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

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Reading Time: 3 minutes [414 words]

Here is the translated text as follows:

LEO M. FRANK, 289

Now, another thing. We didn't have to put Frank's character up. If we hadn't, the judge would have told you that Frank must be presumed to have a good character, and that you did not have the right to ask that question about him. But we thought you were, and we put it up and see what a character the man has. There's not a man in the sound of my voice who could prove a better character. Of course, I mean from the credible evidence, not that stuff of Conley's and Dalton's.

But you say, some people, some former employees swore he had a bad character. You know that when you want to, you can always get someone to swear against anybody's character. Put me in his place and let my friend, Arnold, be foolish enough to put my character up, and there'd be plenty of those I have maybe hurt or offended as I have gone through life, who would swear it was wrong, and I believe I've got an ordinarily good character. Why, you could bring twenty men here in Fulton County to swear that Judge Roan, there on the bench, has a bad character. You know that he's had to judge men and sometimes to be what they thought was severe on them, and he's naturally made men hate him and they'd gladly come and swear his character away. But if the men and women who live near him, the good and decent men and women who lived near him and knew, came up and said his character was good, you'd believe them, wouldn't you?

Well, gentlemen, the older I get, the gentler I get, and I wouldn't think or say anything wrong about those misleading little girls who swore Frank was a bad man. I guess they thought they were telling the truth. Well, did Miss Maggie Griffin really think Frank was a vicious man and yet work there three years with him? Don't you think she heard things against him after the crime was committed and that when she got up here and looked through the heated atmosphere of this trial, she did not see the real truth? And Miss Maggie Griffin, she was there two months; I wonder what she could know about Frank in that time. There was Mrs. Donegan and Miss Johnson and another girl there about two months, and Nellie Potts, who never worked there at all.