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LEO M. FRANE. 339

man who has conjured it up simply to acquit a friend, or a
man that has been the friend of a friend; let it be the doubt
of an honest, conscientious, upright juror, the noblest work
of Almighty God.

Now this statement. I tell you, gentlemen of the jary,
that when this statement you heard Frank make is scanned,
it is susceptible of but one construction, and that is, that
it is the statement of a guilty man, made to fit in these gen-
eral circumstances, as they would have you believe-—these
gentlemen here harped a great deal, gentlemen of the jury,
“are you going to convict him on this, are you going to con-
vict him on thet.’’ It isn’t the law that circumstantial evi-
dence is inferior to direct and positive evidence, and it in
correct to instruct the jury that there is nothing in the na-
ture of circumstantial evidence that renders it less reliable
than other classes of evidence. The illustration that they
would seek, gentlemen of the jury, not by direct language
did they do it in their argument to you, because we had
already read them this authority, bat they would bring up
this isolated fact and that isolated fact and they would say
“are you going to convict him on that?’’? I don’t ask your
eonviction on that. Two illustrations, first, each of the inci-
dental facts surrounding the main fact in issue, is a link in
a ehain, and that the chain is not stronger than its weakest
link, this authority says is generally rejected aa an incorrect
metaphor and liable to misconstruction, The second ilustra-
tion and the one that is approved is, each of the incidental
facts surrounding the main facts in issue are compared to
the strands in a rope, where none of them may be sufficient
in itself, but all taken together may be strong enough to es-
tablish the guilt of the aceused beyond a reasonable doubt.

And so they took isolated instance after isolated instance
and then said ‘‘are you going to convict him on that?’’ I say
no. But I do say that these instances each constitute a
chain, or a cord,—a strand in a cable, and that, when you get
them all, all together, you have a cable that ought to hang
anybody. That’s the proposition, Not on this isolated in-

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