The Guilty Of Leo Frank's Murder Case

Leo Frank, also known as Leo Max Frank, born April 17th, 1884 in Cuero Texas was the factory superintendent who was convicted to the murder of Mary Phagan. This accusation leads to the lynching of Leo Frank. Being raised in Brooklyn New York, he earned a B.S. from the College of Engineering at Cornell University in 1906. After an apprenticeship in Germany with the Pencil manufacturer Frank moved to Atlanta, Georgia to work at the National Pencil Company. Marrying Lucille Selif and living harmoniously with his wife’s well off family until his death (Surrain).

August 26th 1913 Mary Phagan was killed. Her murder shocked the city, the discovery of the thirteen year old girl in the basement of an Atlanta pencil factory where she had gone to collect

Telling the jurors about how her daughter woke up and had breakfast, then going to the pencil factory to pick up her pay. Later that day she identified her daughter at the scene of the crime. After Fannie Colman, Newt Lee provided the most important testimony of the trial’s opening day. Lee testified that on the evening of the murder he received a call from Frank asking if things were okay at the plant. Prosecutor Dorsey and defense attorney Rosser fought each other to a rough draw over the several detectives who took the stand. Rosser blew a great chance to explode the prosecution’s theory that the murder took place in front of Frank’s office and the body was moved to the basement. The most anticipated prosecution witness, Jim Conley the prosecutions’ stand stood mainly on his testimony. According to Conley, Frank said “I wanted to be with the little girl, and she refused me, and I struck her and I guess I stuck her to hard and she fell and hit her head against something, and I don’t know how she got hurt” Mary Phagan was dead and Conley clamed Frank said “there would be money in it for me” if he helped dispose of the body. The murder notes were Frank’s idea, Conley testified, “Frank dictated the notes to me”. The defense had several goals, first they hoped to cast serious doubt on the prosecution’s time line. Second, the defense planned to produce a series of character witnesses who, they

Frank was sentenced to death by hanging for the murder of Mary Phagan, but his sentence was eventually commuted the night before he was due to be killed. During the last days in office as the governor of Georgia, John Slaton commuted Frank’s death sentence to life imprisonment. This enraged Georgians many of who argued they should take the law into their own hands. “With military precision the men began their work, cutting telephone lines, overpowering guards, handcuffing the warden, and finally moving directly to Frank’s dormitory, where the prisoner was roused form his sleep and quickly hustled outside,” Oney writes in his 1985 article on Frank. “They were Marietta’s leading citizens, and they acted premeditatedly and without passion.” After driving over one-hundred miles towards Marietta, Frank’s captors hanged him form a tree and left him to die. Oney reports, that thousands of people eventually came to stare at his hanging body before someone removed it. (Jacobs) In 1986 the Georgia State Board of Pardons and Paroles pardoned Frank stating “without attempting to address the question of guilt or innocence, and in recognition of the state’s failed to protect the person of Leo M. Frank and thereby preserve his opportunity for continued legal appeal of his conviction, and in recognition of the states frailer to bring his killers to justice and as an constitutional and