The Leo Frank Case

One of my embarrassing addictions is to true crime. For years, I was fascinated by Ted Bundy. Now, I am fascinated by the case of Leo Frank.  Leo Frank was a Jewish man who was accused of raping and murdering a thirteen-year-old girl in Atlanta in 1913.  The case is noteworthy because it was the first time a white man had been convicted in a Southern court on the testimony of a black man.  He was convicted and sentenced to death. His sentence was commuted to life in prison by a governor who believed him to be innocent and feared to release him because he would be lynched. An enraged mob broke into the prison, kidnapped him, and lynched him. His case led to the founding of the Anti-Defamation League as well as the resurgence of the Klu Klux Klan.

There were two other possible suspects, a night watchman named Newt Lee, who found the body and called the police, and a janitor named Jim Conley.  Both were African-American.  Conley testified against Frank at the trial.  Conley's own lawyer later declared that he believed Frank innocent and Conley guilty.

Conley had had three years of schooling and was a chronic alcoholic who had served time on chain gangs because of drunken brawling.

A key piece of evidence was two notes in Conley's handwriting that were found near the body. The notes purported to be notes written by the victim, Mary Phagan, saying that the night watchman was raping her.  Of course, it defies common sense that a rapist would let his victim write during the attack or that the victim would even think to do so. There was no possible way that she could have written the notes after the attack because of the nature of her injuries.

It is also important to note that the physical evidence was grossly mishandled.  Many of the witnesses against Frank were African-American and thus had reasons to fear the legal system and succumb to any pressure placed on them to lie. Some witnesses, both white and black, gave statements to the police, later recanted their statements, and some eventually recanted their recantations. In other words, none of the evidence was particularly good.

Decades later, a man named Alonzo Mann came forward and said he saw Conley carrying the body. Mann was 14 at the time and Conley threatened to kill him if he said anything. He kept the secret for decades and told his story only shortly before his death.  This evidence is assumed to mean that Conley was almost certainly guilty.

A few points about this case stand out.

1. Frank should never have been convicted. Conley changed his story significantly three times. He was an alcoholic and alcoholics tend to be liars. AA has a saying: How do you know when an alcoholic is lying? Whenever he opens his mouth. An alcoholic who repeatedly changes his story is not credible and the jury should have disregarded his testimony. Without this testimony, the state had no case.

2. Frank seems to have been what we today would call a sexual harasser.  After the murder, a number of women came forward claiming to have been harassed by him. This does not make him guilty of murder but it does explain why the police began to consider him a possible suspect.

3. Although Conley was probably guilty, there are aspects of the stories about him that seem counter intuitive to me.  Allegedly, Conley raped and murdered a thirteen-year-old white girl.  Instead of fleeing as quickly as he could, he stayed at the murder scene and wrote TWO notes. Conley had only three years of schooling--and probably low-quality schooling at that.  Writing was no doubt difficult for him.  We are asked to believe that a man with a limited education would stay around the crime scene and risk being caught and lynched, in order to write a note? Would the most logical course of action not be to flee? And yet, the notes are clearly in his handwriting. Either Frank urged him to write the notes, as he claimed, or the police pressured him to do it and somehow planted the evidence.

It is rare for murderers to write notes and leave them at the scene. I have heard of this but only in cases of family violence.

Conley was uneducated but he was bright enough to be cross-examined for sixteen hours by the best legal minds in the South and his story held up.  He was clearly not stupid and yet we are to believe that he did something impossibly stupid. If you had sexually assaulted and killed a young girl at work, would YOU say around to write TWO notes?
My own suspicion is that someone on the police force, who had perhaps been pressured by a politician, planted evidence, destroyed evidence or leaned on Conley heavily and helped him concoct a story.