 
 agreed to do; and if she isn’t doing it, ask her why, 
 and find out why. Ought this to be held against the 
 defendant? And can it be fairly said to sustain Con¬ 
 ley’s statement that Frank is guilty of murder? 
 
 Says Mr. Dorsey: 
 
 Miss Kitchens, the lady from the fourth floor, whom, 
 in spite of the repeated assertions made by Mr. Arnold, 
 you didn’t produce; and her account of this man’s con¬ 
 duct when he came in there on these girls whom he should 
 have protected and when he should have been the last 
 man to go in that room, sustains Jim Conley. 
 
 36 
 
Mr. Arnold’s Address to the Court 
 
 What did he ever do? Opened the door of this 
 room, after work hours, as he had a right to do. 
 There was no bath or toilet in there. It was a room 
 where before work hours these girls simply changed 
 clothes and if they were there at any other time, they 
 were presinned to be only lounging, and some of them 
 had been flirting from the window into the street. 
 
 Have we come to the point when inferences that are 
 unfair and things that are wrong can lead us to take 
 a man’s life? Shall the fact of the crime be allowed 
 to rob us of our reason? “Wasn’t this a dreadful 
 crime?” is a question often asked. Indeed, it was 
 a dreadful crime. A man said to me the other day, 
 “Ought he not suffer who did that deed?” I said 
 “Yes, he ought, but if you, my friend, were charged 
 with it, wouldn’t you want it proved you were guilty 
 before the dreadful features of the crime were even 
 considered?” 
 
 Some people seem unable to distinguish between 
 these separate questions. The horror of the crime 
 isn’t the question; the choking of that innocent child 
 to death isn’t the question. The question is: Who 
 did it? And has it been proved as the law requires? 
 
 Hear Dorsey again: 
 
 Darley and Mattie Smith,—as to what they did even 
 on the morning of Saturday, April 26th,—even going into 
 the minutest details, sustains Jim Conley. 
 
 He says Darley and Mattie Smith, going down the 
 steps together at half past nine, sustains Jim Conley. 
 
 37 
 
The Trial of Leo Frank 
 
 He might as well have said Judge Roan was sitting 
 on the bench hearing motions that Saturday, and that 
 sustains Jim Conley; or the Southern train gets in 
 here at 4:45 from New York, and that sustains Jim 
 Conley. 
 
 Dorsey continues: 
 
 McCrary, the old negro that you praised so highly, the 
 man that keeps his till filled by money paid by the 
 National Pencil Company, as to where he put his stack 
 of hay and the time of day he drew his pay, sustains 
 Jim Conley. 
 
 McCrary never saw Jim Conley there that day at 
 all. He denied having any conversation with him as 
 Jijn Conley says he did. McCrary tells about getting 
 to the factory at a certain time that morning—half 
 past eight—and Mr. Dorsey, in his roundabout exami¬ 
 nation of him, undertook to prove that he got there 
 a little later. Now, he figures out that sustains Jim 
 Conley. 
 
 Dorsey says again: 
 
 Monteen Stover—as to the easy walking shoes she wore 
 when she went up into this man Frank’s room, at the 
 very minute he was back there in the metal room with 
 this poor, little, unfortunate girl, sustains Jim Conley. 
 
 I reckon that would sustain Jim! They had found 
 out she had easy walking shoes and Conley’s lie was 
 just made to fit the shoes. Either that, or else the 
 negro with lust and cupidity in his bosom was watch- 
 
 33 
 
Mr. Arnold's Address to the Court 
 
 ing those little girls so closely that he noticed even her 
 shoes and stockings. 
 
 Not only does Monteen Stover not sustain Conley, 
 but she proves the absurdity of his story that he was 
 “watching” for Frank, because he could have kept 
 her out by saying Frank was not there; yet he let her 
 go in there, knowing, according to his own story, that 
 Fra nk had a girl in there and had taken her back to 
 the metal room, and that the girl had screamed. 
 
 How dreadful, how unjust is this argument—to cite 
 these circumstances as evidence of Frank’s guilt. 
 That “watching” story is preposterous. What good 
 could Conley have done by “watching”? Conley 
 would have had no right at any of the “watching” 
 episodes that he says took place before Jan. i, 
 1913, to lock the front door because at that time that 
 was used by the Clark Woodenware Company and 
 the people of the pencil factory jointly. What white 
 man could this negro have kept out anyhow? And 
 who is it that would not have had his suspicions 
 aroused had Conley attempted to stop him, or to 
 give a signal to Frank that somebody was coming? 
 If Frank was engaged in these practices his best 
 and safest plan would have been to bolt the door of 
 the stairway that led up to the second floor, and 
 thereby kept everybody out. Furthermore, there is 
 no evidence that Frank had any engagement on this 
 day that would have made “watching” necessary. 
 There was nothing to “watch” for. 
 
 But to bolster up the story of the notes, some rea- 
 
 39 
 
The Trial of Leo Frank 
 
 son had to be given why Conley and Frank were thus 
 coming in contact in a transaction that would ordi¬ 
 narily admit of no confidants; and the “watching” 
 story was thus bom. The lie was clumsy, but 
 necessary. 
 
 And what a wonderful watchman was Conley! 
 This timid little girl, Monteen Stover, came in and 
 tripped up the stairs like an antelope, and he let her 
 in at the very time he ought not to have let anybody 
 in. The proof of the pudding is in the eating. He 
 says he was not asleep when she came in. If there 
 ever was a time when his boss needed protection, it 
 was when he tipped back to that metal room with the 
 little girl and when the little girl had screamed a wild 
 scream. Why, even to Conley’s dull, besotted intel¬ 
 lect, it would have said: “Mr. Frank and that girl are 
 having trouble back there; I must watch carefully for 
 him now.” And right at that time he let Mon teen 
 Stover in there—this faithful watchman!—and Mr. 
 Dorsey says that sustains Jim Conley:—Monteen 
 Stover! 
 
 Mr. Dorsey continues: 
 
 Monteen Stover, when she tells you that she found 
 nobody in that office, sustains Jim Conley. 
 
 Yes, and she clears Frank, too; because if Epps 
 tells the truth, if the schedule of the street car tells 
 the truth, if the men in charge of the car tell the truth, 
 Mary Phagan had not reached the office at that time 
 and had not even reached town at that time. 
 
 40 
 
Mr. Arnold's Address to the Court 
 
 Mr. Dorsey further says: 
 
 Lemmie Quinn—your own dear Lemmie—as to the time 
 he went up and went down into the streets with the evidence 
 of Mrs. Freeman and Corinthia Hall, sustains Jim Conley. 
 
 He didn’t show how that sustained Jim Conley. 
 Lemmie said he got to the office at 12:20 and was at 
 the Busy Bee Restaurant at about 12:30. Does that 
 sustain Jim Conley? Mrs. Freeman, formerly Miss 
 Emma Clark, and Corinthia Hall, both say they saw 
 Lemmie Quinn at the Busy Bee Restaurant and talked 
 with him. Quinn had already been at Frank’s office at 
 12:2o and only Frank was there. Quinn went down to 
 the cafe about 12:30 and met Mrs. Freeman and Corin¬ 
 thia Hall. The two women left Quinn at the cafe and 
 went up into Frank’s office to use the phone, finding 
 Frank there alone. This evidence corroborates Quinn. 
 There is complete harmony in this testimony. Frank 
 also in his statement shows that Quinn came in and left, 
 and afterwards the two women came in and used the 
 phone. How can that sustain Jim Conley? Mr. Dorsey 
 just yelled that it sustained him. He is yelling that 
 everything sustains him. The air sustains him; the 
 courthouse sustains him; the sun when it rose this 
 morning sustains him; when it sets to-night it will 
 sustain him; these reporters sitting over there sustain 
 him; everything in and out of court sustains him. 
 
 Mr. Dorsey further says: 
 
 Frank’s statement that he would consult his attorneys 
 about Quinn’s statement that he had visited him in his 
 office, sustains Jim Conley. 
 
 4i 
 
The Trial of Leo Frank 
 
 You remember what that was? Quinn had talked 
 with Frank and told him that he recollected seeing 
 him that day, April 26th, at about 12:20. That was 
 the substance of Frank’s reply as I recollect it: “Well, 
 I’ll tell my lawyers about what you say and they will 
 pass on whether it is of any value.” Poor Frank 
 didn’t know. He knew he was innocent; but he did 
 not know the exact value of the information that 
 Quinn gave him that he had seen him in his office at 
 12:20, and in his innocence he said, “Well, I’ll tell it 
 to my lawyers and see what use they can make of it” 
 —and that is used against him. 
 
 Why, if he had beon a guilty man and Quinn had 
 gone to him with a lie about seeing him at 12:20, he 
 would have jumped on it like a duck on a June bug. 
 He would have seen in a minute the use he could put 
 it to, and he never would in a fair, conservative way 
 have said, “I’ll tell it to my lawyers and see what use 
 they can make of it.” 
 
 Frank was at sea about the wretched charge. He 
 didn’t know the depths of the malevolence that was 
 clustering around him at the time. 
 
 Mr. Dorsey goes on: 
 
 Dalton, sustained as to his life for the last ten years 
 here in this community and in DeKalb, when he stated 
 he had seen Jim watching before on Saturdays and holi¬ 
 days, sustains Jim Conley. 
 
 Dalton! In this case they seem to have seined the 
 lowest strata of society for the ugliest, dirtiest reptiles 
 
 42 
 
Mr. Arnold's Address to the Court 
 
 that swim and move about in the ooze of the bottom. 
 It is hard to describe Dalton—that mangy, leprous 
 creature which this prosecution, representing law and 
 order, presented to the public. The profert of him 
 is all that will do him justice. He had a face like a 
 mud cat. You could tell his habitat was in the 
 filth. 
 
 Dalton began as a thief and ended as an adulterer 
 with Daisy Hopkins in the pencil factory. He was 
 proud of it on the stand and he said that Daisy was 
 a peach. We brought in Daisy just to show what 
 sort of peach she was. Daisy said he lied, of course; 
 that she never had been with him in the pencil fac¬ 
 tory, and that there was not a word of truth in what 
 he said from its beginning to its end. Of course, she 
 is a poor, fallen creature. I don’t suppose any other 
 kind would care to come within a thousand miles of 
 Dalton. 
 
 The other women Dalton named as having known, 
 in that factory also said he lied. His fellow citizens 
 from Gwinnett and Walton counties said he was un¬ 
 worthy of belief. But they produced two or three 
 kind-hearted fellows who said, “Oh, well; he’s re¬ 
 formed; he’s j’ined the church”; and “while the lamp 
 holds out to burn, the vilest sinner may return.” I 
 never did have much confidence in the reformation 
 of such fellows. You can cure a drunkard sometimes 
 —that’s weakness in the flesh—but with a fellow like 
 Dalton it’s different. The evidence indicates that if 
 he ever did reform he fell back into the outer darkness 
 
 43 
 
The Trial of Leo Frank 
 
 right away. His conduct in this case shows he is a 
 backslider now. 
 
 But even if he did slip in that factory with the Hop¬ 
 kins woman, he said he never saw Frank do anything 
 wrong and never saw any indication of it. 
 
 Dorsey says: 
 
 Daisy Hopkins’ awful reputation and the statement of 
 Jim that he had seen her go into that factory with Dalton 
 and down that scuttle hole to the place where that cot is 
 shown to have been, sustains Jim Conley. 
 
 Daisy Hopkins says it is all a wretched lie, and it 
 just gets back to that delightful gentleman Dalton 
 there sustaining him. But Dorsey says Daisy Hop¬ 
 kins’ reputation sustains him. Well, there are many 
 lewd women in Atlanta and the reputation of each 
 one sustains Jim Conley, according to that reasoning. 
 A thousand in Chattanooga, I suppose, sustain Jim 
 Conley; a million such women, I guess, in New York, 
 sustain Jim:—just as much sense in one as in the 
 other! 
 
 Mr. Dorsey further argues: 
 
 The blood on the second floor, testified to by numerous 
 witnesses, sustains Jim Conley. The appearance of the 
 blood, the physical condition of the floor when the blood 
 was found Monday morning, sustains Jim Conley. 
 
 An inventive gentleman by the name of Barrett 
 claimed to have found blood spots on the second floor. 
 They were chipped up and sent to a chemist for analy¬ 
 sis. Only in one of the spots did he find a single 
 
 44 
 
Mr. Arnold's Address to the Court 
 
 trace of blood, and he swore that one-eightieth part of 
 one drop could have made it all, and that it may have 
 been there for years. One witness testified that once 
 a man was hurt and bled at the very spot. No man 
 knows in which of various ways, or when, that blood 
 got there. 
 
 Oh, what a colossal fake was here attempted to be 
 foisted on court and jury! Its purpose was to show 
 that the girl was killed on the second floor, and killed 
 by Frank. As a matter of fact, the negro could just 
 as well have killed her in the metal room as Frank 
 could:—better. If the little girl had happened to go 
 back there to the toilet and Conley had come to the 
 head of the stairs and seen her go back, he could have 
 followed, and in the quiet of that room perpetrated 
 this wrong upon her. It would have been out of view 
 from Frank’s office and could have been done without 
 Frank’s knowledge. 
 
 No, the blood spot fake does not sustain Conley. 
 Where Conley says he first found the body, there was 
 no blood. The presumption is this is where the 
 struggle took place. The absence of blood here im¬ 
 peaches him more than its presence elsewhere could 
 sustain him. If there was to be any blood, here was 
 the place. 
 
 Remember, too, that blood spot was found before 
 Jim ever said he dropped the body there. Jim just 
 fitted in with his manufactured tale. Why, any liar 
 on earth can be sustained by some well-known physi¬ 
 cal fact that he runs across in the course of his lying. 
 
 45 
 
The Trial of Leo Frank 
 
 If an accomplice in a murder says: “On my way home 
 I saw Bill Jones kill Tom Smith; I passed through the 
 capitol and the capitol had marble floors,” and an¬ 
 other witness says: “Yes, the capitol has marble 
 floors,” Mr. Dorsey would say: “Oh, that sustains 
 him; he passed through the capitol and the floors were 
 marble and he said it.” 
 
 Further, Mr. Dorsey argues: 
 
 The testimony of Holloway which he gave in the affi¬ 
 davit before he appreciated the importance, coupled with 
 the statement of Boots Rogers that that elevator box was 
 unlocked, sustains Jim Conley. 
 
 He doesn’t say what part of Holloway’s evidence 
 he is talking about; but Your Honor will remember 
 they got Holloway down there and took an affidavit 
 from him; but Holloway on the stand said: “When I 
 made that affidavit I didn’t remember about sawing 
 some lumber for the man up on the fourth floor; I 
 now remember that I got some lumber and went in 
 and got the key to that motor box and unlocked it 
 and never locked it again. I had to do that to saw 
 the lumber, and I didn’t think of that at the time; 
 I was simply testifying to the custom.” And Den¬ 
 ham said he did saw the lumber for him. This shows 
 that the elevator was not locked and disputes Conley’s 
 statement that Frank unlocked it. 
 
 Now, Dorsey says that sustains Jim Conley; how, 
 I don’t figure out. 
 
 He goes on: 
 
 46 
 
Mr. Arnold's Address to the Court 
 
 Ivey Jones, the man who says he met him in close 
 proximity to the pencil factory on the day this murder 
 was committed, the time he says he left that place, sus¬ 
 tains Jim Conley. 
 
 Does he, Your Honor? Ivey Jones met Jim Conley 
 at a quarter to two. Does not that sustain as strongly 
 our theory that the negro killed the girl? Our theory 
 is also supported by Conley’s confession that he 
 handled the body, by that evidence of his handwrit¬ 
 ing, and by his confession that he wrote the incrimi¬ 
 nating notes found by the body. He was there that 
 morning and Ivey Jones saw him at a quarter to two, 
 just two or three hundred yards from the pencil 
 factory. He had just left the factory and, of course, 
 he disposed of the body after Mrs. White left there. 
 
 Conley killed this little girl when she went down the 
 steps. He got in a struggle with her probably over 
 that mesh bag, about 12:15 or 12:20—somewhere 
 along there—just before Lemmie Quinn came in. She 
 probably injured herself in the struggle; perhaps was 
 rendered unconscious. It was but the work of a 
 moment to throw her down into that cellar. He 
 didn’t go right then into the cellar and move the body. 
 That perhaps would take some time and perhaps he 
 thought she was living, and he had a more diabolical 
 purpose in view. He waits until Frank leaves, and 
 Mrs. White leaves at one o’clock, and he goes down 
 into that cellar and finishes the work. He attempts 
 to violate her person, and he had doubtless finished 
 by a quarter to two. 
 
 47 
 
The Trial of Leo Frank 
 
 And there was no purpose on Conley’s part to burn 
 the body because Conley had no control of the heat¬ 
 ing apparatus. Conley’s method of throwing people 
 off the track was by the notes. Conley never thought 
 anybody saw him there that morning; he was in that 
 dark place half hidden by those boxes. The evidence 
 shows that the officers found signs indicating that 
 something had been dragged on the ground from the 
 bottom of the elevator shaft to where the body lay. 
 This physical fact tends to support the theory that 
 Conley threw the girl down the shaft and later dragged 
 the body away; and to contradict Conley’s testimony 
 that he and Frank took the body down in the elevator 
 and that from the elevator he carried the body on his 
 shoulder to the place where it was found at the saw 
 dust pile. 
 
 Great God! When you think how much closer this 
 negro was to the tragedy—how he confessed his part 
 in it—how his character coincides with it,—how the 
 community or the jury can let just his making this infa¬ 
 mous charge carry conviction against a lifetime of good 
 conduct, is almost beyond the imagination of mankind. 
 
 Mr. Dorsey proceeds: 
 
 Albert McKnight, who testified as to the length of 
 time that this man Frank remained at home, and the 
 fact that he hurried back to the factory, sustains Jim 
 Conley. 
 
 Does he? Does Albert McKnight sustain him? 
 Albert McKnight says, “At 1:30 I saw Mr. Frank 
 
 48 
 
Mr. Arnold's Address to the Court 
 
 in his dining room.” That contradicts Conley abso¬ 
 lutely because Conley says he and Frank were at the 
 factory at 1:30; yet my friend, without telling the 
 jury how, yells at them, “ That sustains Jim Conley.” 
 
 No, Your Honor; liar though McKnight was in 
 many respects, he does not sustain Conley. 
 
 What next does Dorsey say sustains him? He 
 says: 
 
 The repudiated affidavit—made to the police in the 
 presence of Craven and Pickett—of Minola McKnight 
 —the affidavit which George Gordon, the lawyer, sat 
 there and allowed her to make, although he knew he 
 could get a habeas corpus and take her within thirty 
 minutes out of the custody of the police, sustains Jim 
 Conley. 
 
 On the contrary, I say Minola McKnight’s affidavit 
 sustains our contention that the whole case is a fabri¬ 
 cation. It shows like the flash of lightning in the 
 black sky a dark transaction that otherwise would 
 have remained always dark, and makes one wonder 
 how many similar things were done in this case. 
 
 How does he figure out that Minola’s affidavit sus¬ 
 tains Jim Conley? Can you see anything in that ex¬ 
 cept the arrest of a negro woman, illegally, without a 
 warrant, after she had voluntarily made a truthful 
 statement; then the bringing of her to the Solicitor’s 
 office; the attempt to get her to agree with her hus¬ 
 band who was in the hands of two men here; then 
 taking her to the station house and putting her behind 
 bars and forcing her to make the affidavit? Is there 
 
 49 
 
The Trial of Leo Frank 
 
 anything in Minola’s affidavit except duress and vio¬ 
 lation of law by officers? How does that corroborate 
 Jim Conley? 
 
 Mr. Dorsey says: 
 
 The use of that cord, found in abundance, to choke this 
 girl to death, sustains Jim Conley. 
 
 Couldn’t Jim Conley use the cord as well as Frank? 
 It had that loop in it always. It was tied around a 
 bundle of pencils. That was its natural and normal 
 condition. That cord was found from the cellar to 
 the garret. Jim Conley knew where they hung on 
 the second floor. What is here to sustain Conley’s 
 story that Frank, and not he, killed the girl? 
 
 He goes on: 
 
 The existence of the notes alone sustains Jim Conley 
 because no negro in the history of the race, after having 
 perpetrated rape or robbery, ever wrote a note to cover 
 up the crime. 
 
 How does he know that? Jim Conley could write. 
 He admits he wrote these notes. When he admits he 
 wrote the notes, that, pritna facie, ought to disprove 
 everything he states and ought to put a strong bur¬ 
 den on him of explaining how he came to write them 
 at somebody else’s dictation, and to prove it by some¬ 
 thing beyond his mere ipse dixit. 
 
 Conley says that Frank’s intention was to bum 
 the body to conceal the crime, and that he was to 
 come back later and help him do it; and yet that 
 Frank, with this thought uppermost in his mind, 
 
 50 
 
Mr. Arnold’s Address to the Court 
 
 conceived the additional idea of these notes to be 
 placed beside the body and dictated them to him and 
 he wrote them. Why were both things done? 
 
 Conley sees he must fix up an explanation for this 
 and he says the notes were written so that if he never 
 came back to bum the body the notes would explain 
 the killing. Yet Frank had no reason to believe the 
 negro would not come back. Was ever an explana¬ 
 tion more preposterous? Don’t you know that if 
 Frank intended to bum the body he never would 
 have written the notes? Don’t you know the notes 
 were the last explanation of how the killing occurred, 
 and were intended by the ignorant man who wrote 
 them to stay by the body until it was found? 
 
 Now, burning a body is a thing that would occur 
 to any intelligent mind as a way to destroy evidence. 
 But to conjure up these notes as a way to hide the 
 crime is as far from the educated mind as something 
 connected with witchcraft would be. These notes are 
 negro notes from beginning to end—in thought, in 
 composition, in everything. The savage mind acts in 
 strange, devious, peculiar ways; the educated mind 
 does not. 
 
 The one contention in this case that appeals the 
 least to any man with common sense and fairness, is 
 that the verbiage of these notes is Frank’s, and not 
 Conley’s; that Frank, a Northern man, highly edu¬ 
 cated, whose knowledge of the language is wide, but 
 with very little knowledge of negroes, almost a 
 stranger here, without any aid from anybody, could 
 
 5i 
 
The Trial of Leo Frank 
 
 get up notes like these. Never could it have hap¬ 
 pened in a thousand years. 
 
 Ignorance conjures up far-fetched ideas and con¬ 
 clusions unconceived of by the intelligent brain. 
 These notes professed to be a statement from the 
 girl herself explaining how she was killed and who 
 did it. They are idiotic and ridiculous, except to an 
 ignorant, darkened mind. 
 
 Take the expression “night witch,” in one of the 
 notes. I don’t believe there is a white man on God’s 
 earth who would have known what that expression 
 meant; but a negro did interpret it. 
 
 Here we have a note so obscure, so couched in the 
 dark vernacular of the negro—he says it was all dic¬ 
 tated by Frank, too—that our Southern policemen 
 who corral these negroes daily, who deal with them 
 and who play with them like you would with cards 
 on a table, can’t understand it. Every one is groping 
 in the darkness until Newt Lee sees it. Newt Lee, 
 a negro whose mental operations are the same as Jim 
 Conley’s, says, “That means me, boss; I’m the night 
 watchman.” 
 
 A white man goes by his intelligence, by his logic, 
 by his discernment; a negro goes largely by his in¬ 
 stinct, and, occasionally, it is strikingly correct. 
 
 During the great Civil War, when the tracks were 
 torn up and the mails couldn’t go by railway, when 
 the telegraph wires were cut and there was no quick 
 way of communication, the negroes often heard of 
 great battles in Virginia and Tennessee long before 
 
 52 
 

 
37 & 39 SOUTH FORSYTH ST. 
 
 Atlanta, Ga.„ 
 
 190_ 
 
 PUT THIS ORDER HUMBER OH YOUR BILL. 
 
 An exact reproduction of one of the two notes that were found by the body 
 Mary Phagan, with the elimination of two words which it was thought proper 
 omit from this publication. 
 
The Second One of the “ Murder Notes ” 
 
 A facsimile illustration of the second one of the two notes that were found near 
 - body of the dead girl. 
 

 
Mr. Arnold's Address to the Court 
 
 the white people' ever heard of them. The news 
 travelled from hill to hill, from dale to dale, in some 
 way through that under-strata of the population. 
 
 Your Honor, it is by Jim Conley’s evidence alone 
 that Frank is charged with having had anything to do 
 with the writing of these notes. How does the exist¬ 
 ence of the notes sustain Conley? 
 
 Further on Mr. Dorsey states: 
 
 The note paper on which it was written—paper found in 
 abundance on the office floor and near the office of this 
 man Frank—sustains Jim Conley. 
 
 How? Conley knew just as well where all the 
 paper in the building was as Frank did. That kind 
 of paper was found down in the cellar. It was used 
 by all the foreladies of the floors. Conley had a pen¬ 
 cil. He could have gotten the paper anywhere in the 
 factory. The evidence clearly showed this. Now, 
 how does the paper sustain Conley? 
 
 Dorsey argues: 
 
 The diction of the notes "that negro did this,” and old 
 Jim throughout his statement says “I done,” sustains 
 Jim Conley. 
 
 Oh, what a trap was here laid for us! 
 
 Conley was loaded on that, but while he did go out 
 of his way a number of times to say "I done,” and 
 was very particular about it, yet he had had just 
 enough schooling to use the word "did,” and he used 
 it many times as he gave his evidence; and, of course, 
 when writing, one is more accurate than when speaking. 
 
 53 
 
The Trial of Leo Frank 
 
 Now, this record shows that Conley in his evidence 
 used the word “did” ninety-two times. When Mr. 
 Dorsey told the jury that Conley all throughout his 
 statement said “I done,” Mr. Rosser interrupted him 
 and showed by the record and by the official stenogra¬ 
 pher that Conley on the witness stand said “I did” 
 time and time again. 
 
 Dorsey continues: 
 
 Maybe he did in certain instances say that he “did” 
 so and so; but you said in your argument that if there is 
 anything in the world a negro will do it is to pick up the 
 language of the man for whom he works; and while I’ll 
 assert that there are some instances you can pick out in 
 which he used that word, there are other instances you 
 might pick showing that he said “I done,” and they 
 know it. 
 
 Well, how does that sustain Jim Conley? 
 
 Mr. Dorsey goes on: 
 
 All right; leave the language; take the context. 
 These notes say, as I suggested the other day, that she 
 was assaulted as she went to the toilet. And the only 
 toilet known to Mary, and the only one she would ever 
 have used is the toilet on the office floor, where Conley 
 says he found the body; and her body was found right on 
 the route that Frank would pursue from his office to that 
 toilet, right on back also to the metal room. 
 
 Mr. Dorsey proceeds on the idea that the note was 
 telling the exact truth as to how Mary Phagan was 
 killed. Why, the object of the note was to throw 
 everybody off the trail, of course. The note naturally 
 
 54 
 
Mr. Arnold's Address to the Court 
 
 would have put her as being killed in the wrong place, 
 if it had done anything. It was putting it on the 
 wrong negro and putting the girl’s death in the wrong 
 place. 
 
 Don’t you suppose if Frank was dictating the notes 
 and trying to throw everybody off the track, he 
 would not have had the notes to show the killing to be 
 on the floor where he actually killed the girl? Did 
 you ever think of that? Dorsey says Frank has good 
 sense and his theory is that Frank is writing the notes 
 to throw everybody off the track. His theory is that 
 the notes mean that the girl was killed right on the 
 office floor, right where it would have incriminated 
 Frank; and his further conflicting theory is that Frank 
 was such a bungler that he would have written the 
 notes to show exactly where he killed her and to show 
 it to be on the floor where his office was. Surely, he 
 cannot praise Frank for his good sense in one breath, 
 and by his construction of the notes, in the next 
 breath, prove him to be a rank fool. 
 
 This note also says: “He pushed me down that 
 hole.” There is no hole she could have been pushed 
 down in the metal room, and this alone shows that 
 Mr. Dorsey’s construction of the note was wrong 
 when he said the meaning was that she went back to 
 the toilet in the metal room. She was evidently pushed 
 down a hole in the same place, or near the same 
 place, where the toilet was; and, as just stated, there 
 was no such hole in the metal room; but there were two 
 holes on the ground floor at the bottom of the steps. 
 
 55 
 
The Trial oj Leo Frank 
 
 One hole was the elevator shaft and the other hole 
 was the trapdoor down which the ladder led, which 
 the court has heard so often spoken of. The negro, 
 knowing that he had pushed the girl down one of these 
 holes, unconsciously brings this fact out in the note. 
 While he was cunning, he was very ignorant, and it 
 was hard for him to keep up a connected tale in these 
 hastily written notes. 
 
 Further, Mr. Dorsey says: 
 
 The fact that this note states that a negro did it by 
 himself shows a conscious effort on the part of somebody 
 to exclude and limit the crime to one man. And this fact 
 sustains Jim Conley. 
 
 Does it? He was trying to limit it to one negro 
 and no other negro. There is only one negro in it 
 and that is “that tall, black negro.” He is trying 
 to exclude the idea that he, Conley, had any part in 
 it at all, and trying to fasten it on one negro alone. 
 Perhaps his animosity to the “long, tall, black negro,” 
 the fireman of the pencil factory, was so great that he 
 alone was the man he wanted the charge to center on, 
 and perhaps he did not wish to involve Newt Lee. 
 
 Mr. Dorsey argues: 
 
 Frank, even in his statement, sustains him as to the 
 time of arrival Saturday morning at the factory, as to the 
 time of the visit to Montag, as to the folder which Conley 
 says Frank had in his hand, and Frank in his statement 
 says he had the folder. The time that Frank says he left 
 that factory sustains old Jim. 
 
 56 
 
Mr. Arnold's Address to the Court 
 
 Why, they had all of these statements of Frank long 
 before Conley’s statement was fixed up. Frank made 
 a statement to the coroner’s jury, full and in detail, 
 involving all these facts. Frank made a statement 
 before the detectives and it was easy enough for the 
 negro to chime in with what Frank had said. But 
 that does not sustain Conley. 
 
 Besides, Conley as he sat hidden down there among 
 the boxes, doubtless knew practically everything that 
 happened that morning, and had an opportunity to 
 see all theise people come and go. This is our theory 
 as well as the State’s. 
 
 Mr. Dorsey goes on: 
 
 Conley is sustained by another thing: This man Harry 
 White, according to your statement, got $2.00. Where is 
 the paper? Where is the entry on any book showing that 
 Frank ever entered it on that Saturday afternoon, when 
 he waited for Conley and his mind was occupied with the 
 consideration of the problem as to what he should do with 
 the body? 
 
 They didn’t keep a book showing these amounts. 
 They made a ticket for $2.00 and put it in the drawer. 
 It was done at this time, and Schiff said he found 
 it, and that was all that was ever done in the way 
 of an entry. They treated it as cash when they 
 paid White his wages, and instead of giving him 
 $2.00, gave him his ticket on the next pay day. 
 
 Dorsey claims Frank forgot to make an entry on 
 the book. Yet Frank went through three and a half 
 hours of the most intricate and detailed work ever 
 
 57 
 
The Trial of Leo Frank 
 
 made on that financial sheet, and experts say there 
 was a mistake of only fifty cents made, and that it 
 could have been made by not carrying out minute 
 decimals. Yet Dorsey says that Frank’s mind was 
 so occupied with the crime that he made a mistake 
 of $2.00, and that Conley is thereby sustained. 
 
 He says: 
 
 This expert in bookkeeping, this Cornell graduate, this 
 man who checks and re-checks the cash—you tell me that 
 if things were normal, he would have given out to that 
 man White this $2.00 and not have taken a receipt, or not 
 have made an entry himself on some book going to show 
 it? I tell you there is only one reason why he didn’t 
 do it. 
 
 I needn’t repeat it. He did make the cash ticket 
 for $2.00. Schiff found it and entered it on the book; 
 Schiff says that’s the way it’s always done; Frank 
 says it’s the way it’s always done. -White says: “I 
 got the $2.00,” and there is no complaint that White 
 was ever paid the $2.00 again. 
 
 Dorsey continues: 
 
 He is sustained by the evidence in this case and the 
 statement of Frank that he had relatives in Brooklyn. 
 
 Let’s see about that. Everybody knew he was 
 from Brooklyn. The negro had worked around the 
 factory for two years. The newspapers had stated 
 he was from Brooklyn. This negro read the news¬ 
 papers eagerly; we have shown all that; so he knew 
 Frank was from Brooklyn. He knew his father and 
 
 58 
 
Mr. Arnold's Address to the Court 
 
 mother lived there. He doesn’t merely claim that 
 Frank said he had relatives in Brooklyn. If he had, 
 that would have been a commonplace statement and 
 it would have had no bearing; but the negro lied in 
 what he did state. He said Frank said: “I’ve got 
 wealthy relatives in Brooklyn,” and we overwhelm¬ 
 ingly showed he did not have wealthy relatives 
 there. His people are of very limited means. His 
 father was a traveling salesman with an income of 
 $1200 a year. He is old and crippled now and 
 trouble is his portion. 
 
 Can anybody believe that the negro told the truth 
 when he stated that Frank paced the floor and in his 
 presence said, “Why should I hang? I have wealthy 
 relatives in Brooklyn” ? 
 
 Further, Dorsey says: 
 
 When old Jim Conley was on the stand Mr. Rosser put 
 him through a good deal of questioning with reference to 
 some fellow by the name of Mincey. Where is Mincey? 
 Echo answers: “Where?” Either Mincey was a myth or 
 Mincey was such a diabolical perjurer that this man knew 
 it would nauseate the stomach of a decent jury to have 
 him produced. And if you weren’t going to produce 
 Mincey, why did you parade it here before this jury? The 
 absence of Mincey is a powerful fact that goes to sustain 
 Jim Conley because if Mincey could have contradicted 
 Jim Conley or could have successfully fastened an admis¬ 
 sion on old Jim that he was connected in any way with this 
 crime,—depend upon it, you would have produced him if 
 you had to comb the State of Georgia with a fine tooth 
 comb from Rabun Gap to Tybee Light. 
 
 59 
 
The Trial of Leo Frank 
 
 The answer to that is this: A man named Mincey 
 claimed that Conley made to him a certain statement. 
 We didn’t know. They had Conley canned for weeks 
 and months. We didn’t know whether he was going 
 to admit or deny making the statement to Mincey. 
 We asked Conley about it and it was our duty to do 
 so. Any fact, probable or improbable, that has been 
 suggested to us we ought to ask about. Conley 
 denied it. We never attached any importance to 
 Conley’s denial one way or the other. Mincey’s tale 
 may have been true, but it did not impress us as 
 evidence that was probable and reasonable, and 
 rather than burden our case with anything doubtful, 
 we decided against the putting up of Mincey. 
 
 Now, how does that sustain Jim Conley? 
 
 Dorsey continues: 
 
 Gentlemen, every act of that defendant proclaims him 
 guilty. Gentlemen, every word of that defendant pro¬ 
 claims him responsible for the death of this little factory 
 girl. Gentlemen, every circumstance in this case proves 
 him guilty of this crime. 
 
 That is such glittering generality that I beg to be 
 excused from discussing it. I know of no circum¬ 
 stance, I know of no act, I know of no word of this 
 defendant, inconsistent with innocence. If there ever 
 was a fair, intelligent statement by a much persecuted 
 man, it was this man’s statement to the court and 
 jury; and I say further that a cleaner, more honest 
 defense than ours has never been put up in a court¬ 
 
 room. 
 
 60 
 
Mr. Arnold's Address to the Court 
 
 I have now gone through every fact in this case that 
 Mr. Dorsey says corroborates Jim Conley, every 
 single one of them. I don’t claim any credit for 
 answering them. A ten-year-old school boy could 
 answer them if he had heard the evidence and was 
 fair. 
 
 Your Honor, the newspapers yesterday carried an 
 account of the trial of Wilburn down in Jones County, 
 which formed quite a contrast to the trial of Frank. 
 
 A farmer had been killed. A young man confessed 
 having murdered him and confessed an intimacy with 
 his wife. It would seem to be just such a case as 
 would bring all of the savagery of the populace to the 
 surface. Yet the people sat throughout that trial, 
 and heard those horrible details without an expres¬ 
 sion of vengeance. He was found guilty and sen¬ 
 tenced to hang, and the dispatches from that little 
 town say the people were sad that the verdict had to 
 be rendered. They felt that under the facts of the 
 case it had to be done, but it was done, not in glad¬ 
 ness, but in sorrow. They were not happy that a 
 man was going to die. 
 
 When the verdict of the jury was rendered in the 
 Frank case, and even before the jurors had been 
 polled, the savages that were grouped about the 
 courthouse here on either side were making the air 
 hideous with their cries of delight and their shouts 
 of joy. 
 
 Capital punishment may have to be inflicted occa¬ 
 sionally, but when it is done it ought to be done re- 
 
 61 
 
The Trial of Leo Frank 
 
 gretfully, sorrowfully, sadly. Some day the civilized 
 world will look with as much horror upon our taking 
 a human life by law as we do upon the old English 
 law of years ago, when even the theft of a silk hand¬ 
 kerchief was a capital offense. 
 
 Charles Dickens, in writing of his court and prison 
 experiences, wrote one little story that helped to 
 start the great crusade that changed all that in Eng¬ 
 land. It was written in the first person by a young 
 doctor about his first case. 
 
 The doctor said: 
 
 I was called once by a poor mother to treat a case at her 
 house; I went there as she asked me to do, and she said: 
 “The patient hasn’t come yet but will be here in a few 
 minutes”; and in a few minutes the dead-wagon rumbled 
 up to the door and the corpse of a stalwart young man 
 was taken out and the mother said that this was the case. 
 “Why,” I said, “he is dead; and there is the mark of 
 the rope around his neck.” “Yes,” said the mother, 
 “I just wanted you to see if he was dead, and if there was 
 any way to bring him back to life.” 
 
 He was hung for some small theft. The mother 
 had hoped there might be some life left in the body, 
 which the doctor might revive. 
 
 The civilized world will yet stand aghast at capital 
 punishment. It finds support in the old law of Moses: 
 “Whoso sheddeth man’s blood, by man shall his blood 
 be shed.” That was in the time when our ancestors 
 dressed in the skins of animals; that was in the day 
 
Mr. Arnold's Address to the Court 
 
 when they were pastoral; when they were shepherds; 
 when they had flocks and herds; when a man had a 
 hundred wives if he could take care of that many; 
 when they believed in human sacrifices; that was in 
 the day when the nations of the earth believed in 
 every form of torture; when the Assyrians and other 
 ancient nations would cut off a man’s hands and feet 
 when they took him prisoner; that was even before 
 the days of the rack and the Inquisition. Men be¬ 
 lieved in that. 
 
 But when Christ came to earth he enunciated the 
 doctrine that I have never understood how any Chris¬ 
 tian can reconcile with capital punishment: “Ye 
 have heard that it hath been said, 1 An eye for an eye, 
 and a tooth for a tooth but I say unto you, whosoever 
 shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the 
 other also." 
 
 These words have lived through the ages; but, 
 strange to say, many Christians that have professed 
 to follow the doctrines of the Prince of Peace, have 
 been as bloody as the Mohammedans who openly 
 followed the doctrine of the sword and torch. 
 
 Civilization is a slow growth. Not by mere pro- 
 nunciamento, but through the processes of the years 
 alone, will man become civilized. It is an evolution, 
 just as we grew up from the monkeys; just as we sat 
 down a long time and wore off the tails with which 
 we once scampered around the trees; just as we wore 
 off the hair from our backs by wearing clothes. I 
 hope my friends Dorsey and Campbell have gotten 
 
 63 
 
The Trial of Leo Frank 
 
 rid of their tails and hair, but this case doesn’t look 
 much like it to me. 
 
 This trial seems to me to be a sort of reversion to 
 barbarism. Here is a man condemned to death on 
 the uncorroborated evidence of a moral leper, evidence 
 given to save himself, evidence that is contrary to all 
 light and reason, and against the most powerful alibi 
 ever proved in court. 
 
 At the beginning there was nothing against this 
 defendant except his own statement that he had seen 
 the girl on the day she was killed, and had paid her 
 the amount that was due her for her work. He was 
 the last person known to have seen the little child 
 alive, and it would not have been known that he had 
 even seen her except for his own statement to that 
 effect. A guilty man would never have voluntarily 
 made that admission; but it was the truth and Frank 
 spoke it. 
 
 Many stories now arose. The germs of prejudice 
 multiplied. In the soil of falsehood the feeling against 
 this defendant grew. When the trial came on, the 
 oceans of feeling and prejudice crept into the court¬ 
 house at the very beginning, and remained there 
 until the rejoicing of the happy savages marked the 
 rendition of the verdict. 
 
 The Solicitor spoke to the mob as much as to the 
 jury. And he didn’t have to use any reason in his 
 argument; if he had blood in his talk, that was enough. 
 It was poison that was fed to those jay birds in the 
 jury box. 
 
 64 
 
Mr. Arnold's Address to the Court 
 
 Oh, why couldn’t we have had a trial like Wilburn 
 had? There was no ferocity, no hungering for human 
 blood, at Wilburn’s trial. We have not had a judicial 
 trial. A judicial trial is one where calm, fair-minded 
 men get together, and focus their minds on the facts, 
 and spurn every outside suggestion. We have had 
 no such trial as that. 
 
 A fair, impartial, judicial consideration of this case 
 would have resulted in the acquittal of the defendant, 
 for his innocence has been proven. 
 
 Can you conceive of a white man of Frank’s intelli¬ 
 gence, in broad daylight, with the doors unlocked, in 
 charge of a factory like this, which it has been shown 
 was a perfect hive of people all the morning of this 
 tragedy—can you conceive of such a one’s attempting 
 such a deed? The whole thing is so despicably im¬ 
 probable. 
 
 Monteen Stover was at the factory at 12:10. By 
 no stretch of the imagination can you take the evi¬ 
 dence and get Mary Phagan there before 12:10 to 
 12:12. At 12:30 Frank is seen on the fourth floor by 
 Denham and White. He left at “about one o’clock.” 
 He is seen on the comer at about 1:10. Mrs. Levi 
 saw him get off the car at his home at 1:20. Even 
 the State’s witness McKnight says he saw him out 
 there at 1:3o. 
 
 All of the experiments that have been made show 
 that, assuming Conley to have told the truth as to 
 what he and Frank did, Frank could not have left 
 the factory before 1:30. Yet the unmistakable evi- 
 
 65 
 
The Trial of Leo Frank 
 
 dence shows he had reached his home before that 
 hour, and went back to the factory in the afternoon, 
 and for three hours worked on that financial sheet. 
 
 Your Honor, have we lost our senses? Is this case 
 different from other cases? Do different rules obtain 
 here? If so, why? Sometimes I fear that perhaps 
 the law, not Leo Frank, is on trial. 
 
 It has been shown that the time Conley gave as to 
 the disposition of the body was false. It has been 
 shown that Mary Phagan was not at the pencil fac¬ 
 tory at the time Conley claims the deed was done, 
 and that Frank was not there at the time Conley 
 claims the body was moved. 
 
 But it is asked, could Conley invent such a tale? I 
 tell you if there is any one talent a negro has, it is 
 inventing a striking lie. 
 
 Why, Conley stated in one of his affidavits, that 
 before he went to the pencil factory on the day of the 
 killing, he went over on Peters Street and drank at 
 several saloons. He went into many details, giving 
 the names of the saloons, the kinds of spirits he drank, 
 the names of the men he met, and the various things 
 he did. He says now that every word of that affi¬ 
 davit was false, and that those things did not occur. 
 
 Could he invent a tale? We have his own evidence 
 as a demonstration that he could invent a marvelous 
 tale. 
 
 It has been shown that Conley confessed to a part 
 of the crime, and that confession was proven false by 
 clocks, watches and other evidence. It has been 
 
 66 
 
Mr. Arnold's Address to the Court 
 
 shown, that he wrote the notes that were found by 
 the body of the dead girl. Don’t you know that if 
 he wrote the notes, he killed the girl? Could you 
 offer him any better inducement to evade and to lie 
 than not to charge him with killing the girl, when he 
 admitted writing the notes? The detectives, even 
 then, led him into charging the notes on Frank. 
 
 The murder of Mary Phagan is no longer a mystery. 
 The experiments that have been made, the physical 
 facts of the case, the testimony delivered here, show 
 the murderer to be, not Leo M. Frank, but Jim Con¬ 
 ley, a perpetual law-breaker who has a law-breaking 
 race back of him to “the time whereof the memory of 
 man runneth not to the contrary.” 
 
 Will you accept as true this monstrous tale that 
 Conley tells, or will you place the judgment of a 
 skilled man upon it, and say it is so incredible that 
 you will not foreclose the question forever? Conley, 
 though reveling at first in his wonderful accomplish¬ 
 ment as a liar, lied so much and so often that he even¬ 
 tually lost all pride about lying, and when cornered 
 with a lie that he couldn’t explain, just admitted it 
 was a lie. 
 
 Will Your Honor allow this verdict to stand by 
 believing Conley’s latest lie, discarding human testi¬ 
 mony, and changing clocks, watches and street car 
 schedules? We only ask that justice be done. 
 
 Here is the only place we can argue the facts on 
 appeal. The Supreme Court has no jurisdiction over 
 questions of fact where the witnesses are in conflict. 
 
 67 
 
The Trial of Leo Frank 
 
 It takes errors of law for that court to interfere. 
 Your Honor alone has the duty and the responsibility 
 now of approving this verdict, or setting it aside; of 
 saying, as an independent tribunal, whether the jury 
 found the truth. 
 
 We have battled against the twin evils of prejudice 
 and ignorance, but we are panoplied in the right. And 
 
 What stronger breast-plate than a heart untainted? 
 
 Thrice is he arm’d that hath his quarrel just; 
 
 And he but naked, though lock’d up in steel, 
 
 Whose conscience with injustice is corrupted. 
 
 Much is said these days about law and order, but 
 I say to you that the spirit back of this prosecution, 
 the spirit that was manifest in and about the court¬ 
 room where Frank was tried, and where the poor man 
 —I hate to say it—had not a dog’s show for his life, 
 was not the law and order spirit. 
 
 The fact is often overlooked that a crime can be 
 committed against a man charged with crime. There 
 are murders in court as well as out of court, and I 
 would no more be a party to the one than to the 
 other. We may be sure, too, that the great All 
 Seeing Eye above looks not merely at forms of things, 
 but sees into their very hearts. 
 
 In such a case as this it behooves the officers of the 
 law to say to the multitudes: “Stop, stay your hand; 
 this is not a chase; there is no quarry here we have 
 joined in to catch; we are trying to find a fact, and 
 we are going to do it calmly, considerately, dispas¬ 
 sionately, if it takes until eternity to do it.” 
 
 68 
 
Mr. Arnold's Address to the Court 
 
 Your Honor, our cause is right and must eventually 
 triumph if Justice rules in Georgia. Time is the great 
 truth teHer. Before the peaceful passage of time 
 false creeds wither, error topples to the earth, the 
 passion of the mob subsides, and in the end truth— 
 and only truth—prevails. 
 
 69 
 
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