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

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Reading Time: 3 minutes [385 words]

Here is the translated text as follows:

Many things, said Judge Story, had been brought into the present case which he regretted. However, the counsel for the defense had undoubtedly done right in omitting nothing that might have occurred to their minds as likely to benefit the prisoners. The jury had been presented with many cases to illustrate the difficulty of deciding upon the identity of individuals. Some of these cases might be founded in fact, or they might, for all anyone could say to the contrary, be figments of the imagination. They were commonplaces of the law and had been cited before him for the same purposes as now, in almost every criminal trial in which he had been engaged.

If these cases served any purpose, they established two things: first, that unless the body were found, there ought to be no conviction; second, that because men had testified falsely or had been mistaken as to identity, testimony ought not to be taken. Now, these positions were absurd. If no conviction ought to take place unless the body of a murdered person is found, what is to be done in cases of murder at sea, where the body is thrown overboard and buried beneath the broad ocean?

The cases of murder were numerous, and were they to be told that a jury had no right to convict because the body could not be produced from the depths of the sea? Men had been convicted on false testimony; and what then? Are we to say that jurors shall never convict because men have been found base and wicked enough to perjure themselves for the purpose of taking away the life of a fellow being? No one, surely, will contend for doctrines of this kind. If they were admitted, our courts would be useless, not only in criminal but civil cases, and instead of being here today, the law ought to prescribe that there should be no courts, no administration of justice throughout our country.

Human testimony is almost the only thing upon which we can rely in this world; and he who undertakes to shake our faith in it, undertakes to shake our faith in everything on earth, and I had almost said, in heaven. Where would be the consolations of Christianity, which are based on human testimony? How...