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266 X. AMERICAN STATE TRIALS.

degree methods of the police and detectives in words that
burned.

Well, they used those methods with Jim Conley. My
friend, Hooper, said nothing held Conley to tlie witness chair
here but the truth, but I tell you that the fear of a broken
neck held him there. I think this decision about the third
degree was handed down with Conley’s case in mind, I’m
going to show this Conley business up before I get through.
I’m going to show that this entire case is the greatest frame.
‘up in the history of the state.

My friend Hooper remarked something about circumstan-
tial evidence, and how powerful it frequently was. He forgot
to say that the circumstances, in every case, must invariably
be proved by witnesses, History contains a long record of
circumstantial evidence, and I once had a book on the sub-
ject which dwelt on such eases, most all of which sickens the
man who reads them. Horrible mistakes have been made by
circumstantial evideneo-—more so than by any other kind.?

Hooper says, ‘‘Suppose Frank didn’t kill the girl, and Jim
Conley did, wasn’t it Frank’s duty to protect her’? He was
taking the position that if Jim went back there and killed
her, Frank could not help but know about the murder.
‘Which position, I think, is quite absurd. Take this hypo-
thesis, then, of Mr. Hooper's. If Jim saw the girl go up and
went back and killed her, would he have taken the body down.
the elevator at that time? Wouldn’t he have waited until
Frank and White and Denham, and Mra. White and all
others were out of the building? I think so. But there’s not
a possibility of the girl having been killed on the second floor.
Hooper smells a plot, and says Frank has his eye on the little
girl who was killed. The crime isn’t an act of a civilized

1 Here Mr. Arnold cited the Durant case in San Francisco, the
Hampton case in England, and the Dreyfus case in France as in-
stances of mistakes of circumstantial evidence. In the Dreyfus
cage he declared it was purely perseention of the Jew. The hide-
ousness of the murder itself was not as savage, he asserted, as the
feeling to convict this man. But the savagery and venom is there
just the same, and it is » case very much on the order of Dreyfus.

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