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in the words of Holy Writ, he was certain
to betray one master or the oilier.
If the papers published outside of Geor
gia would care to realize the shame we feel
over our disgrace, let them suppose a case
in which THEIR GOVERNOR uses the
executive office as an asset in the law-prac
tice of his firm.
When they bring the facts home to them
selves, in this practical way, they will be
less inclined to crown Partner Slaton as a
hero; and they will be able to take his true
measure, as a secondary member of the firm
that is absolutely dominated by Rosser.
Slaton had many friends who, directly
and indirectly, endeavored to impress upon
him the ambiguity of his position, the im
propriety of his legal connection with
Frank's lawyers, and the impossibility of
his acting faithfully, both as Rosser’s part
ner, and as Georgia’s Chief Magistrate.
I was one of those friends!
The tiles of this paper will prove that I
did my utmost to warn Slaton of the
abyss into which he was plunging.
But some relentless, invisible power held
him, and he refused to be advised, or
warned.
I was not by any means the only Geor
gian who implored him not to act in the
dual capacity of Georgia’s Governor and
Rosser's partner.
Read the following, and see how deli
cately a member of the Atlanta bar
broached the subject to Slaton:
f
, Atlanta, Ga., June 3, 1915.
Hon. John M. Slaton, Governor of Georgia:
My Dear Sir: In reference to the Frank case
that will shortly be before you for your consid
eration, as Chief Executive of the State, I beg to
state that it is being commonly discussed that it
is a move to hurry the case before you for action
before your term of office expires. Your ene
. mies are criticising now this movement.
As the case has not at this time reached you
for your consideration, but has been upon appli
cation heard by the Prison Commission and now
there ioi' their final consideration, which means
shortly to be transmitted to your consideration,
I make this suggestion: that as it is common
knowledge that you have a great deal of detail
work to dispose of before your term of office ex
pires, and as your successor has been elected by
the people before the application for a pardon
or commutation of sentence in the Frank case
was filed, and as your successor will shortly be
inaugurated and assume the duties of Governor,
and as the record of the Frank case, on account
of the different stages in which the case has
travelled through the courts will be voluminous
and will require careful examination, which will
be very lengthy, and as it is common knowledge
that you are a member of the firm in which the
Hon. Luthur Rosser, senior counsel for Mr.
Frank is a member, notwithstanding that you
have never practised law as a member of that
firm or otherwise, since you were inaugurated
Governor, I suggest that a reprieve by you in
Frank’s case be issued and granted and let the
case go to Mr. Harris, thef Governor-elect, for
final consideration; and in granting the reprieve,
let the people, through the order granting the
reprieve, knew that you send it to Mr. Harris
UPON THE HIGH GROUNDS OF YOUR CON
NECTIONS.
Now, dear Governor, if this course is pursued
from my viewpoint, your bitterest enemies would
shrink with shame in charging improper motives
in dealing with your action in Hie case.
As to the Frank case, I beg to state that I have
no interest, directly or indirectly. It is imma
terial to me what disposition is made of his case.
Respectfully yours, S. C. CRANE.
Slaton did not deign to acknowledge the
receipt of Mr. Crane’s letter —a letter which
put him especially upon notice that it was
common talk that the case was being hur
ried before him, to keep it from being
passed upon by Governor Harris.
I am informed that the Judge who sen
tenced Frank the last time, suggested the
same thing to Slaton, and offered to fix
the date of Frank’s execution so that Gov
ernor Harris would have to pass on the ap
plication for clemency; and that Slaton
said “No!” He demanded that the case
come before him!
THE JEFFERSONIAN
To the New York Slaton said:
The Supreme Court of our State never passed
upon the merits of the Frank case, and under our
Constitution could not do so. Under our Consti
tion the Supreme Court is a court to correct
errors of law, not fact. 'ln New York you have
an Appellate Division, which can review facts.
Power of the Trial Judge.
We have no such court in Georgia, but our
Supreme Court is limited to the correction solely
of errors of law, and if there be any evidence
tending to convict Frank the Supreme Court has
no power to set aside the verdict of the jury.
Under our system in Georgia the only judge
who has any power to review the merits of the
case and to consider the weight of testimony
or to determine the justice of the cause is the
trial judge who presided at the trial. This was
Judge Roan.
Isn't it a shame that Slaton should
be telling this sort of stuff to the Northern
people, when every lawyer in Georgia
knows the utter mendacity of it?
The Supreme Court of Georgia does re
view the facts, just as the Appellate Court
of New York does: every volume of Georgia
Reports shows it.
In the 141st Volume of the Supreme
Court Reports, there are numerous criminal
cases where our Supreme Court reviewed
the facts, and the case of Leo Frank is one
of them!
In the 20th division of the opinion, the
Court says —-
“JUc have given careful consideration to
the evidence.”
Could the Appellate Court of New York
do more than give careful consideration to
the evidence?
Could any court of review do it?
Didn’t Slaton himself announce, in his
15,000-word document, that he sustained
the verdict of the jury?
Hasn't he contended that all he did, was
•to change the punishment, on account of
Judge Roan’s alleged ignorance of the law?
Slaton's statement to the World con
tinues—
I
Governor Alone Could Save Frank.
Therefore, when Judge Roan, the trial judge,
writes me a letter and asks me to commute the
sentence of Frank and in effect asks me to cor
rect the mistake which he made, and especially
in view of the grve doubt created by the evi
dence in the case, it is almost inconceivable
that any Governor would hesitate to exercise
the power vested in him by the Constitution for
meeting exactly such emergencies. The impo
sition of the penalty had passed beyond the
trial judge, because the term of court had
passed, and he asked me to prevent an injustice
which might occur because of the judge’s over
sight, and I exercised my power to correct a
mistake when I was the only one who had the
power to correct it.
“When Judge Roan writes me a letter."
JUDGE ROAD NEVER WROTE ANY
SUCH LETTER!
Judge Roan never asked Slaton to cor
rect any mistakes of his.
Judge Roan went to his grave firmly be
lieving that his rulings on the law were
right; and that the evidence in the case
showed that Frank was “unquestionably
guilty.”
The clumsy effort to produce a letter from
Judge Roan, long after his death, was as
bare-faced a fraud as was ever pulled off
anywhere !
And if Judge Roan made a mistake of
law in charging the jury as to the penalty
in the case, why was it that Partner Rosser
was blind to this mistake? Why was Part
ner Phillips blind to it? Why were Jus
tices Beck and Fish blind to it? Why were
the majority Justices blind?
Judge Roan made no mistake, and Slaton
knows it; but the World does not know it,
and the Northern people generally do not
know it.
The evidence of James Conley was a part
of the record, and Conley sir ore that he saw
the criminal commit the crime.
This being true, how could Judge Roan
treat the case as one of circumstantial evi
dence, only? How can anybody do it?
Nobody can do it, save a demoralized
renegade, desperately trying to defend his
base betrayal of trust.
Continuing his statement to the World,
Slaton says:
Governor’s Judicial Function.
The Governor in the exercise of his consti
tutional power of clemency is but a part of
this judicial system and may be likened to the
cities of refuge in the old Israelitish law. When
by necessity the case is beyond the courts with
their formality of procedure there is yet an ap
peal that may be made to the Executive and by
so doing remove the impossibility of injustice.
Every civilized State and every civilized Nation
vests somewhere this power and generally in
the Executive. The Governor of every State, or
acting in conjunction with a pardoning board,
performs this function. The President of
France may do the same thing. The Executive
in England does the same thing. When it is not
abused it ought to be a safeguard of the people
and its sacredness as much exalted as the proper
performance by the courts of their function.
The editor of the ITtoAZ may not know
that the pardoning power is not a judicial
function, and never was.
The editor of the World may not know,
that Slaton took an oath to support a Con
stitution which expressly FORBADE 111 Al
to exercise JUDICIAL FUNCTIONS.
The editor of the World does not know,
that when Slaton usurped judicial func
tions, and re-tried Leo Frank, he was vio
lating his oath of office; and had not he
and his partners spun out the appeals, and
the hearings, and the travels of the case,
until it was TOO LATE TO IMPEACH
SLATON, he would have been IM
PEACHED.
Slaton knows that Governors do not re
try criminal cases, on the same evidence
that was before the jury. He knows that
the Executive in England never did such a
thing: and that the President of the French
Republic never did.
Presidents in this Republic also use the
pardoning power: but they do not retry
cases, on the testimony which wentf before
the jury.
SLATON BOASTS OF HANGING BART CAN
TRELL.
I
In the Chicago Daily Tribune, the fugi
tive ex-Governor of Georgia said, on July
10, 1915 —he being on his way to the Yel
lowstone Park, on that delayed honeymoon
of his:
“They sad / am afraid to allow a man to
hang. This is untrue.
“I allowed a boy of only eighteen years to
go to the gallows.”
This reference is to Bartow Cantrell, of
Hall County, Georgia, the ignorant boy who
had shot and killed a grown man.
The Georgia boy whose death on the scaf
fold is cited by Slaton as a proof of his cour
age, had never been in the habit of debauch
ing $5-a-week work girls, nor had he ever
been seen to commit the crime of Sodom,
nor did he rape and murder a little girl who
ought to have been at school.
Therefore, Nir. Hearst did not send Clar
ence Shearn to Atlanta, to reverse the Su
preme Court of Georgia.
Therefore, the Chicago lollywop, Mary
Delaney Fisher, did not Pullman-car her
self down to the Gate City to slop over the
Governor, and to do the sob-racket with
the Governor's Sally.
Therefore, Doctors C. B. Wilmer and
Jake White did not ascend the Throne of
Grace in behalf of just a plain, common,
unromantic Georgia lad, who had killed a
man.
It required all the peculiar horror, loath-
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