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

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408 X. AMERICAN STATE TRIALS.

**Judge Roan:** Mr. Sheriff, I will pass sentence tomorrow. Have the prisoner here. I will notify you in time of the hour. Gentlemen of the jury, I thank you for your patient service in this case. This has been the longest trial I have ever participated in, and I dare say the longest you ever have or ever will. Thanking you again for your long and faithful service and arduous labors, the Court will now dismiss you. The state will furnish your script for twenty-nine days.

August 26.

**Judge Roan:** Mr. Frank, stand up. The jury, which has been trying you for days, or rather for weeks, on yesterday afternoon rendered a verdict finding you guilty of murder. It is now my duty as the presiding judge of this court to pass the sentence of the law upon you for that offense. Before I pass that sentence, have you anything to say, wherefore it should not be passed?

**Frank:** I say now, as I have always said, that I am innocent. Further than that, my case is in the hands of my counsel.

**Judge Roan:** Mr. Frank, I have tried to see that you had a fair trial for the offense for which you have been indicted. I have the consciousness of knowing that I have made every effort, as the law requires me to do, to see that your trial was fair. Your counsel has notified me that a motion for a new trial will be made.

From the courthouse door, he was picked up bodily by members of the waiting crowd and, on their shoulders, carried to his office in the Kiser building across Pryor Street. The shouting was deafening when the solicitor appeared in the street. Two ballots were cast by the jury before an agreement was reached. The first ballot cast showed eleven members for a verdict of guilty without the recommendation of mercy and one in doubt. After one more ballot, an hour later, the twelfth man came over to the majority and made the early verdict possible. Judge Roan declared that never in all of his experience had he witnessed such a demonstration following the announcement of a verdict. The shout from the 2,000 gathered outside the courtroom attracted more, and in ten minutes after the verdict was made public, the crowd was so great that the police reserves began riding through it in an effort to disperse it—Atlanta Journal, Aug. 26, 1913.

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