Wednesday, 6th October 1915: Georgia Is Attacked By Judge Sheppard, The Atlanta Constitution

New York, October 5. The lynching of Leo M. Frank, although not designated by name, was made the basis of a portion of the charge today to the new federal grand jury by Judge William B. Sheppard, of Pensacola, Fla., who swore in the jurors and instructed them. Judge Sheppard told the grand jury that the people looked to the courts for protection and that failure to get it sometimes led to outrage.

"Not many weeks ago," Judge Sheppard said, "the country was shocked by an outrage committed in a southern state. That offense against society, that outrage against the law, was the culmination of an indifference that existed in that state for more than twenty years. Lynchings and outrages against the law had become so common that little attention was paid to them. Such an outrage has startled the country and, as I say, it was only a culmination of public indifference."

Judge Sheppard is holding court in New York under the law which permits a federal judge to sit in another part of the country where dockets are congested to aid in disposing of cases.

"There are, however," continued Judge Sheppard, "wholesale indications, notwithstanding these public outrages, which shock the public conscience, that American thought has awakened to the importance of these things. In every part of the United States, there is growing insistence that legal machinery be freed from those technicalities which serve no rightful purpose, but merely tend to delay and defeat the ends of justice."

"There is also on the public's part a more earnest demand that no person whose guilt is proved be suffered to escape, no matter how high or low his position may be. This is an evidence of social progress and of a cleaner public conscience. The responsibility of a busy court in this regard is inexpressibly serious and important. Their duty to the law, whose high ministers they are, demands that they vouchsafe to everyone who comes before them a trial that is impartial, speedy and dispassionate. Thus only can justice reach the ends of the law."