The Atlanta Constitution,
Sunday, 26th October 1913,
PAGE 1, COLUMN 1.
Believing Their Client
Will
Secure Another
Chance,
Lawyers Declare
Savannah
Desirable Place.
WITH BITTER
SARCASM
RUBE ARNOLD
ARRAIGNS
PROSECUTION'S
TACTICS
Attributes Conviction to
Race
Persecution, Biased
Jury
And Corrupt
Witnesses.
Dorsey Next, Then
Hooper
Rosser Concludes.
So confident are they of success in their efforts to gain a new
trial, counsel for Leo M. Frank's defense already are looking
forward to savannah as the city in which to stage the anticipated
second arraignment of their client.
The defense was in high spirits yesterday afternoon over the
force and strength of Mr. Arnold's second-day argument before
Judge Roan, in the state library. Upon adjournment at 4 o'clock in
the afternoon Messrs. Arnold and Rosser left the capitol, frankly
expressing their expectation of securing a new trial.
If a new trial is granted on grounds of prejudice and mob
feeling, there will unquestionably be a change of venue. In this
case, Savannah is decided upon by the defense as being the most
logical place in which to hold a second trial. The decision upon a
change of venue will be reached by attorneys and the presiding
judge in conference.
Looking to Savannah.
It is said that an investigation is being promoted even this
early into Savannah as a logical place for change of venue, which
will probably be brought about in case of a new trial. Neither Mr.
Rosser nor Mr. Arnold would verify this rumor.
They said to a Constitution reporter, however, that Savannah
was a desirable place in which to hold a second trial, and that in
all probability, the venue would be changed to that city. Its
distance from Atlanta and the natural lack of interest the people
had likely taken in the Frank case would make it the logical point,
they intimated.
There would be no fever of excitement, no prejudice, no
fanaticism, as has been noted locally, they said.
In case a new trial and change of venue are granted, the
task of prosecution will be upon the shoulders of the solicitor
general of the circuit to which the venue has been shifted. In this
event, it will be merely a matter of courtesy on the part of the
solicitor of the new circuit to grant Solicitor Dorsey the privilege
to prosecute.
The defense of Frank, it is rumored, will try to balk this in
case they are successful, by pleading that Dorsey was unfair in
his tactics of prosecution Frank, and that it would be unjust for
him to participate in the new trial. This, however, has not been
verified.
Arnold Charges Race Persecution.
Perhaps the most dramatic utterance in Colonel Arnold's
speech Saturday was his declaration that the Frank trial was akin
in many respects to the crucifixion of Christ.
It is the most horrible persecution of a Jew since the death
of Christ, he said.
Through his argument frequent and wide reference was
made to racial prejudice which he alleged existed poignantly in
the trial of his client, and, to which he attributed the greatest
effect in Frank's conviction.
Everywhere, he spoke, you heard those who believed in
his guilt refer to him as that damned Jew.' NO one spoke of the
merits of the case. It was always, that damned Jew,' and nothing
else.
Because of repeated reference to certain evidence
submitted by the prosecution, Mr. Arnold was forced to
discontinue his speech when a number of women attaches of the
state library appeared in the room to engage in their duties. The
hearing was then continued until 9 o'clock Monday morning.
Assails Detectives.
Much of Arnold's speech was devoted to attacks upon
Solicitor Dorsey and the detective department, who, he said,
hounded Frank like a pack of wolves, driven on by prejudice and
fear that if they shifted to a new trial, public opinion would cause
them disaster.
If there ever was a case in which the seine of prosecution
was sent out to drag in the ooze and slime of degeneracy, it was
in the Frank trial. Look at Dalton, for instance. He even had a face
like a mud cat. You could tell from his very face and speech and
deportment that his habitat was the mud.
They put him on the stand to bolster up the story of the
diabolical Conley. Dalton, the filthy, assisting the unutterable
Conley. The only reason Dalton's story was believed was because
of the highly receptive attitude of the jury mind, which was willing
and ready to believe anything against the defendant, against
whom they and much of the public was prejudiced.
Dalton begins as a thief and winds up as a moral ferret"
and, sadly, is proud of the fact when he tells his miserable story.
Your honor unfortunately erred in letting in such testimony,
produced by such a person as Dalton. You must remember that
Frank was being tried on purely a lone issue, and that issue
alone.
Says State's Witnesses Rehearsed.
Then, there was Dewey Howell, the little 15-year-old girl
who had been sent to the home of the Good Shepherd in
Cincinnati. After much hullabaloo and mystery, she went on the
stand and testified that she had seen Frank talking to Mary
Phagan and that he had put his hand on Mary's shoulder.
We didn't cross-examine her. Neither did we cross-examine
any of the other character witnesses introduced by the state.
These witnesses
Continued on Page Three.
PAGE, COLUMN 2
were all hostile to Frank. They were coached, rehearsed, prepared
to tell their little tales, and, had we cross-examined them, there is
no telling on God's earth what they would have been ready to tell.
The Lord only knows what fabrications they would have put
before the court.
The prosecution had a regular school for training and
rehearsing its witnesses, and whoever was the most perfect"
remembered his or her story the best"was put at the head of the
class. Therefore, we would have made a very, very disastrous
mistake in cross-examining any of them.
The state, in obtaining its witnesses, gave a bid to the
discharged employee, the men or women who hated wealth and
was willing to defeat it in the spirit of the anarchist, and the
basely ignorant persons who were prejudiced against the Jew.
Defense Was Trapped.
We were trapped. We were between a conspiracy hatched
up by Dorsey and his colleagues, the detectives, and a jury
untrained in weighing the evidence and too frightened to do so
had they been properly trained. Sure there was a conspiracy. It
takes no power of divination to see that.
Why, during those old barbaric days of England, when a
man was hanged for a list of 180-crimes that ran everywhere
from stealing a handkerchief to committing murder, you would
have found just such men as Dorsey and the police and
detectives of Atlanta crying and yelping for the blood of the poor
man on trial.
This veneer of civilization is mighty thin. It is thin on all of
us. You don't have to scratch down deep before you find the
barbarian in any of us. We all have primeval instincts. We haven't
evolved so far that there isn't much of the heathen smoldering in
our nature and crying for outlet.
Capital Punishment Going.
Fifty years from today capital punishment will be abolished.
Time rights all things. It is only evolution that civilizes us"growth
"that's all. It's slow, but it's sure. Remember, we use to have
hairy backs and no language and tails that clung to limbs and
held us in bed on a limb.
Some people say we are getting worse. But it's not true. We
are not. We are really getting better. It is true that we go through
some frenzied periods of process now and then which gives these
calamity howlers a chance to say we are getting worse, but they
always end for good.
We will soon lose all the fangs of savagery, the chief one of
them being capital punishment.
The trial of Leo Frank, gentlemen, is a reversion back to
barbarism"one of the worst instances of reversion I have ever
seen. There was something psychological about the situation. It
reminded me of a wagon running downhill. The further it traveled
the greater momentum it gained.
Make Sport of Dr. Harris.
Now, I'm coming to something in the case that causes me
to laugh and feel sympathetic at the same. I am thinking of poor
old Doc Harris"Roy Harris"the man who can look at a corpse
and tell by the complexion of the nose the date of birth, religious
beliefs and entire history. Wasn't he a peach? He can't do you any
good when you're alive, but he can certainly hold some autopsy
on you when you pass beyond the pearly gates. That is,
considering you go there.
If I were sick and saw Harris coming up the front steps, I'd
say: Wife, put crepe on the door, order my shroud and send for
the cheapest undertaker in town. He's a lallapaloosa. No wonder
that peach.' Miss Daisy Hopkins, the fairest of the fair"according
to one Mr. Jack Dalton"could sit in the witness stand perfectly
still. Old Doc Harris had just been in it.
Harris lives just two doors above me. I had a case
pertaining to the death of old Uncle Josh Crawford some time ago,
and the first thing I knew Doc Harris had old Uncle Josh, who'd
been dead for years, up in his cellar, grinding him up in a sausage
mill. If I'd have known it at the time, I'd have moved from the
neighborhood.
Your honor, we are not asking for so much as a new trial as
we are asking for a trial, a real trial, a fair trial, which we didn't
get. We deserve a trial. Justice itself demands that we have one.
You cannot allow the stream of purity to be polluted from which
justice flows.
Some of these jurors have said that they were not
influenced by the crowds and the demonstrations. Justice,
however, says that you cannot take their opinions, that you must
take the effect of such incidents as you see them yourself. Your
honor has got to give a new trial simply on this one point if
nothing else.
Calls Jury Jaybirds.
The jurors would naturally say that they were not affected.
The jury, itself, I am afraid, did not feel as jurors should have felt.
Why, when Dorsey was feeding poison to the court indirectly
because he would not be allowed to do it directly, those twelve
jaybirds say in the jury box with gaping mouths, gulping down
with avidity everything that was said and done.
The trial of Frank was the unfairest, the most injurious, the
most diabolical on record. There never was a persecution of a Jew
go stinking since the crucifixion of Christ.
Most of Arnold's morning argument was devoted to bitter
arraignment for Solicitor Dorsey for the solicitor's alleged attitude
toward Frank and for this tactics, which Arnold termed nasty and
unfair.
At one time the speaker declared that a tramp would have
been surer of justice and a fairer trial than Frank. This, he said,
because of prejudice and feeling against Frank because he was a
Jew.
He accused Dorsey of having brought in every conceivable
crime tot ry the defendant on the lone charge of murder, and that
these tactics were employed merely to prejudice the jury. And,
he said, to tell the truth. I don't think it required much effort to
prejudice that particular jury.
Rosser to Conclude.
Mr. Arnold also dwelt at length upon the murder notes that
were found beside the body. He declared that no white man,
especially an intellectual man of Frank's type, could have
composed the notes. Also that it should be proof conclusive of
Conley's guilt when it was discovered that the notes were in his
handwriting and language.
Mr. Arnold will resume his argument Monday morning at 9
o'clock in the state library, where the entire hearing is being held.
He will be followed by Solicitor Dorsey and Frank Hooper will then
speak for the state. The concluding speech will be made by
Colonel Rosser.