0931 Page – Leo Frank Georgia Supreme Court Appeals Records, 1913, 1914

Visible Translated Text Is As Follows:

The solicitor-general having, in his concluding argument, made the various statements of fact about the Durant case, as shown in the preceding ground of this motion, the judge erred in failing to charge the jury as follows, to-wit:

“The jury are instructed that the facts of other cases read or stated in your hearing are to have no influence upon you in making your verdict.

You are to try this case upon its own facts and upon the opinion you entertain of the evidence here introduced.”

95. Because the Court should have given in charge the instruction set forth in the preceding ground, because of the following argument made by the solicitor-general, in his concluding argument to the jury, said argument being a discussion of the facts of other cases, and requiring such charge as was requested, the remarks of the solicitor-general, in conclusion, being as follows:

“Oscar Wilde, an Irish knight, a literary man, brilliant, the author of works that will go down the ages—Lord Windemere’s Fan, De Profundis, which he wrote while confined in jail—a man who had the effrontery and the boldness, when the Marquis of Queensbury saw that tire was something wrong between this intellectual giant and his son, sought to break up their companionship; he sued the Marquis for damages, which brought retaliation on the part of the Marquis for criminal practices on the part of Wilde, this intellectual giant; and wherever the English language is read, the vilest, the boldest, the coolest of this man, Oscar Wilde, as he stood the crossexamination of the ablest lawyers of England—an effrontery that is characteristic of the man of his type—that examination will remain the subject matter of study for lawyers and for people who are interested in the type of pervert like this man.

Not even Oscar Wilde’s wife—for he was a married man and had two children,—suspected that he was guilty of such immoral practices, and, as I say, it never would have been brought to light probably, because committed in secret, had not this man had the effrontery and the boldness and the impudence himself to start the proceeding which culminated in sending him to prison for three long years.

He’s the man who led the aesthetic movement;—he was a scholar, a literary man, cool, calm, and cultured, and as I say, his cross-examination is a thing to be read with admiration by all lawyers, but he was convicted, and in his old age, went tottering to his grave, a confessed pervert.

Good character?

Why, he came to America, after having launched what is known as the ‘aesthetic movement’ in England, and throughout this country lectured to large audiences, and it is he who raised the sunflower from a weed to the dignity of a flower.

Handsome, not lacking in physical or moral courage, and yet a pervert, but a man of previous good character.

Abe Ruef, of San Francisco, a man of his raucous religion, was the boss of the town, respected and honored, but he corrupted Schmitt, and he corrupted everything that he put his hands on, and finally the people debilitated by this jury, so did eventually Abe Ruef’s career has brought this man before this jury, already referred to Durant.

Good character isn’t worth a cent in a certain way.

I have got the case before you.

And crime don’t go only with the ignorant and the poor.

The ignorant, like Jim Conley, as an illustration, commit the small crime, but a man of high intellect and thing about some of this higher type of crime, and he doesn’t know anything about some of this higher type of crime but a man of high intellect and

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