Thursday, 10th December 1914: Leo Frank Hears Sentence Of Death, The Atlanta Constitution

The Doomed Man Maintains Stoical Calm During the Ordeal In Dramatic Statement He Reiterates His Innocence.

After having been shut out from the sunlight for more than a year, the first words of Leo M. Frank yesterday upon emerging from the Courthouse in which he had been sentenced to die on Friday, January 22, a little more than a month from now, were: "Oh, but isn't the sunshine wonderful. I feel it tingles all over me." He was being carried through the roadway in the rear of the new million-dollar Courthouse. The sunshine, the first in several days, bathed the stone building in a flood of warmth, and the prisoner, walking between two sturdy deputies, gazed unblinkingly into the skies. He was hurried into a waiting taxi-cab, and carried back to his cell in the Tower.

Frank was re-sentenced by Judge Ben Hill a little after noon. The Courtroom was practically filled with friends and relatives and the idle curious who had got wind of the proceedings. Frank, himself, seemed the least perturbed of anyone in the place. A dramatic statement was made by the prisoner, in which he maintained innocence and a stolid determination to face death without a tremor.

Frank's Statement.

"May it please your honor," he said, "this is a momentous day, a day of far greater importance to the State of Georgia and to the law, even than to yourself, for, under the guise of the law, your honor is about to pronounce words that will condemn to death an innocent man. Transcending in importance the loss of my own life is the indelible stain and dishonor resting upon the name of this State by reason of its judicially murdering an innocent man. The jury's verdict of August 28, 1913, finding me guilty of the murder of Mary Phagan did not then and does not now speak the truth. I declare to your honor and to the world that that verdict was made in an Atmosphere seething with mob violence and clamor for my life, a verdict based on evidence absolutely false, which, under other circumstances, would not have been given a moment's credence."

"Your honor, I deeply sympathize with the parents of Mary Phagan. The brute that brought so much grief upon them has plunged me into sorrow and misery unspeakable and is about to accomplish my undoing. But this, I know, my execution will mark the advent of a new era in Georgia, where a good name and stainless honor count for naught against the word of a vile criminal; where the testimony of Southern White women of unimpeachable character is branded as false by the prosecution, disregarded by the jury and the perjured vaporings of a Black Brute alone accepted as the whole truth; where a mob crying for blood invaded the Courtroom and became the dominant factor in what should have been a solemn, judicial trial. Oh, shame that these things should be true!"

"Life is very sweet to me. It is not an easy thing to give up the love of dear ones, of wife and parents, of even loyal friends. Though this be true, death has no terrors for me. I go to my end in the full consciousness of innocence and in the firm conviction that, as there is a God in heaven, my full vindication must come some day. With the dawn of that day, there will come to the people of Georgia a full realization of this horrible mistake, a mistake irretrievable"the execution of an innocent man, a victim of perjury, prejudice, and passion."

Frank was represented by the following members of Counsel: Luther Z. Rosser, Reuben Arnold, Herbert and Leonard Haas, and Henry C. Peeples. Sheriff Mangum led the squad of deputies who escorted the prisoner. One of his first actions upon reaching the Courtroom was to shake hands with his attorneys.

Sentence Is Pronounced.

Officers were stationed at the doors, and Judge Hill gave explicit instructions to arrest anyone who made the slightest demonstration of Approval or Disapproval. He then pronounced sentence, saying: "It is ordered by the Court that you shall be carried by the Sheriff to the Common Jail of the County and there safely kept with a sufficient Guard until Friday, the 22d Day of January, 1915, on which day, between the hours of 10 in the morning and 4 in the afternoon, you shall be hanged by the Sheriff until the Sentence of Death shall be carried out." At these orders, a personal guard has been placed over the Cell of Frank.