Chapter 24: Roy Barnes Mercer Law School (November 12, 2019) Final

Former Georgia Governor Roy Barnes Malfeasance

Former Georgia Governor. Roy Barnes visited Mercer Law students on Tuesday. He discussed his efforts to reopen one of Georgia’s most notorious lynchings. Barnes works as a consultant to the Fulton County District Attorney’s Conviction Integrity Unit to review old cases. THE CASE of Leo Frank, a factory superintendent who was lynched in Marietta in the early 1900s. This followed the commutation of his death sentence, for killing Mary Phagan, a 13-year-old female employee in the factory he managed. Barnes also discussed the evidence and process of the case for the possible exoneration of Frank.

[Jack Saw Speaks] Alright, good afternoon!

Thank you, everybody, for joining us despite the rain and the cold. I'm Jack Saw, I'm the president of Historians in Law School, it's a student organization here at school, and we're excited, together with the school, and with the help of our Dean Kathy Cox, to be sponsoring this event. And we're excited to see such a good turnout, including my fellow students and alumni. Welcome back, and welcome home. And current attorneys here in town. So I'll turn it over to Dean Kathy Cox to introduce our speaker.

[Dean Kathy Cox Speaks] Thank you, Jack, and good afternoon to all of you. I want to say a special word of welcome to Judge Hugh Lawson. We are always glad to have you here judge and to my friend, and fellow public servant former state representative, Larry Walker, from Perry, who served in the Georgia legislature with Governor Barnes and me, we're glad that both of you could be here along with so many other friends, alumni and students today. It's a real pleasure to introduce you to former governor Roy Barnes.

Governor Barnes is a lifelong resident of Cobb County, Georgia. He is a “double dog,” having earned his history degree and his law degree from the University of Georgia and the Georgia law school. He first went to work as a prosecutor in the Cobb County District Attorney's office after graduating from law school, before opening his own law firm in Marietta, where he continues to practice today.

The political bug bit him really early. He was elected to the Georgia Senate at age 26, becoming the youngest member of the state senate at the time. He served eight terms in the Georgia State Senate, rising into numerous leadership positions, and also being appointed as chairman of the Select Commission on Constitutional Revision, which rewrote the Georgia Constitution in 1983. So if any of you students want to know any interpretation about the Georgia Constitution, he's your guy! (At least my view! – Roy Barnes interjects) He and Larry Walker, both, wrote the Georgia Constitution that exists today.

He made his first bid for the governorship in 1990 and was unsuccessful in a primary Zell Miller who went on to win. But Roy Barnes came back two years later and was elected to the Georgia House of Representatives where I got the chance to serve with him in the House and as a member of the House Judiciary Committee along with state representative, Walker.

In 1998 Governor Barnes was elected as the 80th governor of Georgia. He made education reform and improvements to education, public education, in Georgia a hallmark of his administration with efforts to reduce class sizes all over the state, raise accountability standards, require more discipline in classrooms, and other reforms.

He also concentrated on health care reform and remedies for urban growth and sprawl. He took on the very controversial issue of removing the Confederate Battle Flag from the Georgia state flag and he won that battle, changing the Georgia flag, but many believe that battle played a big role in his defeat for reelection in 2002. Nevertheless, he was awarded in 2003 the John F. Kennedy Profiles in Courage award, for his leadership in that effort.

Upon his defeat in 2002 Governor Barnes did something that really surprised the legal community, he did not go back to Marietta to start making money. He instead went to work for the Atlanta Legal Aid office as a full-time volunteer, for the next 6 months, committing his efforts and providing one of the strongest signals possible about what lawyers really owe their profession and the community.

He did eventually return to private practice of law, where he has continued to work as one of the most successful trial lawyers in Georgia and the southeast. He's known for successfully handling personal injury, wrongful death, and medical malpractice cases, along with mass tort cases, and complex business disputes.

There's a pretty well-known saying in Georgia that if you're in trouble, you want Roy Barnes on your side and you don't want to have to fight against him.

Governor Barnes, in my opinion, is one of the wisest and most astute political leaders Georgia has ever known, along with being one of the smartest trial lawyers ever to see a Georgia courtroom. It has been my honor to serve with him, and Georgia government and a special privilege to have him here as our guest today to talk about one of his most recent endeavors in the historic Leo Frank case. Please join me in welcoming former governor, Roy Barnes.

[Roy Barnes Speaks] Kathy read that just like I wrote it, so, I've got to tell you just one little side note. We had a lot of controversy is the judges know about Georgia's voting machines and I had this lady that came out to interview me. She says, “did you know they stole the election from you in 2002, with those voting machines?” I said, “No ma'am. I think I lost that all on my own.” so...

Van Pearlberg, who's here, used to be an assistant district attorney and is now in the Attorney General's office. Van and I are longtime friends. He's probably a better expert on Leo Frank than I am. So we're glad to have him. Now you're one of the Phagan's descendants. “I am, I'm Mary Phagan-Kean, the great niece.” [Mary Phagan Kean comments, Barnes continues] The great niece – this is Mary Phagan-Kean, who's the great niece of Mary Phagan.

I want to turn you back for over a hundred years in Georgia.

Really back to the time of 1913. Georgia was a lot different. It had just come out, about 25 or 30 years before, out of the Civil War and a good part of the state was still recovering. In fact, if you look at the tax digest in 1860, it was 1960 until the tax digest recovered at the same amount that it was in 1860.

Georgia was also torn. It was torn between the Henry Grady, New South and the Old South, that had been brought down in the Civil War. Grady and governors, were trying to attract to Georgia any industry they could because most of the people we're desperately poor.

Now, into all of that comes Leo Frank. Leo Frank, was born in Texas, but he grew up in Brooklyn and he went to Cornell where he studied mechanical engineering. He married Lucille Selig. The Selig family is still one of the greatest and most well-known families in Atlanta – Selig properties, Steve Selig, Slick Selig as his father was known.

Well, the Frank's uncle [Moses Frank] owned a majority of what was the National Pencil Factory which was on Whitehall but now is called Peachtree and they divided it up.

He was a member of the temple [Formerly the Hebrew Benevolent Society] which is now on Peachtree. And they were mostly reform – the temple was reform Jewish faith and it was led by a fellow that was considered a radical in many aspects and that is Rabbi David Marx.

They were mostly German Jews that were members of that community and they were assimilationist and not isolationist.

The Orthodox, and some conservative but mostly Orthodox, believe in living in communities separated from other Jewish or Gentile communities, but the reform, and particularly at this time, with a German influence were assimilationists.

Those of you who have seen Driving Miss Daisy – Miss Daisy, her son was a member of the temple. The temple was bombed, by the way, in the 1950s [circa 1958] because they were very pro-civil rights [that was never proved] and another lawyer the time, Ada Garland's father, Reuben Garland, defended the fellow that was charged. Who, by the way, was acquitted and this was in the 1950s.

Mary Phagan was a teenage [little girl, teenager wasn't used until 1940's- 1950's] girl. She was raised in Marietta, she was buried in Marietta, where I'm from. And child labor was very common at the time. The first industry was really the manual type industry in textile mills, and children were the ones that generally worked there. It was accepted in society, at the time. She was owed a dollar and twenty cents for past wages. Now back then we had the first rapid transit, even though Cobb has none today, but we had the first rapid transit in Cobb County. It was called the trolley line and it was run by the Atlanta Northern Line. So there was a line, a street car that ran every hour going to Atlanta and another one that was returning to Atlanta. She rode the street line, the streetcar down to Atlanta, because the plant was closed, because we were having Memorial Day. Not Yankee Memorial Day as they called it at the time – Confederate Memorial Day, April 26th, [1913].

And she knew the plant was closed, [False: did not know about payday being on Saturday due to the fact she quit the Thursday before her murder] but she also knew that Mr. Frank worked there and she wanted to get her dollar and twenty cents because her family needed it.

So the plant was closed and she went. There's no question she went there. No question she saw Leo Frank, in my view, but her body was found the next morning in the basement where the incinerator was. Now this is going to become important a little bit later.

There was two ways to get downstairs: one was with an elevator, but it was a very rudimentary elevator. It didn't have any brakes on it [False it did have breaks, by a hand cord]. It stopped when it hit the ground and you would jump and ran, then have a break. It just went up a couple of floors.

And then there was a ladder that went into the basement. Mary Phagan was found in the basement and there was soot all over her face. Her dress was hiked up and she was found early the next morning by a fella named Newt Lee who worked there. He was a janitor [ False: He was the nightwatchman not the janitor], or you know, worked around the plant.

Of course, Frank and the police were called and all of that and Newt Lee was the first suspect. Now remember this was before the time of Miranda. It was before the time of anything that had any essence of being a due process, particularly if you were an African-American in the South.

And in fact, both as to Newt Lee and to Conley, Jim Conley, who we'll talk about it in just a moment, who became the star witness. The newspapers would have stories that I've read “Conley, & Lee, Being Sweated by the Police.” Now we can only imagine what “being sweated” was, but it was not uncommon even when I started practicing law. I hate to say this, for police officers to get carried away with rubber hoses and everything else.

The police pretty well ruled Newt Lee out and then the idea, the focus turned to Jim Conley. Now Conley was a janitor, a gopher, or whatever, in the office. He gave three different statements, three different affidavits, which all changed through time. He became the star witness, and what he said was that Frank wanted to have sex with Mary [Phagan], and that he had taken her into the lady's room.

His office was on the same floor as the manufacturing and a wood lathe was there [in the machine department aka metal room]. And that he had hit her too hard. This was his final story. And that he called Conley up to take her down to the elevator. She was dead.

Now this is going to become critical later. Conley also said that they had mattress tick, which is that striped cloth that was around mattresses and then wrapped her in it to take her down there [to the basement of the national pencil company].

Conley also said that he took he and Frank together – took her down the elevator, you know the one that bump! [Roy Barnes is falsifying the story, Leo Frank controlled the elevator with a hand cord] And this became critical later, particularly to Governor [John] Slaton.

Frank was indicted based on that testimony and put on trial pretty well. The trial took about a month. Frank was represented by what probably was the best lawyer in Georgia at the time. His name was Luther Rosser.

The prosecution was represented by, up to that time, a lackluster prosecutor by the name of Hugh Dorsey. By the way, just as a footnote Hugh Dorsey and his wife's daughter would later marry Luther Rosser's son. Everything is connected. You know there's only seven degrees of separation.

Judge [Leonard] Roan was the [presiding] judge and was considered a very good judge and was. The difference in the trials were greatly different [then] than they are today. The Fulton County Courthouse was on Marietta Street at the time. There was no air conditioning, as you might imagine, so the windows were open during the day, and this is one of the things that Oliver Wendell Holmes and Charles Evans Hughes wrote about in the sense, in the case, was the mob outside. And somebody would sit in the window [False: not true], so is reported in the case, and holler out what the testimony was [False: not true], and there would be a roar of approval or a boo of disapproval [False: Fake news, this was not the case]. 

*After losing 12 successive court appeals Frank’s lawyers went to the US Supreme Court, which REFUSED his 13th appeal. In a statement, Holmes and Hughes simply affirmed that generally trials should not be carried out under mob rule. The Justices never actually reviewed the Frank trial. Indeed, as Governor Slaton
pointed out, the case record shows there were no anti-Semitic mobs in or outside the courtroom. The murder trial, conducted by Judge Leonard S. Roan, was in fact orderly, and the Supreme Court found in the trial “no error of law.”

There are some that say, and I've read some of these reports, that the jury was sequestered and was kept at the old Kimball house. And I have read some reports of, as the jury would come up from the Kimball house to go to the courthouse every day, parts of the mob would say, “hang the Jew or we'll hang you,” [This is the jury tampering hoax, Leo Frank's defenders promote to trick the public into thinking Leo Frank didn't have a fair trial] whatever it was, and all of them and I don't think there's a lot of dispute about this, there was a mob presence there [There was no misbehaving mob outside the courthouse, Barnes is misrepresenting the case]. The effect they had is open to dispute.

Well, to make a long story short, because I only have a little time and I want to get to John Slaton and the lynching. To make a long story short, Frank was convicted and sentenced to hang. Georgia let every sheriff hang his own folks at the time. Fulton County had what was called the Tower and he was to be hung there.

The case went to the Supreme Court of the United States, twice. There were two dissents -- Charles Evan Hughes and Oliver Wendell Holmes. And Hughes wrote, and I won't get into it, I read it last night again, about the influence of the mob. [False: no mobs]

John Slaton was governor of Georgia. He was called Jack. He was a rising star in Georgia politics and everybody said that he was going to be the next United States Senator. He was married to the wealthiest woman in Georgia. Her name was Grant, Sarah Frances Grant. She was called Sally. In fact, John Slaton is buried in the Grant Mausoleum at Oakland Cemetery, not his own. He was buried in his wife's mausoleum.

The case finally came up to him in June of 2015 [False: actually 1915]. Now, he had been watching the case and he had started his own investigation in the case.

We had crazy times of governors taking office back then. He was going out of office and Governor Nat Harris was coming in and Nat Harris was the governor who signed a bill allowing women to practice law in Georgia. And Nat Harris was the governor coming in and I'm sure, like every other governor, he'd say, “maybe it won't get there before I leave.” But he had been governor twice. We didn't have a lieutenant governor then. He'd been president of the Senate in 1911 when Hoke Smith died and he became acting governor for about 18 months and then Joseph Mackey Brown, the son of Joseph E. Brown, the Civil War governor, served one term in between and then Slaton came back and served the second term – when he caught the Leo Frank case.

He [Governor Slaton, part-owner of the law firm which represented Leo Frank at his trial and state appeals] read the entire month-long transcript. He did his own investigation. He took detectives and Hugh Dorsey to the scene and he came to the conclusion that there was not certainty as to the death penalty. He middled around as to whether he was actually guilty. He said there was not certainty. He wrote – and I'll leave it here with Kathy in case anyone wants to see it they can – he wrote a commutation order; Twenty-nine pages where he set out the evidence in detail.

He talked about all of the witnesses and things that had arisen since that time.

One of the things that he depended on was – remember Conley said that he and Frank had taken Mary Phagan down the elevator – and so the police, when they came down – and remember that elevator hit the bottom [False: not true, it had a hand cord break, Conley reported Frank controlled the cord and stopped it too soon] -- the police reports coming the next morning to investigate said that they found (I know this is indelicate) human excrement when someone had had a bowel movement under the elevator.

Well now, that is when they came to investigate and that was a turning point, as you'll see with him, one of the turning points, because he said, that if they had gone down on the elevator, it would have smooshed the excrement and they would have been smelling it. In fact, it was not until the next day that it occurred.

Another thing that he relied upon was this: Judge Roan, who had presided over the trial, had talked with Slaton and had written him a letter [False: It was a forgery], in which Judge Roan said, I have doubt, I have doubt. And if I had the power, he didn't think he had the power at the time, he was wrong and Governor Slaton tells him, yeah, he could have done it, I probably would have granted a new trial [False: Judge Roan did have the power].

There's a lot of litigation that's going on right now for a Georgia Supreme Court on the power of a trial judge sitting as a 13th juror. That is, the right to set aside and put their own judgment in.

And so, based upon that and the other facts – there was some hair on the lathe – and somebody testified (remember we didn't have scientific things like we do now), well, that looks like Mary Phagan's hair. After the trial there was somebody that found a microscope and looked at it and a doctor gave an opinion, “this is not the same hair.” That happened after the trial [The examining scientist was likely bribed according to other people stating they were bribed in the Leo Frank Georgia Supreme Court Records].

At the trial there had been women that had been brought up, “well, Frank tried to sexually harass me” and another group that says, “Oh, I've worked with him for years and had no problem whatsoever.”

Well, and in fact, Slaton received over a hundred thousand letters. He talks about it in his commutation order. He decided he was going to commute the sentence. And he wrote this order.

He went home and told his wife, Sally, and she said, “I would” and he said, “I don't know what's going to happen here to us.” And she said “I would rather be the widow of a brave man than the wife of a coward.” And he signed the commutation.

Let me read to you part of it:

“The performance of my duty under the Constitution is a matter of my conscience. The responsibility rests where the power is reposed. Judge Roan, with that awful sense of responsibility, which probably came over him as he thought of that judge before he would shortly appear..” Judge Roan had died in the interim. “...calls to me from another world to request that I do that which he should have done.

I can endure misconstruction, abuse and condemnation, but I cannot stand the constant companionship of an accusing conscience. Which would remind me in every thought that I, as governor of Georgia, failed to do what I thought to be right.

There is a territory between a reasonable doubt and an absolute certainty for which the law provides and allowing life imprisonment instead of execution. This case has been marked by such doubt.”

He was interviewed a little bit later after that and this is what he said:

“Two thousand years ago, another governor washed his hands and turned over a Jew to a mob. For 2,000 years that governor's name has been cursed. If today another Jew” [Leo Frank] “were lying in his grave because I had failed to do my duty, I would all through life find his blood on my hands, and would consider myself an assassin through cowardice.”

Now, he went out of office within four or five days, Slaton did.

What was the reaction?

Well, he had to have the state militia escort him to the train station to leave. He slipped back in from time to time but he stayed gone ten years, before he came back to start back practicing law. He was successful. He went on and was one of the, before a unified bar, he was president of the State Bar.

But he never, of course, held political office again.

What happened to Leo Frank?

Well, Leo Frank was in the Tower, the Fulton Tower, ready to be hung by the sheriff. And so Governor Slaton, before he released the commutation, had the sheriff take him to the state prison, which was not at Reidsville at the time. It was in Milledgeville, because Milledgeville had been the capitol of Georgia until 1868, when it was moved to Atlanta.

He was not there for long, until his neck was slit [July 17th, 1915] and he had a big gash in it by an attempt on his life. And then, remember the commutation was on June 21st, 1915.

By the way, Frank was scheduled to be hung the next morning [June 22nd, 1915]. So it was right upon...Slaton put it off as long as he could.

Well on August the 17th of 1915 [False: Actually, it was the 16th] a group from Marietta got into the state prison in Milledgeville, brought Frank to Frey's Gin road, which is right off 75 and Roswell road in Marietta, and hung him.

This was not the first great stain on all of us, in the South. Is that is estimated there were more than 4,000 African-Americans lynched after the Civil War until the 1960s [60% of that number were African Americans, the other 40% were Whites and a small percentage were other]. The last one in Georgia was in the late 1940s at [name unintelligible] bridge, Walton county.

But this was the first case of a Jew being lynched. But remember this was a tough time in Georgia. The Ku Klux was not risen yet. But it soon did after this with some of the same folks that were lynchers. And they hated three folks: Jews, Blacks and Catholics, and in fact that's one of the reasons, even as a kid I can remember, prejudice against Catholics.

There's a great story that says Richard Russell, he was a great United States senator from Georgia, and his daddy was the Chief Justice of the Georgia Supreme Court. There's a story that Dick Russell fell in love with a Catholic girl and was going to marry her and he went to his daddy and told him that he was going to marry her and he said, “Well, son.” He said, “You could marry her but your days in politics are over in Georgia.” And he never married. That's a whole 'nother story. Because there's a provision in his will that says he wants a gift to go to a certain person that is exactly [unintelligible] things like that.

But these were the leaders of the community.

There's a famous photograph of the lynching with Frank hanging there and to the right is the superior court judge, standing there. His name was Newt Morris.

If you get interested in this case, this case will drive you crazy, but if you get interested, the book you should read is 'The Dead Shall Rise' [2003] by Steve Oney.

Steve Oney came to see us in the eighties. I was always enthralled with the case and Tom Watson – one of the things I hadn't mentioned – Tom Watson, who was one of the great political leaders – Hugh Dorsey went on to become governor from this. Tom Watson went on to become a United States Senator.

Tom Watson had a newspaper called The Jeffersonian and he printed headlines in red [ False: Not true, we have all the copies of his newspapers and magazines]. And it was scandalous, the reporting on the trial that occurred every day. “Jew pervert,” he used words like that in the headlines instead of being factual. [False: Barnes is wrong, Tom Watson did not comment on the 1913 Leo Frank Trial, until 1914. "Jew Pervert" wasn't published until the late summer of 1915 in Watson's Magazine.]

Here's some of the ones that were involved – Steve Oney has divided it up:

Joseph M. Brown. Well, he was governor from 1909 to 1911, 1912 to 1913, right before Jack Slaton. He was from Marietta. Charlie Brown, his grandson, just died last year. These folks are still around.

Newton Augustus Morris. He was the superior court judge and his great nephew is on the city council of Marietta. I once said, I said, “You can't be an old Mariettan unless you had an ancestor that was at the lynching of Leo Frank and it's just about the truth.

Eugene Herbert Clay. He was the son of the United States Senator. He was mayor of Marietta, but at the time that this occurred he was, what we called him then, the solicitor-general, the district attorney today. I always loved the old name, solicitor-general. I wish they hadn't changed it. They still call him solicitor today.

He is the one that presided and called the grand jury in to listen to evidence about who had taken Leo Frank and lynched him. Surprise, surprise, the grand jury returned a finding that it was “persons unknown” in the community.

John Tucker Dorsey. His son later, Jasper Dorsey, would be president of Bell South or Southern Belle as we called it back then. John Tucker Dorsey, he was one of the best trial lawyers there was. He was a member of the general assembly. He was chairman of the prison committee and that's probably how they got in so easily down in Milledgeville.

He served as district attorney for two years, John Tucker did. He had been twice convicted of manslaughter. I mean, folks were a little bit different back then, you know. And had served in imprisonment on the chain-gang and then was later pardoned by the governor so he could go to law school and become district attorney. He was a distant cousin of Hugh Dorsey, who was the prosecutor.

Fred Morris, he was a Marietta lawyer. He served his first term in the general assembly. He organized the Boy Scouts in Marietta and then went off to the lynching of Leo Frank.

Bowlin Glovitt Glover Brumby. Like I said, had every prominent family in Marietta. He owned the Marietta Chair Company, you know, the Brumby Rocker? This is where it comes from. Oney describes Brumby as the very image of an arrogant Southern Aristocrat and that nothing angered him more than Yankees.

The field commanders, those were kind of the planners, the field commanders was a fella named George Daniels. He ran a jewelry shop on the Marietta Square and was one of the founding members of the Rotary Club.

These folks were not riff-raff.

Gordon Baxter Gann. He was from Mableton, by the way, but he was ordinary and was former mayor of Marietta.

Newt Mays Morris. They called him “Black Newt.” Now Black Newt would whip 'ya. He ran the chain gang in Cobb County and they called him “Whippin' Newt” or “Black Newt.”

William J. Frey. He had been the sheriff of Cobb County from 1903 to 1909. He prepared the noose used to hang Frank and may have actually looped it around Frank's neck. Frey's Gin, Frey's Gin road, the location of where they hung him, was his property.

E.P. Dick Dobbs. He later became very prominent. His family moved north and he was the mayor of Marietta at the time.

L. B. Robeson was a railroad freight agent. He lent his car to the lynch party.

Jim Brumby, Grover Glovitt Brumby's brother – he owned a garage and serviced the automobiles before they went. It was a big affair to go from Marietta to Milledgeville at the time.

Robert A. Hill was a banker. He helped fund the lynching – made sure they had money for gas and other things.

George Swanson, who was the current Sheriff of Cobb County in 1915, and two of his deputies, William McKinney and George Hicks.

Cicero Holton Dobbs. He was a taxi driver and operated a grocery store. He was also my wife's grandfather, who knew nothing about this before Steve Oney wrote the book and was very upset about it.

This case had been whispered about for years and years and years and even among the Jewish community, Steve Selig, told me, he says, “We never mentioned the case, never mentioned it in the Jewish community.”

D. R. Benton was a farmer and an uncle of Mary Phagan's.

Horace Handy was a farmer.

Kuhn Shaw, that's J. F. Shaw's, who died about five years ago, father. He was a mule trader.

Emmett and Luther Burton. We had an Emmett Burton serve, this was the great uncle and grandfather of Emmett Burton who was on our county commission for several years. These were two brothers who were believed to have sat on either side of Leo Frank in the automobile that took him from prison to death. Emmett is said to have been a police officer and Luther, a coal-yard operator.

Yellow Jacket Brown. You know, everyone had a nickname. An electrician who rode his motorcycle to Milledgeville and cut the telephone lines before they got there, so that nobody could call out.

Lawrence Haney, a farmer.

What has amazed me about this case was: how could the best folks in town, the best and leading citizens of the county and of the city – how could they have gone crazy? I ask myself that in our national politics every once in awhile now. How could everybody have gone crazy?

What happened to Rudy Giuliani?

I don't know. We could always have a discussion of that.

But what was it?

Now I know there's two or three things on the other side that everybody tries to bring up. One is, well, they just felt that they were carrying out the lawful sentence that was handed down to Leo Frank. That is what Newt Morris is reported to have said later.

And then, the other thing is, Luther Rosser and Jack Slaton had practiced law before [ False: not before they were law partners during Leo Frank's trial and his appeals], and that Luther Rosser paid Jack Slaton off to commute the sentence.

Now let me tell you something. Jack Slaton had the wealthiest wife in Georgia and at that time, husbands, as you all know from studying law, managed the affairs of the wife. Why in the world, to destroy his political career which was very bright, would he have taken any money? And you cannot read this commutation order without seeing that it is a man that was greatly troubled about it.

So the last thing I'll talk about a little bit: was Leo Frank guilty?

I don't think there's any doubt, and there are few that I think that argue with this today is, he did not get a fair trial [False, the Supreme Court in their majority decisions ruled he had a fair trial]. Not under the circumstances that we would consider today – coerced statements, no scientific, all circumstantial [False, the witnesses later provided affidavits that Leo Frank's defense team tried to bribe them to retract their trial testimony].

The testimony of an accomplice.

There is a reason the common law and the law of Georgia says that, the testimony of an accomplice must be corroborated and a confession must be corroborated and the reason is because of how both of them might have been obtained.

I don't think he was guilty. I think Conley killed her. There's not any doubt in my mind that Conley killed her [False: Barnes opinion defies the evidence and testimony, and majority decisions of the judges at the time]. But at least there is substantial reasonable doubt as to whether Frank killed her [False statements: What substantial reasonable doubt?]. There's two little things and then I'll try to answer some questions. I know we got started late and I know ya'll got other places to go.

There's two things that are happening. One is, the district attorney Paul Howard of Fulton County has created a commission to look into several cases.

One of them is this case [Leo Frank case] and another one is the Child Murders case. And they've got about a dozen, half a dozen to a dozen cases they're looking into to see, to make sure, that there's guilt. Now Wayne Williams is still alive and in the prison.

The other thing that has happened in all of these matters and I think is the import: what is the role of lawyers and judges?

Listen, we are trained to look at facts. There is only a little thin line that separates us from lynchers and a mob and it is lawyers and judges that are trained to not let passion and prejudice overcome us all.

And it is difficult. It is very, very difficult. And it is not an easy path. It is a tough path.

You know, we believe as lawyers, that everybody is entitled to representation. That was our theory all along, but not our practice. Read about the Scottsboro boys, read about through the history and the cases that you stay.

But it is required even more now than ever. That even though everybody cusses us as lawyers, and they do, you know, all the time. Mama, don't let your babies grow up to be lawyers. You know, it's the story instead of cowboys.

But it is the lawyers that have to protect the rights of the individual. And if we ever lose that, that we're not willing to sacrifice ourselves and our reputation and our prosperity, for the rights of those that we represent or what we know is right, then I want to tell you, we're lost, we're lost. It's a very thin line.

Always be the guardians against prejudice, hatred and passion. Sit back and use the skills that you're being trained in and they will be honed much more as you start to practice, to analyze critically, everything that you're presented with.

Thank you, and God bless you and I'll be glad to answer a few questions.

I know we don't have much time but I'd be glad to answer any questions. Yes, ma'am.

Audience Member Question: Was anyone from that long list of lynchers ever prosecuted?

No, nobody was ever tried. And what happened was, Luther Haines, who was [?] judge, good friend of Hugh, Luther Haines practiced law with John Tucker Dorsey, when he was a young lawyer.

And, of course, I was assigned to Luther's courtroom when I was a prosecutor and he and I were great friends until the day he died.

But he knew I was interested in the case and he showed me, one time, a file that John Tucker Dorsey had in his office and had a list of the names of those who were involved and that's the way Oney finally broke it. He broke it through two people. Through Luther Haines and through Bill Kent.

Commentary:

Former Governor of Georgia, Roy Barnes, Speaks at Mercer College's Law School, Students Described it as Biased Propaganda Talk on Leo Frank.