Reuben Rose Arnold Closing Arguments at Leo Frank Trial

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Mr. Arnold:

Gentlemen of the Jury: We are all to be congratulated that this case is drawing to a close. We have all suffered here from trying a long and complicated case at the heated term of the year. It has been a case that has taken so much effort and so much concentration and so much time, and the quarters here are so poor, that it has been particularly hard on you members of the jury who are practically in custody while the case is going on. I know it's hard on a jury, to be kept confined this way, but it is necessary that they be segregated and set apart where they will get no impression at home nor on the street. The members of the jury are in a sense set apart on a mountain, where, far removed from the. passion and heat of the plain, calmness roles them and they can judge a case on its merits.

My friend Hooper said a funny thing here a while ago. I don't think he meant what he said, however. Mr. Hooper said that the men in the jury box are not different from the men on the street. Your Honor, I'm learning something every day, and I certainly learned something today, if that's true.

Mr. Hooper:

Mr. Arnold evidently mistakes my meaning, which I thought I made clear. I stated that the men in the jury box were like they would be on the street in the fact that in making up their minds about the guilt or innocence of the accused they must use the same common sense that they would if they were not part of the court.

Mr. Arnold:

[Mr. Arnold next described the horrible crime that had been committed that afternoon or night in the National Pencil Company's dark basement He dwelt on the effect of the crime upon the people of Atlanta and of how high feeling ran and still runs, and of the omnipresent desire for the death of the man who committed the crime.]

There are fellows like that street car man, Kendley, the one who vilified this defendant here and cried for him to be lynched, and shouted that he was guilty until he made himself a nuisance on the cars he ran. Why, I can hardly realize that a man holding a position as responsible as that of a motorman and a man with certain police powers and the discretion necessary to guide a car through the crowded city streets would give way to passion and prejudice like that. It was a type of man like Kendley who said he did not know for sure whether those negroes hanged in Decatur for the shooting of the street car men were guilty, but he was glad they were hung, as some negroes ought to be hanged for the crime. He's the same sort of a man who believes that there ought to be a hanging because that innocent little girl was murdered, and who would like to see this Jew here hang because somebody ought to hang for it. I'll tell you right now, if Frank hadn't been a Jew there would never have been any prosecution against him.

I'm asking my own people to turn him loose, asking them to do justice to a Jew, and I'm not a Jew, but I would rather die before doing injustice to a Jew. This case has just been built up by degrees; they have a monstrous perjurer here in the form of this Jim Conley against Frank. You know what sort of a man Conley is, and you know that up to the time the murder was committed no one ever heard a word against Frank. Villainy like this charged to him does not crop out in a day. There are long mutterings of it for years before. There are only a few who have ever said anything against Frank. I want to call your attention later to the class of their witnesses and the class of ours.

A few floaters around the factory, out of the hundreds who have worked there in the plant three or four years, have been induced to come up here and swear that Frank has not a good character, but the decent employees down there have sworn to his good character. Look at the jail birds they brought up here, the very dregs of humanity, men and women who have disgraced themselves and who now have come and tried to swear away the life of an innocent man. I know that you members of the jury are impartial. That's the only reason why you are here, and I'm going to strip the state's case bare for you, if I have the strength to last to do it. They have got to show Frank guilty of one thing before you can convict him; they've got to show that he is guilty of the murder, no matter what else they show about him. You are trying him solely for the murder, and there must be no chance that anyone else could just as likely be guilty.

If the jury sees that there is just as good a chance that Conley can be guilty, then they must turn Frank loose. Now, you can see how in this case the detectives were put to it to lay the crime on somebody. First, it was Lee, and then it was Gantt, and various people came in and declared they had seen the girl alive late Saturday night and at other times, and no one knew what to do. Well, suspicion turned away from Gantt, and in a little while it turned away from Lee.

Now, I don't believe that Lee is guilty of the crime, but I do believe that he knows a lot more about the crime than he told. He knows about those letters and he found that body a lot sooner than he said he did. Oh, well, the whole case is a mystery, a deep mystery, but there is one thing pretty plain, and that is that whoever wrote those notes committed the crime. Those notes certainly had some connection with the murder, and whoever wrote those notes committed the crime. Well, they put Newt Lee through the third degree and the fourth degree, and maybe a few others. That's the way, you know, they got this affidavit from the poor negro woman, Minola McKnight.

Why, just the other day the supreme court handed down a decision in which it referred to the third 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 the 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 frameup in the history of the state.

My friend Hooper remarked something about circumstantial 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 subject which dwelt on such cases, most all of which sickens the man who reads them. Horrible mistakes have been made by circumstantial evidence—more so than by any other kind.

[1 Here Mr. Arnold cited the Durant case in San Francisco, the Hampton case in England, and the Dreyfus case in France as instances of mistakes of circumstantial evidence. In the Dreyfus case he declared it was purely persecution of the Jew. The hideousness 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 a case very much on the order of Dreyfus.]

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 hypothesis, 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 Mrs. 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 man—it's the crime of a cannibal, a man-eater. Hooper is hard-pressed and wants to get up a plot—he sees he has to get up something. He forms his plot from Jim Conley's story. They say that on Friday, Frank knew he was going to make an attack of some sort on Mary Phagan. The plot thickens. Of all the wild things I have ever heard, that is the wildest. It is ridiculous. Mary Phagan worked in the pencil factory for months, and all the evidence they have produced that Frank ever associated with her—ever knew her—is the story of weasley little Willie Turner, who can't even describe the little girl who was killed. A little further on in his story, Jim is beginning the plot. They used him to corroborate everything as they advised. Jim is laying the foundation for the plot. What is it—this plot? Only that on Friday Frank was planning to commit some kind of assault upon Mary Phagan.

Jim was their tool. Even Scott swears that when he told Jim that Jim's story didn't fit, Jim very obligingly adapted it to suit his defense. He was scrupulous about things like that. He was quite considerate. Certainly. He had his own neck to save. Jim undertook to show that Frank had an engagement with some woman at the pencil factory that Saturday morning. There is no pretense that another woman is mixed up in the case. No one would argue that he planned to meet and assault this innocent little girl who was killed. Who but God would know whether she was coming for her pay that Friday afternoon or the next Saturday? Are we stark idiots? Can't we divine some things?

They've got a girl named Ferguson, who says she went for Mary Phagan's pay on the Friday before she was killed, and that Frank wouldn't give it to her. It is the wildest theory on earth, and it fits nothing. It is a strained conspiracy. Frank, to show you I am correct, had nothing whatever to do with paying off on Friday. Schiff did it all. And little Magnolia Kennedy, Helen Ferguson's best friend, says she was with Helen when Helen went to draw her pay, and that Helen never said a word about Mary's envelope. There's your conspiracy, with Jim Conley's story as its foundation. It's too thin. It ‘s preposterous.

Then my friend Hooper says Frank discharged Gantt because he saw Gantt talking to Mary Phagan. If you convict men on such distorted evidence as this, why you'd be hanging men perpetually. Gantt, in the first place, doesn't come into this case in any good light. It is ridiculously absurd to bring his discharge into this plot of the defense. Why, even Grace Hicks, who worked with Mary Phagan, and who is a sister-in-law of Boots Rogers, says that Frank did not know the little girl. Hooper also says that bad things are going on in the pencil factory, and that it is natural for men to cast about for girls in such environments. We are not trying this case on whether you or I or Frank had been perfect in the past. This is a case of murder. Let him who is without sin cast the first stone.

I say this much, and that is that there has been as little evidence of such conditions in this plant as any other of its kind you can find in the city. They have produced some, of course, but it is an easy matter to locate some ten or twelve disgruntled ex-employees who are vengeful enough to swear against their former superintendent, even though they don't know him except by sight. I want to ask this much : Could Frank have remained at the head of this concern if he had been as loose morally as the state has striven to show? If he had carried on with the girls of the place as my friend alleged, wouldn't the entire working force have been demoralized, ruined? He may have looked into this dressing room, as the little Jackson girl says, but, if he did, it was done to see that the girls weren't loitering. There were no lavatories, no toilets, no baths in these dressing rooms. The girls only changed their top garments. He wouldn't have seen much if he had peered into the place. You can go to Piedmont park any day and see girls and women with a whole lot less on their persons. And to the shows any night you can see the actresses with almost nothing on.

Everything brought against Frank was some act he did openly and in broad daylight, and an act against which no kick was made. The trouble with Hooper is that he sees a bear in every bush. He sees a plot in this because Frank told Jim Conley to come back Saturday morning. The office that day was filled with persons throughout the day. How could he know when Mary Phagan was coming or how many persons would be in the place when she arrived?

This crime is the hideous act of a negro who would ravish a ten-year-old girl the same as he would ravish a woman of years. It isn't a white man's crime. It's the crime of a beast—a low, savage beast!

Now, back to the case. There is an explorer in the pencil factory by the name of Barrett—I call him Christopher Columbus Barrett purely for his penchant for finding things. Mr. Barrett discovered the blood spots in the place where Chief Beavers, Chief Lanford and Mr. Black and Mr. Starnes had searched on the Sunday of the discovery. They found nothing of the sort. Barrett discovered the stains after he had proclaimed to the whole second floor that he was going to get the $4,000 reward if Mr. Frank was convicted. Now, you talk about plants! If this doesn't look mighty funny that a man expecting a reward would find blood spots in a place that has been scoured by detectives, I don't know what does. Four chips of this flooring were chiseled from this flooring where these spots were found. The floor was an inch deep in dirt and grease. Victims of accidents had passed by the spot with bleeding fingers and hands. If a drop of blood had ever fallen there, a chemist could find it four years later. Their contention is that all the big spots were undiluted blood. Yet, let's see how much blood Dr. Claude Smith found on the chips. Probably five corpuscles, that's all, and that's what he testified here at the trial. My recollection is that one single drop of blood contains 8,000 corpuscles. And, he found these corpuscles on only one chip. I say that half of the blood had been on the floor two or three years.

The stain on all chips but one were not blood. Dorsey's own doctors have put him where he can't wriggle—his own evidence hampers him! They found blood spots on a certain spot and then had Jim adapt his story accordingly. They had him put the finding of the body near the blood spots, and had him drop it right where the spots were found. It stands to reason that if a girl had been wounded on the lathing machine, there would have been blood in the vicinity of the machine. Yet, there was no blood in that place, and neither was there any where the body was said to have been found by Conley. The case doesn't fit. It's flimsy. And, this white machine oil that they've raised such a rumpus over. It was put on the floor as a cheap, common plant to make it appear as though someone had put it there in an effort to hide the blood spots. The two spots of blood and the strands of hair are the only evidence that the prosecution has that the girl was killed on the second floor.

Now, about these strands of hair. Barrett, the explorer, says he found four or five strands on the lathing machine. I don't know whether he did or not. They've never been produced. I've never seen them. But, it's probable, for just beyond the lathing machine, right in the path of a draft that blows in from the window, is a gas jet used by the girls in curling and primping their hair. It's very probable that strands of hair have been blown from this jet to the lathing machine.

The detectives say that Frank is a crafty, cunning criminal, when deep down in their heart of hearts they know good and well that their case is built against him purely because he was honest enough to admit having seen her that day. Had he been a criminal, he never would have told about seeing her and would have replaced her envelope in the desk, saying she had never called for her pay.

I believe that a majority of women are good. The state jumped on poor Daisy Hopkins. I don't contend, now, mind you, that she is a paragon of virtue. But there are men who were put up by the state who are no better than she. For instance, this Dalton, who says openly that he went into the basement with Daisy. I don't believe he ever did, but, in such a case, he slipped in. There are some fallen women who can tell the truth. They have characteristics like all other types. We put her on the stand to prove Dalton a liar, and she did it.

Now, gentlemen, don't you think the prosecution is hard pressed when they put up such a character as Dalton? They say he has reformed. A man with thievery in his soul never reforms. Drunkards do, and men with bad habits, but thieves! No. Would you convict a man like Frank on the word of a perjurer like Dalton?

Now, I'm coming back to Jim Conley. The whole case centers around him. Mr. Hooper argues well on that part. At the outset of the case, the suspicion pointed to Frank merely because he was the only man in the building. It never cropped out for weeks that anyone else was on the first floor. The detectives put their efforts on Frank because he admitted having seen the girl. They have let their zeal run away with them in this case, and it is tragic. They are proud whenever they get a prisoner who will tell something. The humbler the victim the worse is the case. Such evidence comes with the stamp of untruth on its face.

Jim Conley was telling his story to save his neck, and the detectives were happy listeners. If there is one thing for which a negro is capable it is for telling a story in detail. It is the same with children. Both have vivid imaginations. And a negro is also the best mimic in the world. He can imitate anybody. Jim Conley, as he lay in his cell and read the papers and talked with the detectives, conjured up his wonderful story, and laid the crime on Frank, because the detectives had laid it there and were helping him do the same.

Now, Brother Hooper waves the bloody shirt in our face. It was found, Monday or Tuesday, in Newt Lee's house, while Detectives Black and Scott were giving Cain to poor old man Newt Lee. I don't doubt for a minute that they knew it was out there when they started out after it. I can't say they planted it, but it does look suspicious. Don't ask us about a planted shirt. Ask Scott and Black.

The first thing that points to Conley ‘s guilt is his original denial that he could write. Why did he deny it? Why? I don't suppose much was thought of it when Jim said he couldn't write, because there are plenty of negroes who are in the same fix. But later, when they found he could, and found that his script compared perfectly with the murder notes, they went right on accusing Frank. Not in criminal annals was there a better chance to lay at the door of another man a crime than Jim Conley had. You see, there is a reason to all things. The detective department had many reasons to push the case against Frank. He was a man of position and culture. They were afraid that someone, unless they pushed the case to the jumping off place, would accuse them of trying to shield him. They are afraid of public and sentiment, and do not want to combat it, so, in such cases, they invariably follow the line of least resistance.

[Reading Conley's statement, Mr. Arnold pointed out the use of words, which he declared no negro would naturally have used.] These were long words with many syllables in them. They said that Conley used so much detail in his statements that he could not have been lying! [He then read parts of statements which Conley had repudiated as willful lies and pointed out the wealth of detail with which they were filled.] And yet they say he couldn't fabricate so much detail! Oh, he is smart! [He then read the statement of May 24, in which Conley admitted writing the notes. In this he shows three different times at which Conley stated he wrote the notes, these being early in the morning, at 12:04 and at 3 p.m.] The statements were not genuinely Conley's. Take the word "negro." The first word that a nigger learns to spell correctly is negro, and he always takes particular pains to spell it n-e-g-r-o. He knows how to spell it. Listen to the statement. He says that at first he spelled the word "negros," but that Frank did not want the "s" on it and told him to rub it out, which he did. Then he says that he wrote the word over.

Look at the notes. He was treed about those notes, and he had to tell a lie and put upon someone the burden of instructing him to write them. The first statement about them was a blunt lie—a lie in its incipiency. He said he wrote the notes on Friday. This was untrue, and unreasonable and he saw it. Frank could not have known anything of an intended murder on Friday from any viewpoint you might take, and therefore he could not have made Conley write them on Friday.

Ah, gentlemen of the jury, I tell you these people had a great find when they got this admission from Conley ! If Conley had stayed over there in the Tower with Uncle Wheeler Mangum he would have told the truth long ago. There's where he should have stayed, with Wheeler Mangum. My good friend, Dorsey, is all right. I like him. But he should not have walked hand in glove with the detectives. There's where he went wrong. My good old friend, Charlie Hill would not have done that. He would have let the nigger stay in the jail with Uncle Wheeler.

I like Dorsey. He simply made a mistake by joining in the hunt, in becoming a part of the chase. The solicitor should be little short of as fair as the judge himself. But he's young and lacks the experience. He will probably know better in the future. Dorsey did this : He went to the judge and got the nigger moved from the jail to the police station. The judge simply said, "Whatever you say is all right."

Now, I'm going to show you how John Black got the statement of Conley changed. I am going to give you a demonstration. I have learned some things in this case about getting evidence . They say that Frank cut Conley loose and he decided to tell the truth. Conley is a wretch with a long criminal record. Gentlemen, how can they expect what he says to be believed against the statement of Leo M. Frank? They say Conley can't lie about detail. Here are four pages, all of which he himself admits are lies. They are about every saloon on Peters Street, saloons to which he went, his shooting craps, his buying beer and all the ways in which he spent a morning. There is detail enough, and he admits that they are lies. Now, in his third statement, that of May 28, he changes the time of writing the letters from Friday to Saturday. Here are two pages of what he said, all of which he afterwards said were lies. He says that he made the statement that he wrote the notes on Friday in order to divert suspicion from his being connected with the murder which happened on Saturday. He also says that this is his final and true statement. God only knows how many statements he will make. He said he made the statement voluntarily and truthfully without promise of reward, and that he is telling the truth and the whole truth. He said in his statement that he never went to the building on Saturday. Yet we know that he was lurking in the building all the morning on the day of the murder. We know that he watched every girl that walked into that building so closely that he could tell you the spots on their dresses. We know that he was drunk, or had enough liquor in him to fire his blood. I know why he wouldn't admit being in that building on Saturday. He had guilt on his soul, and he didn't want it to be known that he was here on Saturday.

That's why when they pinned him down, what did he do? He says that he was watching for Frank. My God, wasn't he a watchman! He said that he heard Frank and Mary Phagan walking upstairs, and that he heard Mary Phagan scream, and that immediately after hearing the scream he let Monteen Stover into the building. Why, they even have him saying that he watched for Frank, when another concern was using the very floor space in which Frank's office was located, and you know they wouldn't submit to anything like that.

Look again! He says that Mr. Frank said, "Jim, can you write?" What a lie ! He admitted that he had been writing for Frank for two years. It's awful to have to argue about a thing like this, gentlemen ! You will remember Hooper said, "How foolish of Conley to write these notes ! " How much more foolish, I say, of Frank to do it!

I don't think that Newt killed the girl, but I believe he discovered the body some time before he notified the police. Newt's a good nigger. Scott said that it took Conley six minutes to write a part of one note. Conley said that he wrote the notes three times.

They say that nigger couldn't lie. Gentlemen, if there is any one thing that nigger can do, it is to lie. As my good old friend, Charlie Hill, would say, "Put him in a hopper and hell drip lye!"

He was trying to prove an alibi for himself when he said that he was not in the factory on Saturday and told all the things that he did elsewhere on that day. But we know that the wretch was lurking in the factory all of Saturday morning. Further, he swore that while he was in Frank's office he heard someone approaching, and Mr. Frank cried out, "Gee! Here come Corinthia Hall and Emma Clarke!" and that Frank shut him up in a wardrobe until they left. According to Conley, they came into the factory between 12 and 1 o'clock, when as a matter of fact, we know that they came between 11 and 12.

And as for his being able to fabricate the details of his statement—why, he knew every inch of that building from top to bottom! Hadn't he been sweeping and cleaning it for a long time? With this knowledge of the building, he naturally had no trouble in his pantomime after he had formed his story. The miserable wretch has Frank hiding him in the wardrobe when Emma Clarke came in after the murder, when it has been proved that she came there and left before Mary Phagan ever entered the building on that day. They saw where they were wrong in that statement, and they made Conley change it on the stand. They made him say, "I thought it was them." They knew that that story wouldn't fit.

Do you remember, how eagerly Conley took the papers from the girls at the factory? And do you remember how for four or five days the papers were full of the fact that Frank's home was in Brooklyn, and that his relatives were reported to be wealthy? Conley didn't have to go far to get material for that statement he put in Frank's mouth. It so happened, though, that Frank really did not have rich relatives in Brooklyn. His mother testified that his father was in ill health, and had but moderate means and that his sister worked in New York for her living.

Gentlemen, am I living or dreaming, that I have to argue such points as these? This is what you've got to do: You've got to swallow every word that Conley has said—feathers and all, or you've got to believe none of it. How are you going to pick out of such a pack of lies as these what you will believe and what you will not? Yet, this is what the prosecution has based the case upon. If this fails, all fails. And do you remember about the watch, where Conley said that Frank asked him, "Why do you want to buy a watch for your wife? My big, fat wife wanted me to buy her an automobile, but I wouldn't do it!" Do you believe that, gentlemen of the jury? I tell you that they have mistreated this poor woman terribly. They have insinuated that she would not come to the tower to see Frank—had deserted him. When we know that she stayed away from the jail at Frank's own request because he did not want to submit her to the humiliation of seeing him locked up and to the vulgar gaze of the morbid and to the cameras of the newspaper men. The most awful thing in the whole case is the way this family has been mistreated!

The way they invaded Frank's home and manipulated his servants. I deny that the people who did this are representative of the 175,000 people of Fulton county. We are a fair people, and we are a chivalrous people. Such acts as these are not in our natures.

Conley next changes the time of the writing of the notes to Saturday, but denies knowledge of the murder. That, of course, did not satisfy these gentlemen, and they went back to him. They knew he was dodging incrimination. So they had him to change the statement again. Scott and other detectives spent six hours at the time with Conley on occasions and used profanity and worried him to get a confession. Hooper thinks that we have to break down Conley's testimony on the stand, but there is no such ruling. You can't tell when to believe him, he has lied so much. Scott says the detectives went over the testimony with Dorsey. There is where my friend got into it. They grilled Conley for six hours, trying to impress on him the fact that Frank would not have written the notes on Friday. They wanted another statement. He insisted that he had no other statement to make, but he did change the time of the writing of the notes from Friday to Saturday. This shows, gentlemen, as clearly as anything can show, how they got Conley ‘s statements.

In the statement of May 29, they had nothing from Jim Conley about his knowledge of the killing of the little girl, and the negro merely said that Frank had told him something about the girl having received a fall and about his helping Frank to hide the body. Oh, Conley, we are going to have you tell enough to have you convict Frank and yet keep yourself clear. That's a smart negro, that Conley. And you notice how the state bragged on him because he stood up under the cross-examination of Colonel Rosser. Well, that negro's been well versed in law. Scott and Black and Starnes drilled him; they gave him the broad hints.

We came here to go to trial, and knew nothing of the negro's claim to seeing the cord around the little girl's neck, or of his claim of seeing Lemmie Quinn go into the factory, or of a score of other things. Yet, Conley was then telling the truth, he said, and he had thrown Frank aside. Oh, he was no longer shielding Frank, and yet he didn't tell it all when he said he was telling the whole truth. Well, Conley had a revelation, you know. My friend Dorsey visited with him seven times. And my friend, Jim Starnes, and my Irish friend, Patrick Campbell, they visited him, and on each visit Conley saw new light. Well, I guess they showed him things and other things. Does Jim tell a thing because it's the truth, gentlemen of the jury, or because it fits into something that another witness has told?

Scott says they told him thing that fitted. And Conley changed things every time he had a visit from Dorsey and the detectives. Are you going to hang a man on that?

Gentlemen, it's foolish for me to have to argue such a thing. The man that wrote those murder notes is the man who killed that girl. Prove that man was there and that he wrote the notes and you know who killed the girl. Well, Conley acknowledges he wrote the notes and witnesses have proved he was there and he admits that, too. That negro was in the building near the elevator shaft; it took but two steps for him to grab that little girl's mesh bag. She probably held on to it and struggled with him. A moment later he had struck her in the eye and she had fallen. It is the work of a moment for Conley to throw her down the elevator shaft. Isn't it more probable that the story I have outlined is true than the one that Conley tells on Frank?

Suppose Conley were now under indictment and Frank out, how long would such a story against Frank stand the pressure? In the statement of May 29 there are any number of things that are not told of which later were told on the stand. In the May 29 statement Conley never told of seeing Mary Phagan enter; he never told of seeing Monteen Stover enter, nor of seeing Lemmie Quinn enter; now he tells of having seen all of them enter. Don't you see how they just made it to fit witnesses and what the witnesses would swear? It was, "Here, Conley, swear that Quinn came up, swear that the dead girl came up, and swear that Miss Stover came up ; they all did, and it's true, swear to it !" And Conley would say, "All right, boss, Ah reckon they did." And it was "Conley, how did you fail to hear that girl go into the metal room? We know she went there, because by our blood and hair we have proved she was killed there," and the poor negro thought a minute, and then he said, "Yes, boss, I heard her go in." The state's representatives had put it into the negro's head to swear he heard Frank go in with her, and that he heard Frank come tiptoeing out later, and that by that method they made Conley swear that Frank was a moral pervert.

Now, I don't know that they told Conley to swear to this and to swear to that, but they made the suggestions, and Conley knew whom he had to please. He knew that when he pleased the detectives that the rope knot around his neck grew looser. In the same way they made Conley swear about Dalton, and in the same way about Daisy Hopkins. They didn't ask him about the mesh bag. They forgot that until Conley got on the stand. That mesh bag and that pay envelope furnish the true motive for this crime, too, and if the girl was ravished, Conley did it after he had robbed her and thrown her body into the basement.

Well, they got Conley on the stand, and my friend Dorsey here asked Conley about the mesh bag, and he said, yes, Frank had put it in his safe. That was the crowning lie of all! Well, they've gone on this way, adding one thing and another, thing. They wouldn't let Conley out of jail; they had their own reasons for that, and yet I never heard that old man over there (pointing to the sheriff) called dishonest. He runs his jail in a way to protect the innocent and not to convict them in this jail.

Gentlemen, right here a little girl was murdered, and it's a terrible crime. The Phagan tragedy, the crime that stirred Atlanta as none other ever did. We have already got in court the man who wrote those notes, and the man who by his own confession was there; the man who robbed her, and, gentlemen, why go further in seeking the murderer than the black brute who sat there by the elevator shaft?

The man who sat by that elevator shaft is the man who committed the crime. He was full of passion and lust ; he had drunk of mean whiskey, and he wanted money at first to buy more whiskey. [Mr. Arnold asked the sheriff to unwrap a chart which had previously been brought into court. It proved to be a chronological chart of Frank's alleged movements on Saturday, April 26, the day of the crime, and Mr. Arnold announced to the jury that he would prove by the chart that it was a physical impossibility for Frank to have committed the crime.]

Every word on that chart is taken from the evidence, and it will show you that Frank did not have time to commit the crime charged to him. The state has wriggled a lot in this affair; they put up little George Epps, and he swore that he and Mary Phagan got to town about seven after twelve, and then they used other witnesses, and my friend Dorsey tried to boot the Epps boy's evidence aside as though it were nothing. The two street car men, Hollis and Mathews, say that Mary Phagan got to Forsyth and Marietta at five or six minutes after twelve, and they stuck to it, despite every attempt to bulldoze them, and then Mathews, who rode on the car to Whitehall and Mitchell, says that Mary Phagan rode around with him to Broad and Hunter streets before she got off.

Well, the state put up McCoy, the man who never got his watch out of soak until about the time he was called as a witness, and they had him swear that he looked at his watch at Walton and Forsyth (and he never had any watch), and it was 12 o'clock exactly, and then he walked down the street and saw Mary Phagan on her way to the factory. Now, I don't believe McCoy ever saw Mary Phagan. Epps may have seen her, but the State apparently calls him a liar, when they introduce other testimony to show a change of time to what he swore to. It's certain those two street car men who knew the girl, saw her, but the state comes in with the watchless McCoy and Kendley, the Jew-hater, and try to advance new theories about the time and different ones from what their own witness had sworn to. Well, we have enough to prove the time, all right; we have the street car schedule, the statement of Hollis and Mathews and of George Epps, the state's own witness.

The next thing is, how long did it take Conley to go through with what he claims happened from the time he went into Frank's office and was told to get the body until he left the factory. According to Conley's own statement, he started at four minutes to 1 o'clock and got through at 1:30 o'clock, making 34 minutes in all Harlee Branch says that he was there when the detectives made Conley go through with what he claimed took place, and that he started then at 12 :17, and by Mr. Branch's figures, it took Conley 50 minutes to complete the motions. Well, the state has attacked nearly everybody we have brought into this case, but they didn't attack Dr. William Owen, and he showed by his experiments that Conley could not have gone through those motions in 34 minutes. Jim Conley declared that he started at 4 minutes to 1 o'clock to get the body, and that he and Frank left at 1 :30. If we ever pinned the negro down to anything, we did to that, and we have shown that he could not have done all that in 34 minutes.

Away with your filth and your dirty, shameful evidence of perversion; your low street gossip, and come back to the time—the time-element in the case. Now, I don't believe the little Stover girl ever went into the inner office. She was a sweet, innocent, timid little girl, and she just peeped into the office from the outer one, and if Frank was in there, the safe door hid him from her view, or if he was not there, he might have stepped out for just a moment. Oh, my friend, Dorsey, he stops clocks and he changes schedules, and he even changes a man's whole physical make-up, and he's almost changed the course of time in an effort to get Frank convicted. Oh, I hate to think of little Mary Phagan in this. I hate to think that such a sweet, pure, good little girl as she was, with never a breath of anything wrong whispered against her, should have her memory polluted with such rotten evidence against an innocent man.

Well, Mary Phagan entered the factory at approximately 12 minutes after 12, and did you ever stop to think that it was Frank who told them that the girl entered the office when she entered it? If he had killed her he would have just slipped her pay envelope back in the safe and declared that he never saw her that day at all, and then no one could have ever explained how she got into that basement. But Frank couldn't know that there was hatred enough left in this country against his race to bring such a hideous charge against him.

Well, the little girl entered, and she got her pay and asked about the metal and then she left, but, there was a black spider waiting down there near the elevator shaft, a great passionate, lustful animal, full of mean whiskey and wanting money with which to buy more whiskey. He was as full of vile lust as he was of the passion for more whiskey, and the negro (and there are a thousand of them in Atlanta who would assault a white woman if they had the chance and knew they wouldn't get caught) robbed her and struck her and threw her body down the shaft, and later he carried it back, and maybe, if she was alive, when he came back, he committed a worse crime, and then he put the cord around her neck and left the body there.

Do you suppose Frank would have gone out at 1 :20 o'clock and left that body in the basement and those two men, White and Denham, at work upstairs? Do you suppose an intelligent man like Frank would have risked running that elevator, like Conley says he did, with the rest of the machinery of the factory shut off and nothing to prevent those men up there hearing him? Well, Frank says he left the factory at 1 o'clock, and Conley says he left there at 1 :30. Now, there's a little girl, who tried the week before to get a job as stenographer in Frank's office, who was standing at Whitehall and Alabama streets, and saw Frank at ten minutes after 1. Did she lie? Well, Dorsey didn't try to show it, and according to Dorsey, everybody lied except Conley and Dalton and Albert McKnight. This little girl says she knows it was Frank, because Professor Briscoe had introduced her to him the week before, and she knows the time of day because she had looked at a clock, as she had an engagement to meet another little girl. That stamps your Conley story a lie blacker than hell!

Then, Mrs. Levy, she's a Jew, but she's telling the truth; she was looking for her son to come home, and she saw Frank get off the car at his home corner, and she looked at her clock and saw it was 1 :20. Then, Mrs. Selig and Mr. Selig swore on the stand that they knew he came in at 1 :20. Oh, of course, Dorsey says they are Frank's parents and wretched liars when they say they saw him come in at 1 :20. There's no one in this case that can tell the truth but Conley, Dalton and Albert McKnight. They are the lowest dregs and jail-birds, and all that, but they are the only ones who know how to tell the truth! Well, now Albert says he was there at the Selig home when Frank came in; of course he is lying, for his wife and the Seligs prove that, but he's the state's witness and he says Frank got there at 1 :30, and thus he brands Conley's story about Frank's leaving the factory at 1:30 a lie. Well, along the same lines, Albert says Frank didn't eat and that he was nervous, and Albert says he learned all this by looking into a mirror in the dining room, and seeing Frank's reflection. Then Albert caps the climax to his series of lies by having Frank board the car for town at Pulliam street and Glenn.

Now as to the affidavit signed by Minola McKnight, the cook for Mr. and Mrs. Emil Selig. How would you feel, gentlemen of the jury, if your cook, who had done no wrong and for whom no warrant had been issued, and from whom the solicitor had already got a statement, was to be locked up? Well, they got that wretched husband of Minola ‘s by means of Graven and Pickett, two men seeking a reward, and then they got Minola, and they said to her, "Oh, Minola, why don't you tell the truth like Albert's telling it?" They had no warrant when they locked this woman up. Starnes was guilty of a crime when he locked that woman up without a warrant, and Dorsey was, too, if he had anything to do with it. Now, George Gordon, Minola's lawyer, says that he asked Dorsey about getting the woman out, and Dorsey replied, "I'm afraid to give my consent to turning her loose; I might get in bad with the detective department." That's the way you men got evidence, was it?

Miss Rebecca Carson, a forewoman of the National Pencil factory, swore Frank had a good character. The state had introduced witnesses who swore that the woman and Frank had gone into the woman's dressing room when no one was around. I brand it a culmination of all lies when this woman was attacked. Frank had declared her to be a perfect lady with no shadow of suspicion against her. Well, Frank went on back to the factory that afternoon when he had eaten his lunch, and he started in and made out the financial sheet. I don't reckon he could have done that if he had just committed a murder, particularly when the state says he was so nervous the next morning that he shook and trembled. Then, the state says Frank wouldn't look at the corpse. But who said he didn't t Nobody. Why, Gheesling and Black didn't swear to that. Now, gentlemen, I've about finished this chapter, and I know it's been long and hard on you and I know it's been hard on me, too; I'm almost broken down, but it means a lot to that man over there. It means a lot to him, and don't forget that.

This case has been made up of just two things — prejudice and perjury. I've never seen such malice, such personal hatred in all my life, and I don't think anyone ever has. The crime itself is dreadful, too horrible to talk about, and God grant that the murderer may be found out, and I think he has. I think we can point to Jim Conley and say there is the man. But, above all, gentlemen, let's follow the law in this matter. In circumstantial cases you can't convict a man as long as there's any other possible theory for the crime of which he is accused, and you can't find Frank guilty if there's a chance that Conley is the murderer. The state has nothing on which to base their case but Conley, and we've shown Conley a liar. Write your verdict of not guilty and your consciences will give your approval.

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