114 Page – American State Trials 1918 Volume X Leo Frank Document

Here is the translated text as follows:

82 X. AMERICAN STATE TRIALS.

The critical issue at hand is not merely the presence of a hypothesis but whether every other hypothesis is excluded to a moral certainty. That is the question! That is the question! And the enlightened conscience of every juror must answer it as he would if the life of his own child depended on the answer.

How are you to answer it, gentlemen? The "how" reveals the incurable defect, the inherent vice of circumstantial evidence. You are tasked with reasoning out an unknown transaction; you must discern by the mind's eye what could not be seen by the actual eye. You are to visualize a place you have never seen (the scene of a tragedy), identify the dramatis personae, and assign each actor their role. You must arrange the incidents in their actual order of occurrence, bring each actor onto the stage at the right moment, and infallibly determine the words, gestures, and actions of each. You are especially to avoid mistakes of identity or changes in the cast. But your difficulty does not end here. You reason based on what you have heard, but you must also imagine! You must challenge your intellect by considering the possible and almost infinite combinations of circumstances in search of another hypothesis that might explain all you know.

You are to do what the Siamese king no doubt honestly tried to do before he told the Dutch ambassador he was a liar; that is, search for some possible law of nature that would make water hard enough to bear an elephant. You are to invoke your creative power, your faculty of invention, to see if every supposition is excluded except that which the prosecution makes to explain the circumstances detailed in evidence. If you should fail to think of something that might account for all you have heard, if it should escape the counsel, the single counsel for the defense, the prosecution demands the life of the prisoner for your failure! And now you see also how fatal feeling and prejudice against him would be to the fair exercise of this power on your part. How such a state of mind would unfit you to search for another hypothesis than the one that would condemn! Be assured, the prosecution will not aid you in this search. I may try, and fail; but neither their inaction nor my failure can discharge you from the responsibility.