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

Here is the translated text as follows:

LEO M. FRANK, 311

According to the law, they had the right to delve into that character, and you saw that on cross-examination they dared not do it. I have here an authority that puts it right squarely: "Whenever anyone has evidence (83 Ga., 581) in their possession, and they fail to produce it, the strongest presumption arises that it would be hurtful if they had, and their failure to produce evidence is a circumstance against them."

You don't need any law book to know that this is true, because your common sense tells you that whenever a man can bring evidence, and you know that he has it and doesn't do it, the strongest presumption arises against him. And you know, as twelve honest men seeking to get at the truth, that the reason these able counsel didn't ask those "hare-brained fanatics," as Mr. Arnold called them, before they had ever gone on the stand—girls whose appearance is as good as any they brought, girls that you know by their manner on the stand spoke the truth, girls who are unimpeached and unimpeachable—was because they dared not do it. You know it; if it had never been put in a law book, you'd know it. And then you tell me that because these good people from Washington Street come down here and say that they never heard anything, that he is a man of good character.

Many a man has gone through life and even his wife and his best friends never knew his character; and someone has said that it takes the valet to really know the character of a man. And I would rather believe that these poor, unprotected working girls, who have no interest in this case and are not under the influence of the pencil company or Montag or anybody else, know that man, as many a man has been heretofore, is of bad character, than to believe the Rabbi of his church and the members of the Hebrew Orphans' Home.

Sometimes, you know, a man of bad character uses charitable and religious organizations to cover up his defects, and sometimes a consciousness in the heart of a man will make him over-active in some other line, in order to cover up and mislead the public generally. Many a man has been a wolf in sheep's clothing; many a man has walked in high society and...