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

78 X, AMERICAN STATE TRIALS.

and not a fact guessed at by you, or inferred, implied or pre-
sumed by the law in the absence of knowledge. Can it be
found in the evidence you have heard? The evidence is
purely circumstantial. The State has not been able to intro-
duce any positive testimony; not the least. There is nothing
to guide you but circumstances, and therefore I have some-
thing to say of the nature and quality of that kind of evi-
dence, and what it must be to warrant conviction. That such
evidence has been treacherous all experience shows; that it
must ever be treacherous philosophy makes manifest. What is
cireumstantial evidence but reasoning? It is dependent upon
faith ; faith in the ability and honesty of the witnesses for the
cireumstances; but what shall be done with the circumstances
obtained by faith, is a question solved only by the reason of
man, Every step afterwards is a process of induction, and
by a series of inductions a conelusion is reached. Ifa single
error is made in the process, the conclusion is necessarily
wrong. One blunder does as much mischief as a hundred. If
you conelude that one fact is necessarily dependent on an-
other fact, and it should happen to be independent, the mis-
take is fatal, The logic you invoke in such case must lead
you to a false result. The enlogists of this species of evidence
find security in the number of the facts, ‘‘in the many links
in the chain of evidence,’? but these likewise multiply the
chances of mistake in the process of induction. The inherent
vice of this kind of evidence is incurable, for being only a
process of reasoning, human reasoning, it must be treacher-
ous, until man becomes infallible. There is another prominent
defect, incurable also, and that is the uncertainty of the facts
or circumstances themselves. What you call a fact or cir-
eumstance may not be either, but only an inference or deduc-
tion made by a witness from some other fact, within his knowl-
edge, and which inference he has unconsciously substituted
for a fact. Any one at all acquainted with human testimony
will concede that nothing is more frequent, or usual, than
the substitution of an inference drawn by the witness upon
something precedent for the fact itself. The liability to error
is greater in proportion aa the witness thinks the inference