396. Leo Frank and the Murder of Mary Phagan Part 3

The Prosecutors

This episode concludes the multi-part investigation into the Leo Frank case, detailing the legal battles and social upheaval following his conviction for the murder of

Key takeaways

• Governor John Slayton commuted Leo Frank's death sentence to life in prison just before his scheduled execution.
• The Knights of Mary Fagan, a group including prominent citizens, kidnapped and lynched Leo Frank in August 1915.

Main topics

• The Leo Frank Trial and Appeals
• The Lynching of Leo Frank

Notable quotes

The moment a body is found, the clock starts ticking.

Conclusion

The episode provides a sobering look at how mob mentality and systemic

Transcript preview

Speaker 3 (0:00) The moment a body is found, the clock starts ticking. 48 hours before the trail goes cold. From A &E and Crime House, this is the official podcast from the famous true crime series, The First 48. I'm Carter Roy. Every Thursday, I revisit a landmark homicide investigation in depth with long-form storytelling built for your ears. Listen to and follow The First 48 on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Speaker 4 (0:44) I'm Brett. And Speaker 2 (0:46) I'm Alice. And Speaker 4 (0:47) we are The Prosecutors. Today on The Prosecutors, we finish our look at the Leo Frank case. Speaker 4 (1:38) Hello everybody and welcome to this episode of The Prosecutors. I'm Brett and I'm joined as always by my sagacious co-host, Alice. Speaker 2 (1:48) Is that like suggestive with an accent? No, Speaker 4 (1:51) it means like sage-like. Speaker 2 (1:55) Oh, I think that is the only way to pronounce it. Speaker 4 (1:58) I don't really know how to pronounce it. I actually Speaker 2 (2:00) just got a bundle of sage in my farm box. I don't know what CSA stands for, but other people know what that means. And so sage is on my mind. Sagacious. I might start using that word. Speaker 4 (2:13) Sagacious. I don't know if people actually say that anymore. Somebody sent it to me. So I Speaker 2 (2:17) was like, why not? I am sageful because I have a bunch of sage on my kitchen counter right now. Speaker 4 (2:24) Okay. Here's something interesting. Tell Speaker 2 (2:27) me about it. Speaker 4 (2:28) I Googled it because I wanted to know the actual definition. Which is exactly what he would expect it to be. Someone who has keen mental discernment, good judgment, and deep insight. But it is not etymologically Speaker 2 (2:40) related to the word sage. Interesting. Speaker 4 (2:43) Yeah. It actually derives from the Latin word sagere, which means to perceive keenly. Speaker 2 (2:49) But isn't the English word sage probably based on the Latin? I Speaker 4 (2:53) mean, I'm just telling you what the Google machine tells me. Etymologically, it would make Speaker 2 (2:56) sense that sage in the English is also derived from the Latin. Speaker 4 (3:00) Now we're down. We're going down. Now we're down the rabbit Speaker 2 (3:02) hole. Let's figure out some Latin. Speaker 4 (3:03) So sage, one distinguished for wisdom. Let's see if there's an etymology for. Speaker 2 (3:12) No, the Latin term is sapiens. No, no, that's a wise person. Hold on. Let's see. Salvia is the actual herb. Speaker 4 (3:20) Let's see. Speaker 2 (3:20) I have not found. One who is sage. Now we're just down a rabbit Speaker 4 (3:26) hole. Okay, let's see. Speaker 2 (3:28) Saper is what I'm finding for the Latin verb for the English word sage. Speaker 4 (3:32) That's interesting. Which means to taste or to know. Huh. I Speaker 2 (3:37) like that knowledge has to do with tasting. Speaker 4 (3:40) Knowing how something tasted showed you had good judgment. Over time, this led to the old French word sage, meaning a smart or learned person. So someone Speaker 2 (3:50) who likes to eat is sage. I love it. Speaker 4 (3:52) I Speaker 2 (3:53) actually am going to adopt that. I'm going to go. Sagacious. I was going to say, I'm going to go be sagacious with all the ice cream in my freezer. Speaker 4 (3:59) Exactly. Speaker 2 (4:00) All right. But anyways, I wonder how we get to three episodes on a case. Exactly. This is what we do for the first 10 minutes. It's because Speaker 4 (4:06) we turn our wisdom and discernment to those cases. To really dig deep and find out what happened. And that's what we're going to do today as we wrap up. Speaker 2 (4:16) And maybe the core of this case has to do with the digestion of cabbage, which was eaten. There you go. Speaker 4 (4:24) Look at that. Look at that. Alice always Speaker 2 (4:27) brings Speaker 4 (4:27) it back around. So with that, we've been talking about the Leo Frank case. Very controversial case. We got to the end of the trial last week when Leo Frank was convicted. for the murder of Mary Fagan. So obviously you should listen to the first two episodes to get some background on that. Because at this point, he has now been sentenced to hang with an execution date of October 10th, 1913. So on August 27th, 1913, his defense files. an appeal, and his execution was stayed. Now, this was the kind of thing that didn't always happen back then. Frankly, most people, one of the reasons that executions were carried out so quickly in the past is you weren't guaranteed a lawyer or paid for a lawyer, as you know, and you weren't. They didn't waive filing fees for you. And so if you couldn't afford to appeal a case, you just didn't appeal. And the sentence was carried out. So this was somewhat unusual, not unusual, but obviously there were a lot of people very interested in Leo Frank's case. They had raised money for his defense and his appeal and his appeal was filed. Now it begins because once again, this is a long time ago. It's a little different. procedurally from what we're used to now, it actually begins in the trial court with Judge Leonard Rohn, who was the same judge who had sentenced him to hang, considering his initial appeal and his motion for a new trial. That was denied on October 31st, 1913. But it continues to move through the system. February 1914, it reaches the Georgia Supreme Court. Now, they also denied the motion for a new trial, though there was a strong dissent in this order that believed that Leo Frank had not had a fair trial. There was a lot of impropriety during this trial that had influenced the jury. It's not difficult, I think, for you to know what that was. And now, because his trial has been denied, he has a new execution date set for April 17th, 1914, which is his. 30th birthday. Fast forward to April 16th, 1914. This is one day before Leo Frank is to be executed. His defense team files an extraordinary motion for a new trial. This was denied a week later. Now, what's interesting is by this point, this story continues to grow. People in Georgia are still talking about it. And now we're starting to have some movement. By April of 1914, a number of the 20 women who testified against Frank, I think I said 40 last time. It was 20. Still a lot. Still a lot. Still a lot. Not quite. 40. So a number of these women had recanted their testimony. Dewey Hewell, Nellie Pettis, Nellie Wood, Ruth Robinson, Mary Karst, Mamie Kitchens and Carrie Smith all recanted their testimony. And some of this testimony. was pretty important. I mean, some of it was just the general gossipy type stuff, but some of it was the kind of stuff that can get you convicted. Nellie Pettis had alleged that Frank had made an indecent proposal to her, and that's important. That's firsthand evidence of his sexual impropriety. It's not just rumor and innuendo. It's someone coming in and saying, he did the same thing to me that he's alleged to have done in this. Case. So her testimony was important. So was her recantation. It was Dewey Huell. We talked about her who had said that she had seen Frank talking frequently with Mary Fagan and touching her shoulder. We talked about that last episode. She's the person who testified to that. And she recanted. Basically, in these recantations and the affidavits that went along with them, they said things variously like. These women had been coached into making false accusations or their stories had just been misunderstood or they had not understood the questions that they were asked at trial. Mary Karst, for instance, or Marie Karst, had said that she didn't know what lasciviousness meant. So when she was asked a question about that, she didn't really know what that word meant. So she answered as best she could. Now, here's the thing. You might think, OK, here we go. Innocence movements moving forward. The problem is, like so many of these cases, you have these women who've testified under oath. They've said that he did it. They then recant. Well, guess what happens shortly after they file these affidavits? The recanters recant their recantations and they reaffirm their prior testimony. And you can only imagine. I'll say this about about this. These are recantations. We talk about recantations a lot in these innocence cases. A lot of times we're very critical of them for obvious reasons. You have someone who testified 10 years ago. Some innocence person comes to them, says, hey, if you'd done all this stuff, wouldn't you have thought the person was innocent? And by the way, the statute of limitations on perjury has run. So do you want to tell the real truth now? And they say what the person wants to hear. And there's a lot of pressure and they get praised for it. And it's, you know, it's amazing and wonderful. And we're all walking towards justice. Imagine. What these women in Georgia in 1914 underwent after they recanted all of the public pressure, the mob mentality against Leo Frank. And it comes out that they've recanted their testimony. It is not surprising to me at all that they then recant their recantations. And Speaker 2 (10:08) this is actually exactly why there are rules and strictures of like how to enter testimony. into trial, right? You have to sit for cross-examination. You have to take an oath there. And why you should actually think about any recantations outside of court after the fact when all the things you're not allowed to be swayed by when you're in trial, either as the juror or as the witness, which is like media pressure and individuals and, you know, the emotions of things. So this is all happening. Recantations, recanting of recantations. He was supposed to be hanged April of 1914. Now it's June 1914, clearly not hanged yet. Frank's defense team tried a new method. So far, by the way, they have been successful in not getting him hanged. He has now outlived two of his hanging dates. They appealed to the Fulton County Superior Court to set aside the guilty verdict. But... Both Fulton County and the Georgia Supreme Court denied this motion and Frank was resentenced to hang on January 22nd, 1915. Now, Frank's primary argument was that the mob surrounding the courthouse had so intimidated the jury that he could not receive a fair trial. There really was a mob out there. There were mobs who were trying to hang suspects even before there was a charge. Remember, there's a lot of mob mentality around this entire. case. Now we are brought to April 19th, 1915. So now this is going all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court. This is pretty extraordinary. We've told you that the U.S. Supreme Court is a court of discretion. They do not have to take every single case that comes before them. Unlike your State appellate court, for example. Now, Frank's conviction was allowed to stand when the U.S. Supreme Court voted 7-2 on April 19, 1915 to deny his appeal. Justices Oliver Wendell Holmes and Charles Evan Hughes both dissented, stating that the hostility outside the courthouse influenced the conviction. So they agreed with Leo Frank's argument that this mob outside the courthouse affected his ability to get a fair trial. Now, with that, Frank has exhausted all his legal options. The Supreme Court has spoken. The U.S. Supreme Court has spoken on his case. His last hope, then, was appealing to the governor for clemency. Speaker 4 (12:37) I think, you know, at this point, with the law the way it is now, Leo Frank obviously would have won. And we talked about this before, the development of the law in this area. And it grew up in another case we need to cover, the Dr. Shepard case. case where that was a sensationalist case, led a lot of media coverage, both inside the courthouse, outside the courthouse, in the press. His conviction was eventually overturned because of this same type of stuff. Not even as bad, because this also had the anti-Semitism that was going on as well. But the Supreme Court wasn't ready for that yet in 1915. So they're denying that the Oliver Wendell Holmes dissent would pave the way. for changes in the law later on. But, you know, Leo Frank's like, that's great. It's great that one day that'll change, but he's in a pretty bad situation. And now he has to ask for clemency from the governor in Georgia, where, as we know, popular opinion is saying this man needs to be executed. The mob is demanding his execution. But in one of just a real act of courage. profile and courage. I don't know if JFK profiled this guy or not, but an absolute act of courage. Georgia Governor John Slayton commutes Leo Frank's sentence to life in prison the day before he was scheduled to be executed. And he wrote a lengthy explanation for why he was doing this. He relied on a lot of evidence. He really poured over this case. He reached his own conclusion. He knew exactly what was going to happen when he did this. He was later asked why he didn't pardon him altogether. And he said that he believed that Leo Frank would be exonerated in the natural course of time, but he didn't feel like it was his place to fully overturn the jury verdict. But he definitely thought he needed to commute this death sentence so that further developments could happen. And his expectation was that Leo Frank's sentence would eventually be overturned. A real act of courage on his part, given the situation. And it's not surprising that when he did this, absolute outrage was the response across the state of Georgia. And this had just ramped up from that initial trial where you had a lot of this sectional divide. You had anti-Semitism brewing. You also had just class divides because Leo Frank, he's a manager. in the factory. And the young woman who was murdered, she's one of the lowly workers. And this is a real time and class divide in the country. So a lot of different things are coming together here. And people want to see Leo Frank hanged. That's what they want to see happen. And he also had a pretty blatant conflict of interest. His law partner had been Frank's lead attorney. So this did lead to public outcry. And Violence. Almost revolution in Georgia. Guys, if you're like me, there are times where certain flavors, they just take you back. Sometimes they take you all the way back to childhood when you were having those nice Saturday mornings, watching cartoons, and everything was perfect. And if there's one flavor that does that for me, it is cinnamon French toast. And let me tell you, we have a new sponsor, Kachava. And they're not only new for us, they have a new flavor. Just for you. Cinnamon French toast. It's going to give you all the nostalgic feels. But it's not just that. It's not just that it tastes good. It's also good for you. 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Speaker 2 (20:47) So the temperature was already hot around this case. Now with this commutation to a life sentence, even more so. And as you can imagine, if there were mobs, if Leo Frank's argument earlier was that he couldn't get a fair trial because of the mobs outside