117 Sheet – American State Trials 1918 Volume X Leo Frank Document

Reading Time: 3 minutes [418 words]


Here is the translated text as follows:

EDWARD D. WORRELL. 85

It was hypothesized that she was guilty, but her guilt was not excluded. However, it never occurred to him to suggest to the jury that, as the house in which the woman was murdered stood upon an alley, on the opposite side of which was another house, also of two stories, it was possible that the murderer entered the opposite building, hoisted a window facing the alley, extended a plank to the sill of the window of the upper story of that in which the mistress was sleeping, walked across on the plank, raised the sash, descended, did the deed, and returning the same way, hid all trace of the crime. He did not think of that! The jury did not think of that! The boasted reason and the quick imagination did not take in their wide range any combination of circumstances so wild and extravagant; and so the innocent girl perished on the gallows! And yet, all this wild extravagance was simple truth! Simple as the way to make an egg stand on end, just as simple as the truth which philosophy pronounced impossible until the egg did stand on end, and which philosophy then pronounced a truth so simple that none but the simple ever doubted it. "Hang up philosophy," which cannot see the truth; and "hang up" the "reasoning process" which hangs the innocent.

I continue from the authority the history of the girl:

"It afterwards appeared, by the confession of one of the real murderers, that they had gained admission to the house, which was situated in a narrow street, by means of a board thrust across the street, from an upper window of a house opposite to an upper window of the house of the deceased; and retreating the same way, leaving no trace behind them."

This is the rock on which circumstantial evidence ever splits. We cannot reason safely from the known to the unknown. Truth half told is always a lie. Circumstantial evidence never brings out all the facts, the whole truth, and we cannot by imagination supply what is left out. Worse than that, "truth lies in the bottom of the well," and the human mind dislikes the labor of going down to bring it up. If it can find anything resembling truth at the top, it will avoid the descent.

It is needless to go through the mournful catalogue of judicial murders done by circumstantial evidence. Its victims are numerous and their stories tragic.

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