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

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Reading Time: 3 minutes [398 words]

Here is the translated text as follows:

388 XY. AMERICAN STATE TRIALS.

Man Scott, one of the most material witnesses, although the detective of this defendant's company, might also throw me down. Scott says this man Frank, when he went there Monday afternoon, after he had anxiously phoned Schiff to see old man Sig Montag and get Sig Montag's permission—had phoned him three times—Scott says that he squirmed in his chair continually, crossed and uncrossed his legs, rubbed his face with his hand, sighed, twisted and drew long deep breaths. After going to the station Tuesday morning, just before his arrest—if he ever was arrested—just before his detention, at another time altogether from the time that Darley speaks of—Darley, the man for whom he sent, Darley the man who is next to him in power, Darley the man that he wanted to sustain his nerve—Scott, your own detective, says that he was nervous and pale, and that when he saw him at the factory, his eyes were large and glaring.

Tuesday morning, Waggoner, sent up there to watch him from across the street, says before the officers came to get him, he could see Frank pacing his office inside, through the windows, and that he came to the office window and looked out at him twelve times in thirty minutes—that he was agitated and nervous on the way down to the station.

I want to read you here an excerpt from the speech of a man by the name of Hammond, when prosecuting a fellow by the name of Dunbar for the murder of two little children. It explains in language better than I can command, why all this nervousness:

"It was because the mighty secret of the fact was in his heart; it was the overwhelming consciousness of guilt striving within him; it was nature over-burdened with a terrible load; it was a conscience striving beneath a tremendous crushing weight; it was fear, remorse and terror—remorse for the past, and terror for the future. Spectral shadows were flitting before him"—the specter of the dead girl, the cord, the blood, arose. "The specter of this trial, of the prison, of the gallows and the grave of infamy. Guilt, gentlemen of the jury, forces itself into speech and conduct, and is its own betrayer."

Mr. Rosser said that once a thief, always a thief and eternally damned. Holy Writ, in giving the picture of the...

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