Originally posted by sdreid
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I happen to believe it was Jim Conley, but this is due to the "evidence" that surfaced in 1986. An extremely old man named Alonzo Mann told the press he saw Conley carrying the dead body of Mary Phagan, but being very young at the time he was scared off from saying anything because Conley threatened to kill him and his family if he did. So Mann kept quiet during Frank's circus of a trial, during the anti-Semitic atmosphere pumped up by local press baron Tom Watson, and during the aftermath when Governor John Slaton reduced the sentence (the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the lower court decision in a poorly written - typically poorly written - decision of Associate Justice Mahlon Pitney of New Jersey; the only two who rejected this majority opinion were Oliver Wendell Holmes, and future Chief Justice Charles Evans Hughes). Slaton, a lawyer before he had his political career, did not think the evidence merited the death sentence, and commuted it to life imprisonment. This effectively destroyed Slaton's career, and he even moved his family to another state. While in prison Frank was stabbed and wounded by a fellow prisoner, and he was later broken out of prison and lynched.
Now the problem in 1986 with Mann's statement was that it was no longer of any judicial value. Had Mann made the statement in court in 1913, he could have been cross-examined by the district attorney of Atlanta to see how the "evidence" stood up. Conley would also have been cross-examined a bit more. By 1986 Mann was like one of the few contemporaries to the tragedy who was still alive. From the point of view of how we insist that witnesses face cross-examination, Mann's statement was questionable at best.
The state of Georgia knew that the fate of Leo Frank, and Watson's orchestrated anti-Semitic campaign, were black marks that had to be removed from it's record, but it just could not give the full pardon people outside the state expected. So it gave a secondary reason (failure to properly protect Frank) as it's reason. It is wimping out, but it is understandable about why it is wimping out.
If that is not enough of a reason to wonder about Mann's statement (which again, I feel probably makes Conley guilty) think about these points:
1) Conley may have been Frank's accomplice (as he was the janitor at the pencil factory, subject to orders from Frank who was the person who ran the pencil factory). When he made the threat to Mann he might have made it because to try to say "Mr. Frank is responsible!" might not hold water to any witness.
2) While the case is recalled for the anti-Semitism Watson caused, an equally unpleasant result came up. We don't usually think of it, but Jim Conley was always the secondary suspect (in some cases he would have been the primary suspect, except that Leo Frank was Jewish and born in the North). Frank supporters did not hesitate to point to Conley, and to bring up an extremely nasty anti-African American campaign, which in the South in 1913-1915 (when the K.K.K. was about to be reborn) was always active.
If you don't believe this, after the trial ended, and after the verdict was upheld, Jim Conley moved out of Georgia to the Midwest (probably Chicago) for safety sake.
3. A problem with Mann's statement (for me, anyway) is the improbability of Mann's reaction to Conley's supposed threat. Even if he was a kid of about 12 at that time, and had seen Conley carrying the murdered girl, I can't believe a Southern white boy, running away after hearing those threats, would not have told his family. In which case, Jim Conley would have been (in 1913) in deadly serious trouble. Male African-Americans were lynched, and even castrated and burned for supposedly disrespectful looks at white men and women in that day - this one told Mann he'd kill him and his family, and Mann failed to mention such a comment?
I might add that the descendants of Mary Phagan (through her brothers), including a great niece named Mary Phagan (who is a writer) still insist that Frank was guilty. So the actual issue of his guilt and innocence is up in the air (not universally settled).
Only one more thing is to explain my disdain for Mr. Justice Pitney. A Republican from New Jersey, he met then President William Howard Taft in 1912, and Taft was impressed enough to name him to a vacancy on the U.S. Supreme Court. When Taft got on the court as Chief Justice in 1921 he soon realized that his actual abilities to pick good (if Conservative) judges failed him on this occasion. Pitney had seemed (like Taft) to be fair minded about labor unions, but by 1921 he had become totally hostile. Taft could have accepted that, but he could not accept Pitney's idiotic long windedness as a "dissenter" on the court.
Taft never (or rarely) agreed with Holmes and Louis Brandeis on their viewpoints when they dissented, but he and George Sutherland admired the style and intellectual vigor of their dissents (Taft later would write to Brandeis that despite their differences he and the Court were proud of him). Pitney noticed how much attention Holmes and Brandeis generated by these dissents, and started writing needless separate opinions and dissents of his own. But while Holmes and Brandeis added to the court's intellectual prestige, Pitney didn't. The great pair would stick to the main thread of the majority opinion to show why they did not share it. Pitney would go off on his own confusing everyone (to make up an example, if the case dealt with the equal protection clause for the constitution regarding corporations, Pitney might bring in total dicta about direct election of senators!). Fortunately for Taft Pitney's health began to decline, and he left the court in 1923. Taft was able to find a better replacement whom President Harding was able to push onto the court.
Pitney is remembered for one other thing. He was an ancestor of the actor Christopher Reeves.
Jeff
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