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

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Reading Time: 3 minutes [397 words]

Here is the translated text as follows:

WILLIAM WEMHS AND SEVEN OTHERS. 479

The law allows one to act upon unavoidable necessity; but also, he who, being assaulted in such a manner and in such a place that he cannot retreat without manifestly endangering his life, kills the other without retreating at all. See. 16. "And an officer who kills one that insults him in the execution of his office, and where a private person that kills one who feloniously assaults him in the highway may justify the fact without ever giving back at all."

In the case before you, I suppose you will be satisfied when you come to examine the witnesses and compare it with the rules of common law, abstracted from all mutiny acts and articles of war, that these soldiers were in such a situation that they could not help themselves. People were coming from Royal Exchange Lane and other parts of the town with clubs and cord-wood sticks. The soldiers were positioned by the wall of the custom-house; they could not retreat, as they were surrounded on all sides, with people behind them as well as before them. There were a number of people in Royal Exchange Lane; the soldiers were so near to the custom-house that they could not retreat unless they had gone into the brick wall of it. I shall show you presently that all the party concerned in this unlawful design were guilty of what any one of them did; if anybody threw a snowball, it was the act of the whole party; if any struck with a club or threw a club, and the club had killed anybody, the whole party would have been guilty of murder in law.

Rules of law should be universally known, whatever effect they may have on policies. They are rules of common law, the law of the land; and it is certainly true that, wherever there is an unlawful assembly, let it consist of many persons or a few, every man in it is guilty of every unlawful act committed by any one of the whole party, be they more or be they less, in pursuance of their unlawful design. This is the policy of the law, to discourage and prevent riots, insurrections, turbulence, and tumults.

In the continual vicissitudes of human things, amidst the shocks of fortune and the whirls of passion that take place...