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TTTE ATLANTA GEORGIAN AND NEWS, 3 won 1ENON Wh HOM INTEREST CENTERS AT TRIAL 0 F_ F RAN IK Mrs. J. W. Coleman, mother of the slain girl, Mary Phagan. She is a witness for the State. • State Balloon Soars When Dorsey, Roiled, Cries ‘Plant’ By JAMES B. NEVIN. Maybe so—but then— Rogers swore almost In the same breath that Frank, looking up the record of Mary Phagan after the par ty reached the factory, deliberately set the combination on the office safe, opened it the very first time, without excitement or unusual circumstances of any sort. Does the State intend to establish the presumption here that Frank, not withstanding the weight of guilt upon his soul, was diabolically cool and de liberate in his movements, as indi cated by the safe incident? What Is State’s Purpose? Why not that presumption as ra« tionally as the other? Which thinr does the State intend the jury shall believe from Rogers’— ita own witn ss—testimony? Fiddlesticks! What IS the State driving at, anyway? Maybe we shall find out eventually! Again, when Grace Hix was placed on the stand—and she was the State's witness, remember—she testified or cross-examination that Frank had only spoken to her three or four times during her five years’ service in the pencil factory; that he talked to the girl employees very seldom, and that she had never known him to address Mary Phagan at all. This* very pretty young girl an swered the questions given her in a straightforward way—evidently she was seeking to speak, only the truth. Poor John Black! With the unwitting assistance ol the Solicitor General and the assist ance of Luther Rosser, he furnished all the “punch” there was in Wed nesday’s story of the Frank trial. Black evidently was undertaking to tell the truth, and was unwilling to tell more or less than the truth, but that didn’t help matters much, to far as the State was concerned. When Solicitor Dorsey exclaimed •‘plant!’’—which moans nothing more than “faked” or “framed up” evi dence for the benefit of the defense— 3 glanced rapidly at Rosser. I saw precisely what I expected tc Bee _a momentary flicker of a smile about the lips and eyes of the man an almost immediate tightening of the lips and narrowing of the eyes, atid then a quick return of the habit ual ferocious frown. I knew Dorsey had put his foot In it—put it right in, away up over the ankle, and I also knew that get ting that foot back to solid ground again was going to be an undertak ing pregnant with extreme difficulty and danger. State Balloon Goes Up. The Solicitor was fretted w^en he exclaimed “plant”—thereby accusing the defense of rankly unfair and un pardonable methods of establishing Frank’s innocence. And right then and there, up went the state’s balloon, and it hasn’t come down yet! If there is one thing in all this ■world Luther Rosser loves better than Anything else he knows of, It is an adversary in the courtroom who hol lers “plant,” and things like that— particularly when said adversary is mad! When Mr. Dorsey on Wednesday, in a moment of forgetfulness and vexation, exclaimed “plant,” It was meat and bread and pie and cakes and beer and skittles to Luther Ros ser! Right then. I would much have pre ferred being a high private in the ranks of the Bulgarian army thar. John Black! The Solicitor handed Mr. Rosser the very club Mr. Rosser was lay ing for, and wherewith the said Mr. posser proceeded to pound poor, un bending John Black to smithereens! In no conceivable way did Black’s responses justify the Solicitor’s pa?- \ionate outbursts. Witn«66 Goes Far Adrift. On the otfteary, it served to con fuse and befuddle the witness, to send him far at sea. After that he contradicted himself, failed to remember, became hazy and evidently worried and distressed. He had been shot mortally from an unexpected quarter, and he soon real ized ‘hat Luther Z. Rosser was de termined to finish the job—and finish it he did! As for the rest of the day and the beginning of this day— Court officials have settled them selves down in full expectation of a long siege in the Frank trial. So far, the progress of the case has been, in the main, commonplace in the extreme, and bewildering only when spectators have considered the thousand and one questions asked, and the always inevitable interposi tion of objections. The thing the average person m the audience does not understand, however, is that in all that seem ingly intermijiable objecting and wrangling there is, at least upon th part of the defense, a far-reaching purpose the mere mention of which will serve to illustrate its importance. Effect of One Little Error. In murder cases the defense has th- right, in the event the battle goes against it. to move for a new trial upon assignment of judicial error in the first trial. If a new trial be re-* fused by the trial judge, the defense may appeal to the highest court of review in the State, and if that court finds error to have been committed vin the trial of the case, it will remand the entire proceeding back to the court of original jurisdiction for cor rection of the error, which means, of course, for another trial. Then the case will begin all over again, exactly as if it never had been tried at all. The State, on the other hand..has no such right as that—if it loses its case in the first instance, it loses ;l for all time. Frank, save of his own motion, never can be tried a second time for the killing of little Mary Phagan. The more rulings the defense, there fore. calls upon the trial judge to make the more chances there are that error may creep in—and one little as signment of error sustained by the court of review would serve to re verse the entire judgment, and send thf> case back for another trial. State Must Grin and Bear. In insisting that the case be held strictly within the legal rules, which a trial judge never can be absolutely sure of doing, the defense throws an anchor to windward in case of defeat —and the State can do nothing but grin grimly, and bear it. The big battle Wednesday to get the diagram of the pencil factory, containing as it did a red-lined indi- j cation of the State’s theory of th- crime, before the jury had, as will readily be seen, a tremendous signifi cance—and although Judge Roan 'et it go in, it went in over the bitter and carefully recorded protest of the de fense. and in case Frank should lose his fight now. the admission of that diagram doubtless will be assigned as error on original trial. The State, of course, can not take , advantage of its own errors, but Dor sey can hope to obtain nothing more . than present advantage by combat ing them—hence the defense may cui in in all sorts of directions, with thf* burden of proof on the State and the nresumption of innocence always with he defendant at bar, and the State nay whistle for consolation. It makes the trial rather uphill puli ng for the State, therefore, however nuch one may think it otherwise. Tf Dorsey wins a point, it may avail him something on the present trial. >ut it will get him nothing eventually, in case he is forced to go to the high- ^r court. The Solicitor has one long, -straight shot for victory—and no more. The defense, on the contrary, is not •learly whipped if it loses its present iight. Defense Seems to Have Shade. If there has been any advantage gained by either side thus far, it has been gained, I should say, by the de fense. Nothing necessarily damaging has . et been set up against Frank. In deed, much of the evidence drawn out seems almost childish in its mean inglessness. Rogers testified that Frank was nervous” when he (Rogers) saw him Sunday morning, April 27, and that he continued “nervous” for some time thereafter—although Rogers never saw him before, and had no way of comparing his conduct then with his general conduct. But if Frank was "nervous,” does the State seek to establish the pre sumption against him therefore that his "nervousness” was occasioned by the thought of little Mary Phagan’s dead body there in the cellar, and Frank responsible for it? By L. F. WOODRUFF. So, too, Rogers had the appearance of sincerity—and what he said, wheth er significant or of small importance, apparently concerned him not at all. Therefore since the State seeming ly made so little of either of these witnesses, although they were offered as the* State’s witnesses and not the defense’s, prompts me to say that the advantage falling to either side be cause of their introduction fell, really, to the defense. What Has State Shown? * What, frankly has the State estab lished thus far? That Mary Phagan i.« dead; that she probabiy was murdered, that the place of the murder was Fulton County, and the date of It April 26. A8 a matter of fact, nothing much has been developed that has not been public property for weeks—some of it for months. There is a feeling, growing more fixed every day. I think, that the State, if it hopes to win. must set up some thing more than it has yet made pub lic! If the State has some big card« up its sleeve, if it is prepared to surprise ihe defense, and many people think it has the first and will do the second, then the case yet Is !n its infancy and the real charge against Frank still Is to be made out. If the State ha« no unrevealed evi dence and is NOT prepared to strike the defense heavy and unanticipated blows, it is but the simple and honest truth to say here and now that the feeling, vague and elusive enough, but unmistakably there, that acquittal eventually will come to Frank and will steadily grow and develop as the days run by and the monotonous trial proceeds. The sun’s heat Is broiling. No man can stand it without suffering. An 1 still men stand, not one man, but scores of them, on a blistered pay ment gazing on a red brick building as unsightly as a gorgon s head and look at nothing by the hour. They are led there by a trail <>f crimson, and they are held there by the carmine charm that—since Cain committed his deed of fratricide— has made murder the deed that the law most severely punishes and has made it the act that most interests man. Go to Pryor and Hunter streets You’ll find a study there. Leo Frank is being tried for the murder of Mary Phagan in the courtroom in a building on the northeast corner. The trial is progressing in a quiet, orderly manner. Sheriff Mangum's force is attending to that. Few per sons not vitally interested In the case are permitted In the courtroom. Outsiders are not even allowed »n the same side of the street that abuts on the building housing Atlanta's most famous criminal trial. But these regulations fall to dampen the interest Atlanta feels In the case. Dickens was never wrong in his study of human frailties and human emotions. Do you remember when Mr. Pickwick was arrested for tres passing and when asked as to his identity replied “cold punch?” Do you remember when he was placed in the pound the sage of Gad’n Hill told how the village populace gassed at nothing through the cracks In the fence of that inclosure? Old Scene Re-enacted. The same thing that Dickens wrote of a half century ago is beipg re enacted in Atlanta in this good year of 1913. Hundreds of Atlantans are figuratively looking through the cracks of the pound fence and seeing nothing. They are standing on that sun burnt pavement gazing on a building Just because in the four walls of thi t structure a man is fighting for his life, just because a gallows threatens a man accused of ending the life of a little girl they never saw, th:*v never heard of, until her dead body was found, and the incarnadined mys tery was added to the criminal his tory of Georgia's capital. For hours they gaze. They can not possibly learn more of the progress of the trial there across the street than they could at their homes or their places of business. But ther- they stand. The intimacy of the lo cation with the tragedy enthrall'? them. When this crowd is viewed, th* strange fascination of the old R«>- mans for the arena in which men died, the allurement of the present day prize ring in which men suffer, is not so strange. A peculiar kink in nature has made man love to wit ness the tribulation of his fellows. Inside the courtroom the crowd is different. Frank is th*»re because sus picion points to him as the slayv. His wife is there, because it is »h wife’s place to be near her husbanl in his supreme hour of trial. His mother is there because mother lov< demands that she be a protector, a guardian, a consoler, when others are trying to blacken his character, t> have him declared unfit to breathe the air of free and 1 onorable men. Attorneys and Their Fight. The attorneys are there to fight a fight they think just. Hugh Dorsey is struggling to establish a record that the county of Fulton will up hold the law thou i the offender ae a- wealthy and as powerful as the chieftain of the greatest trust. Luther Rosser and Reub Arnold are there in their panoply of invincibility to main tain their reputations as well as de fend the man they declare innocent. Mary Phagan’s mother and sister are there because the call of the blood tells them that the death cf the little ‘'actor • girl #hould be avenged. There are scores of spectator?, young lawyers, who wish to witness the struggle between those master minds of their profession engaged ‘n the case. Their interest is as nat ural as the interest of a stock bro ker’s clerk in the personality of the heir to the fortune of Morgan. At a big round table is seated \ group of coatloss men working it to- sneed, every energy strained Id let the people of Atlanta know the varying issues of the battle. None of these men is there by choice. They wotild probably like to he in some other place, where, thougn dozens % of elec tric fans are blowing constantly, the heat is as oppressive ns that of a Turkish 'oath steamroom. But outside the railing. In the soec- talors’ assigned seats, is a crowd n? incongruous to the atmosphere as \ day laborer at a king' levee. Every possible class is represented. There are business men of big *n- tcrests. They sit through the hear ing with their mouths agape. Just an the crowd on tile pavement stands. There are typical Crackers in the throng. One man wearing the badge of honor of a Confederate ve,- eran has been in constant attendance during the trial. Mere Boy , Hang on Every Word. But the large portion of the audi ence is young, pitifully young, too, w hen the issue and the result is con sidered. Boys just in long trousers have obtained admission in some way. T »ev are lustful for every word, everv deed. They are not seeking informa tion. They are attending the tritl as a result of the same impulse that leads them to spend their sparse nickels for a recital of the deeds of derring-do, of “Diamond Dick ” or “Old King Brady.” Om* man, hardly a man either, for his face was youthful, has been .‘it every session. He is palpably a drug victim. His pallor stands out in striking relief among the rather ro bust countenances of the rest of the audience. His hands twitch nervous ly. His head frequently droops. Ilia physical being is demanding the drug he craves. But his mental desire the thrill of the trial holds him more firmly than the power of the opiate His interest in the case might be a study for the most eminent neurolo gists. A common link holds all of these people, those inside and those out. It is the rope of hemp that hangs *s a possible conclusion to this gripping tragedy that has held a city three months. No man has ever been seen who says that he enjoys witnessing i hanging. No hanging has ever been seen where there were not more peo ple anxious to see the execution than there was room In the death cell. The sun on Pryor street may scorch, but the awful charm of the noose and black cap makes the place as pleasant as the veranda of a sea shore hotel. The heat of the court room may sear the very being of the spectators, but the fascination of the death watch keeps them as firmly fastened In their seats as though there were bars of iron about the chairs. It’s a morbid thought, but it’a a morbid crowd. Those interested in Frank listen to the case in the hope of developments that will free him of the ordeal of mounting the stairs of steel. Those who wish his conviction are there to see a web of circum stance weaved around him that lead* only to that awful end* Ollie Phagan, sister of slain girl, who is attending every session of the trial. Crimson Trail Leads Crowd To Courtroom Sidewalk iThe mother of I Leo Frank, who is at her son’s side constantly during his trial for life. Mrs. Leo M. Frank, wife of the accused, who sits at the side of her husband and aids and cheers him.