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

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Reading Time: 3 minutes [418 words]

Here is the translated text as follows:

PEDRO GIBERT AND OTHERS

In the ocean of life, there are in his bosom the same social sympathies that animate our own. He has nerves to feel pain and a heart to throb with human affections, just as you do. His life, to establish the law or to further the ends of justice, is not required. Taken, it is of no value to us; given to him, it is above the price of rubies.

And Costa, the cabin boy, only fifteen years of age when this crime was committed—shall he die? Shall the sword fall upon his neck? Some of you are advanced in years—you may have children. Suppose the news reached you that your son was on trial for his life in a foreign country (and every cabin boy who leaves this port may find himself in the situation of this prisoner). Suppose you were told that he had been executed because his captain and officers violated the laws of a distant land; what would be your feelings? I cannot tell, but I believe the feelings of all of you would be the same, and that you would exclaim, with the Hebrew, “My son! My son! Would to God I had died for thee.”

This boy has a father; let the form of that father rise up before you and plead in your hearts for his offspring. Perhaps he has a mother and a home. Think of the lengthened shadow that must have been cast over that home by his absence. Think of his mother during those hours of wretchedness when she felt hope darkening into disappointment, then into anxiety, and from anxiety into despair. How often may she have stretched forth her hands in supplication and asked even the winds of heaven to bring her tidings of him who was away? Let the supplications of that mother touch your hearts and shield their object from the law.

I have thus endeavored to impress upon you that you are not to judge these men as a mass. Condemn not, I beseech you, a single one of them unless you see upon his hands the red spot of guilt. It is my interest, as a member of society, as much as it is yours, that the guilty should be punished. Where the sin lies, there let the axe fall; but be sure that the crime has been committed before you inflict the penalty. You can never be called to perform a more serious duty than this.