Had I been a member of the jury that tried Frank I would have assented to the verdict of guilty, for the jury did exactly as I wanted it to and I applauded the verdict.
It has also been said that Solicitor-General Hugh Dorsey had strong feelings about Leo Frank’s guilt, and through the years there has been much speculation on what brought about Dorsey’s certainty that Frank was guilty.
In a 1948 study of the Mary Phagan-Leo Frank case, Henry L. Bowden reported a discussion with Hugh Dorsey that seems to shed light on the prosecutor’s feelings about Leo Frank. Bowden had, in conversation with Dorsey, asked him just what it was that had made him suspicious of Frank, and Dorsey reportedly replied that someone had planted a bloody shirt in a well on the property where Newt Lee lived, and that as he and several of the force, including Boots Rogers, the local detective who according to Dorsey was the best detective around, were riding out to the property to check on the shirt, Rogers described to Dorsey Leo Frank’s “extreme” uneasiness and nervousness when confronted with the murder at the factory. This, Dorsey related, had led him to be suspicious of Frank.
Dorsey stated further to Bowden that he had arranged that all the detectives and operatives on the case reported to him directly rather than to the police force, and that the two advantages of this were that the papers were not informed of every little thing that the investigation disclosed and, moreover, that defense counsel were kept in complete ignorance as to what Dorsey’s evidence consisted of and were therefore unable to prepare defenses in advance to such evidence.
Dorsey sought Frank’s indictment for the following reasons: Frank had sent Newt Lee away at 4:00 p.m. and then called the factory at 7:00 p.m. (which Lee claimed Frank had never done before) to check that things were all right. Frank had not answered Newt Lee’s or Captain Starnes’s telephone calls. He hadn’t wanted to come to the factory. He had said he couldn’t tell if Mary Phagan worked at the factory since he didn’t know the names of most of the factory girls (later at the office he was able to tell the exact time Mary had come for her pay on Saturday). Frank had then accused J. M. Gantt of being intimate with Mary Phagan, although earlier Frank had said he hadn’t known her. The police officers who had taken Frank to the mortuary recalled his extreme nervousness. They now considered this emotional agitation important, as well as the fact that Frank had inquired about their finding Mary Phagan’s pay envelope.
At the inquest, J. W. Coleman stated: “Mary often said things went on at the factory that were not nice and that some of the people there tried to get fresh. She told most of those stories to her mother.” Yet the defense for Frank never asked Fannie Phagan Coleman any direct questions about this. Of course, the state had other witnesses and perhaps chose not to upset the mother any more than was necessary.
Additional information which seemed to point to Leo Frank’s guilt was his failure to throw suspicion on Conley who testified that he helped Frank dispose of the body and his concealment of his ballgame date.
Most importantly, Dorsey felt that Frank’s cook, Minola McKnight’s, first statement was true:
Sunday, Miss Lucile said to Mrs. Selig that Mr. Frank didn’t rest so good Saturday night; she said he was drunk and wouldn’t let her sleep with him, and she said she slept on the floor on the rug by the bed because Mr. Frank was drinking. Miss Lucile said Sunday that Mr. Frank told her Saturday night that he was in trouble, and that he didn’t know the reason why he would murder, and he told his wife to get his pistol and let him kill himself. I heard Miss Lucile say that to Mrs. Selig, and it got away with Mrs. Selig mighty bad, she didn’t know what to think. I haven’t heard Miss Lucile say whether she believed it or not. I don’t know why Mrs. Frank didn’t come to see her husband, but it was a pretty good while before she would come to see him, maybe two weeks. She would tell me “Wasn’t it mighty bad that he was locked up.” She would say: “Minola, I don’t know what I am going to do.”
The affidavit of Monteen Stover following the coroner’s verdict added credence to Dorsey’s suspicions that Frank was the murderer, since Miss Stover reported that she got to the office at 12:05 p.m. to get her pay, and Frank wasn’t there. This contradicted Frank, who had said he was continuously in his office from 12:00 noon on.
Dorsey also weighed heavily the record and comments of the jury which pointed to their theory that the murder took place on an upper floor of the factory and that the body was taken to the basement with the intention of burning it. There were other comments by jury members on the factory being used by Frank for immoral purposes and his relations with some of the female employees.
Not yet sure of whom the actual murderer was, Dorsey had indictment forms drawn up for both Leo Frank and Newt Lee. On May 24, however, after the last testimony was heard, he asked for a true bill against Frank. The jury complied and returned an indictment charging Leo Frank with first degree murder.
Because the ninety-degree heat had already begun to take its toll, the Honorable Leonard Strickland Roan ordered the windows and doors thrown open when he convened the Leo Frank case in the temporary Atlanta courtroom on July 28, 1913, at 10:00 a.m. The two hundred and fifty seats in the courtroom were packed full. Outside, crowds milled, spilling over onto Pryor and Hunter Streets.
Twenty officers guarded the courtroom. Judge Roan, an experienced and able jurist, who had served as the presiding judge in almost all of the murder trials in the Stone Mountain area, was determined that strict decorum would be observed inside his courtroom. Although various accounts tell that the words “Hang the Jew” were shouted by the crowd outside, jurors, bailiffs, clerks, and court officials claimed that there were no disturbances or crowd noises until the verdict was announced.
The jurors, all white men and Atlanta residents, were chosen within three hours of the first morning of the trial. One hundred and forty-four people were drawn. Fifty-four were excused; thirty-seven because they confessed an already-formed opinion, three because they were over sixty, fourteen because they opposed capital punishment. The defense used eighteen of its twenty strikes without a cause while the prosecution used seven of the ten it was allowed. The twelve men chosen were: CJ. Basshart (Pressman), A.H. Henslee (Head Salesman, Buggy Co.), J.F. Higdon (Building Contractor), W.N. Jeffries (Real Estate), M. Johenning (Shipping Clerk), W.E Medcalf (Mailer), J.T. Ozburn (Optician), Frederic V.L. Smith (Paying Teller), D. Townsend (Paying Teller), F.E. Windburn (Railroad Claims Agent), A.L. Wiseby (Cashier), M.S. Woodward (Cashier, King Hardware). They were lodged at the Old Kimball House and not allowed to read the newspapers or talk with their families concerning the trial.
The chief prosecutor, Solicitor-General Hugh A. Dorsey, according to the newspapers, was handsome and forceful. At forty-two, he was Solicitor General for the Fulton County courts. Fully convinced of Frank’s guilt, he was assisted by Frank Arthur Hooper, a successful corporate attorney who had volunteered his services, and Edward A. Stephens, Assistant Solicitor General.
Leo Frank was defended by Atlanta’s two well-known trial lawyers, Luther Z. Rosser who, according to the Atlanta Constitution, was the “most persuasive and most domineering lawyer in Atlanta in the art of examining witnesses” and Reuben Arnold, “best known attorney in Georgia,” and “one of the ablest criminal lawyers in the South,” according to the Atlanta Journal. They were assisted by Stiles Hopkins and Herbert Haas.
In his opening argument for the prosecution, Special Assistant Solicitor Hooper described the state’s case against Frank. According to his outline, Mary Phagan had died as a result of a premeditated rape by the defendant, Leo Frank. It was alleged that Frank had seduced and taken liberties with other young factory girls and had made unsuccessful advances to Mary Phagan. Several surviving family members have said that Frank harassed Mary Phagan and that she went