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PAGE FOUR
The American Law-Review, on
the Frank Case*
CRHE earnest and persevering efforts of The
1 Jeffersonian to counteract the manufac
tured prejudice against the State of Georgia,
is bearing fruit.
A change of tone in many papers is appa
rent. and many individuals of other States
who studied my synopsis of the official-evi
dence which convicted Leo Frank, have pub
lished letters, setting outside editors right as
(<• the facts.
When Fhe Jeffersonian called attention to
the Atlanta Constitution of June 22. 1913. in
vhieh the new partnership of Slaton with
Rosser was announced, and showed that Sla
t ui had been Leo Frank’s lawyer, through
out Slaton's gubernatorial term, a wet Jilan
kei fell on th;- agiuiion against our State.
()i’i>id<>r.-, ;'t length began to understand
o;>< deep indignation at Slaton’s perfidity. in
noting lii the double capacity of our Gov-
<r; ;«i ‘1 Frank's lawyer.
i i September-October number of the
Aineiit in Law-Review (St. Louis. Mo.) edi
‘oiiaiiv discus-es lynch law and the Frank
v.i-e. and dots so with a judicial temper and
legal ability altogether admirable.
Rend it. and see how completely this Na-
Law Review sustains the position taken
more than a year ago by The Jeffersonian.
T; (• tragi? end of the Frank case in Georgia
oli< : -a new text for a sermon on American crim
inal procedure. It is a new phase of Lynch law.
Now Lynch law is unknown in countries where
justice, not form, is the court’s motto. In the
United States procedure is king, and this judicial
lon.areh has little care whether right is over
thrown or wrong triumphs, so long as his claims
to precedence are respected.
Lynch lav? is the natural result of a lack of
confidence and respect by the people in their
courts and magistrates. The Docket recalls no
instance of it, where one suspected of a crime
and put on trial, had been acquitted by a jury,
with the full concurrence of a bench of judges.
But when a criminal has been found guilty by
Twelve men and on appeal to a higher court in
his conviction has been set aside, not on the
around that in the opinion of the Bendh the man
was net guilty, but because the word “the” has
been omitted in the indictment or all the “i’s”
had not been dotted or all the “t’s” crossed, then
is that. Judge Lynch takes a hand. It is the
protest of the people against what they regard
: the treason of the judicial authorities. An
n lignant and outraged community can see no
<ther method of righting the wrong than to take
lhe law into their own hands, and mete out the
punishment which the law has declared, but which
the Courts are seeking to nullify.
Frank was convicted of a murder by a jury of
twelve men after a long trial in which he was
defended by able and astute counsel. .Ml the
technicalities which our American criminal pro-
< edure gives to the accused his lawyers took ad
vantage of. His case was appealed to the State
Supreme Court of the United States. These tribu
nals affirmed the judgment. The State of Geor
gia bad a Board of Pardons to assist the Gov
ernor in his prerogative of mercy and to this body
rhe condemned man appealed, but his appeal was
rejected. But while the law was being followed
by the State with exactness, a host of newspapers,
mostly in other States, began a “campaign” to
reverse the decisions of the properly constituted
State and Federal tribunals. People thousands
of miles away from the scene were urged to give
their opinions that Frank was not guilty, and
from all over the land the response came and
the Georgia authorities were deluged with peti
tions from men and women from Texas to Min
nesota and from New York to California that
Frank be not hanged. Os course, everybody who
was opposed to capital punishment signed these
petitions—for to these persons the- guilt or in
nocence of the accused was immaterial —they
belong to that class of our Citizens who are
against the enforcement of any law which they
do net approve of. To these must be added the
sentimentalists who admire a criminal more than
they do an honest citizen, and who delight to
send flowers and gifts to the death cells. And
finally there is that large body of men and women
who think' themselves qualified to decide any
question that may be submitted to them at a
moment's notice, and who are delighted to be
called upon to criticise any oScial action of any
THE JEFFERSONIAN
kind in any part of the land or of the world.
And this “campaign” began, it should be remem
bered, long before the case had been submitted
to the appeallate courts, and was therefore, as a
matter of law, a gross contempt of those courts,
and in any country where the judicial tribunals
are stronger than the newspapers, would be
severely punished by fine and imprisonment.
The State of Georgia, in so far as the investiga
tion and punishment of crime committed within
its territory is concerned, is an independent sov
ereignty. It has established courts and forms of
procedure, and and all the rights of accused per
sons are preserved by its Constitution. And that
its courts have the confidence of its citizens in as
high a degree as those of its sister States there
is no doubt, and that the decision in the Frank
case was approved by the people of Georgia there
is also no doubt. But now came a host of out
siders who declared that Frank was innocent;
that his judges were weak, cowardly and per
jured. Perhaps had this come in the form of a
declaration by some kind of judicial authority in
other States, a body of men who bad taken th’e
time to examine the evidence, and pass upon the
facts, with the patience and care of a high Inter
national tribunal, the people of Georgia would
not have resented it, they might have welcomed
it. But when it came from a mob, what could
you expect?
Certainly the people of Georgia might well pro
test against this method of procedure in the trial
of one accused of a great crime. That there are
grave defects in our judicial* system everyone
must admit. But would trial by referendum be
an improvement? Very few people we imagine
would be willing to have the question of life
and liberty submitted to a popular vote. Every
civilized nation has determimned that the guilt
or innocence of one accused of crime and the
punishment to be meted out to the criminal shall
be decided by regular Courts of Justice presided
over by trained jurists and that the questions
of fact shall be submitted to twelve men —a jury
of his peers. This is the best that civilization
has been able to evolve so far in its history.
These tribunals may sometimes err, whereby in
nocent men are sent to the gallows and guilty
men are set free; but no human system is per
fect and mistakes will accur sometimes in any
system. But the agitation in the Frank case was
a protest against this historical and well ordered
method. It was a clamor that questions of guilt
or innocence should be decided, not by the estab
lished tribunals, but by popular vote. It was a
demand that those tribunals should solve the
problem, not according to the opinions of its
judges founded upon the evidence, but upon the
views of the multitude, founded upon sentiment
and rhetorid.
It is perfectly clair that this is a denial and a
negation of all law, and of all authority. We
cannot try issues of this kind in this way; we
cannot decide the guilt or innocence of an ac
cused man or woman by a show of hands in a
town meeting or by counting noses on the street.
And the people of no State in the American Union
are going to acquiesce in this kind of proceeding.
No citizen of one State is willing to submit to the
inhabitants of the other States the question
whether the decisions of its own tribunals are
wrong and must not be enforced. And this is
what happened in Georgia. Its courts withstood
the popular cry, but a weak and sentimental Gov
ernor whose term was about to expire, yielded to
the clamor, and overturned the judgments of the
courts, without at ail denying their correctness.
The action of the Governor of Georgia showed
a woeful ignorance of the historical reasons for
the power of pardon which the Constitution had
vested in him.
I - ■ - ---- _
The editor of the Law Review proceeds to
speak of the origin of the pardon-power,
giving it a broader scope than it can legally
exercise in Georgia, under our Constitution
of 1877.
Then he adds:
The Governor (from his public statement ex
plaining his action) was of opinion that there was
a reasonable doubt of Frank’s guilt Under these
circumstances had he allowed Frank to go to the
gallows, because of the clamor of the Georgia
mob for his life, he would have been false to his
oath and a traitor to the great office which he
held. People might have criticised his judgment,
but no one could have impugned his motive, had
he set Frank free, because he believed that there
was a reasonable doubt of his guilt. But when
ho sentenced him to imprisonment for life for a
crime of which he believed him to be innocent, he
showed that same fear of public clamor which it
was alleged that the judge and jury which tried
Frank were unable to resist. The statutes of
Georgia said that one convicted of murder in the
first degree should die. This sentence, whprever
he is able to find extenuating circumstances which
so often exist even in the case of the highest
crime, the Governor is given power to change.
If Frank murdered the young girl in the same
manner charged, can yon find one extenuating or
alleviating fact? The evidence shows none; the
friends of Frank never suggested one. If Frank
was guilty he richly deserved to be hanged; if he
was innocent, it was a crime in the Governor to
permit him to pass his life in prison.
And tire mob, which a little later came along
and executed the sentence which the judicial
tribunals had passed, was really more logical
than the Executive, for it acted on the assump
tion that Frank was guilty, and that, if guilty,
no penalty but death fitted the crime.
All things considered, this calm, deliberate
judgment is a stinging rebuke to Slaton, and
a complete exoneration of the mob which ex
ecuted the sentence which the judicial tribu
nals had passed.
To say that the Vigilantes of Cobb County
were more logical than the Governor who
commuted, is to repeat in different words
what I have contended ever since the execu
tion of Frank.
Slaton's course cannot be defended at all,
because it is so obviously and hopelessly il
logical.
*7?
That's why Samuel Adams’ attempt to
defend him was so lame and limping.
If Frank’ was guilty, it was an executive
abuse of power to commute his sentence.
If Frank was innocent, or if there was a
reasonable doubt of guilt, it was a pusillani
mous act to deny him a pardon.
True, he had not asked for one, and Sla
ton, when he was “Honeymooning;’ 'in the
North, actually intimated that he did not
grant Frank a pardon because Frank had not
asked for it.
He was cynical enough to say, that it was
not customary to ytre more than was asked!
In other words, he left an innocent man
under a life-sentence, because the innocent
man had not requested freedom.
The Law Review makes one serious mis
take of fact, when it states that no tribunal
-excepting the jury passed upon the question
of Frank's guilt.
It seems quite difficult to convince out
si del's to the contrary, and to prevail, on them
to accept the truth, namely—>
That Judge Roan had to weigh that very
question when, months after the trial, he de
cided against Frank the motion for a new
trial; and
That the Supreme Court of Georgia care
fully weighed the evidence against Frank,
and pronounced it sufficient to support the
verdict of the jury.
The great American public will settle
down to the right view of the Frank case,
when it becomes generally known that Gov
ernor Slaton was Frank's lawyer, and that
the evidence on which the man was convicted
was conscientiously weighed by our highest
Court, and found sufficient. *
The full synopsis of the sworn evidence,
published in our September magazine put a
sudden end to the clamor against our State.
Read “A Book of Sketches,” by Thos. E.
Watson. This book covers a wide field of
literary research. Historical, Biographical,
Personal. Beautifully illustrated. Paper
cover. Price. 75c, postpaid. The Jefferso
nian Publishing Co., Thomson. Ga.
Bethany, by Thos. E. Watson. A Romance
of the Civil War, with vivid pen pictures of
plantation life, before the war. Bound in
cloth. Price, SI.OO, postpaid. The Jefferso
nian Publishing Company, Thomson, Ga.
The Jeffersonian, SI.OO per year; in Clubs
of Ten, 50 cents.
