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

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Reading Time: 3 minutes [423 words]

Here is the translated text as follows:

LEO M. FRANK. 309

Is it possible for someone to have the audacity and passion to come up here and swear that that man's character is bad if it is not true? I tell you it can't be done, and you know it.

Ah, but on the other hand, Doctor Marx, Doctor Sonn, and all these other people, as Mr. Hooper said, who run with Doctor Jekyll, don't know the character of Mr. Hyde. And he didn't call Doctor Marx down to the factory on Saturday evenings to show what he was going to do with those girls, but the girls know.

Now, gentlemen, put yourself in this man's place. If you are a man of good character, and twenty people come in here and state that you are of bad character, your counsel has the right to ask them who they ever heard talking about you, what they ever heard said, and what they ever saw. Is it possible, I'll ask you in the name of common sense, that you would permit your counsel to sit mute? You wouldn't do it, would you? If a man says that I am a person of bad character, I want to know; curiosity makes me want to know. And if it's proclaimed and published to the world and it's a lie, I want to nail the lie—to show that he never saw it, and never heard it, and knows nothing about it. And yet, three able counsel and an innocent man, and twenty or more girls, all of whom had worked in the factory but none of whom work there at this time, except one on the fourth floor, tell you that that man had a bad character and had a bad character for lasciviousness—the uncontrolled and uncontrollable passion that led him on to kill poor Mary Phagan. This book says it is allowable to cross-examine a witness to see and find out what he knows and who told him those things—and I'm here to tell you that this thing of itself is pregnant, pregnant, pregnant with significance, and does not comport with innocence on the part of any man. We furnished him the names of some. Well, even by their own witnesses, it looks to me there was a leak, and little Miss Jackson dropped it out just as easily. Now, what business did this man have going up there, peering in on those little girls—the head of the factory, the man that wanted flirting forbidden? What business did he have?