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340 X. AMERICAN STATE TRIALS.

stance or that one, but upon all, taken together and bound
together, which make a cable as strong as it ia possible for
the ingenuity of man to weave around anybody.

Now, listen at this statement and let’s analyze that as we
go on a little. I don’t know whether this man’s statement
to the jury will rank along with the cross-examination of
that celebrated pervert, Oseard Wilde, or not, but it was a
brilliant statement, when unanalyzed, and if you just simply
shut your eyes and mind to reason and take this statement,
then, of course, you are not going to convict, But listen to
what our Courts say about these statementa—I have already
read it to you, but I want to read it again, ‘‘Evidence given.
by a witness has inherent strength which even a jury cannot
under all cireumstances disregard; a statement has none.”
No eross-examination, no oath, merely a statement adroitly
prepared to meet the exigencies of the case,

Now, listen at this. This man Frank says ‘‘I sat in my of-
fice cheeking over the amount of money which had been left
over’’—not the cash, not cash, but the amount of money
which had been left over—‘from the pay-roll”—from the
$1,100.00 that they had drawn Friday, and to this day, we
don’t know how much was left over, and we don’t know
whether what was left over coupled with the cash left on
hand would make this bundle of bills that old Jim says was
shown to him and taken back, when Frank wanted to get him:
to go down into the dark cellar and burn that body by him-
self, and old Jim says “I'l go if you go, but if I go down
there and burn that body, somebody might come along and
catch me and then what kind of a fix will Ibe int”’? And I’
tell you right now, if Jim Conley had gone down in that cel-
lar and had undertaken to have burned that body, es sure
as the smoke would have curled upward out of that funnel
towards Heaven, just so certain would Leo M. Frank have
been down there with these same detectives, and Jim Conley
would have been without a shadow of a defense. But old
Jim, drank or sober, ignorant or smart, vile or pure, had too
much sense, and while he was willing to write the notes to

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