119 Slide – American State Trials 1918 Volume X Leo Frank Document

EDWARD D,. WORRELL. 87

without doubt rent in pieces”? The coat was Joseph’s, but
all that followed was error made up of one false act, and
false reasoning from the known to the unknown. The blood
was the blood of a kid, not that of his child; there was no
evil beast; Joseph was not rent in pieces, but in full life, on
his way to the court of Pharaoh, and the house of Potiphar,
¢o act an important part in Jewish and Egyptian history.

The reasoning of the patriarch was quite up to the standard
of the common mind. His deductions were founded in the
Togie so much praised by the enlogista of circumstantial evi-
dence, The blood of the kid looked like the blood of a man.
Science had not in his day reached the analysis which detects
the difference. He naturally excluded the hypothesis that
the children of his own Joins would slay their brother; he
could not think of the other hypothesis—the simple truth—
the sale of his son to the Midianite merchants for twenty
pieces of silver; so that, with a conviction not to be shaken,
he adopted the only hypothesis which could explain the trans-
action—an imaginary wild beast and a fictitious death!

Circumstantial evidence Hed Joseph into prison when he
reached the house of Potiphar. It lied that English girl to
the scaffold. In all countries, in every age, among all peoples,
it has lied its victims to the block, the stake, the scaffold or
the dungeon, Its power is not confined to the tribunals of
Justice; 8 physician et the bedside of his patient sees the
circumstantial evidence of disease; he sees (as he thinks)
the circumstantial indications of a latent inflammation of the
brain, he opens a vein, and the patient dies from the blood-
letting, his hypothesis excluding all others which might ex-
plain the symptoms, is secret Inflammation. A post-mortem
examination shows there was no inflammation of the brain;
but another diseass which to bleed copiously is death. Fhe
trae hypothesis he found afterwards. -There is this difference
between the physician and this prosecution. He excluded
all but one hypothesis to seve life—and they exclude all but
one hypothesis to take it away. The physician must try to
save, but the law does not make it a necessity to kill. It opens
to every jury a path of safety.