Reading Time: 3 minutes [351 words]

254 X. AMERICAN STATE TRIALS.

toward his victim is in the tall, good-natured Jim Gantt,
friend of Mary. He asks Gantt: ‘‘You’re pretty thick with
Mary, aren’t yout’? Tt shows that he knew her and that he
had his eye on her, What next! He wants to get rid of
Gantt. How does he go about it? You have seen that pre-
viously he was bragging on Gantt, on Gantt’s ability as a
workman. But, just as soon as his eye is set upon the pretty
little friend of Gantt, he sets plans to get rid of him. And,
it comes up about a dollar. He says it was something about
money, hoping to lead you, gentlemen, to believe that Gantt
was a thief. He would not let Gantt go into the building
‘because he was a thief. Didn’t he know that this long-legged
Mountaineer was coming back at him? Sure, he knew it.
And, they parted company at onee. Gantt was fired. What
was he accomplishing by thist He was getting rid of the
only man on either floor—in the whole factory—who knew
Mary Phagan, and who would raise @ hand to protect her.

‘Then he seta about laying plana. And those plana!

You will notice that the defense has pitehed its every effort
entirely on Jim Conley. I don’t blame them. He was like
Stone Mountain is to some highways in its vicinity. They
eouldn’t get by him. We could have left him out and have
had an excellent chain of circumstantial evidence. Without
dim, though, the defense couldn’t move—they couldn’t
budge. You have sat and seen the biggest legal battle ever
fought in « court house between skillful intellect and a wit-
ness negro. You have seen brainy eloquence pitted against
the slow, incomprehensible dialect of a negro. You have seen
a trained and speedy mind battling with blunt ignorance,
And, what was the result? At the end of three and a half
daya it came. That negro was asked questions about every-
thing Rosser could conceive. His answers were hurried from
the stenographer’s notes and transcribed on typewriter.
Then, they were hurled back into Conley’s face, But, it was
like water poured onto a mill wheel. They received the same
answers, the same story.

Tt was because, gentlemen, the negro was telling the truth.

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