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

Here is the translated text as follows:

PEDRO GIBERT AND OTHERS

Previously, it was said that he could not read, yet he contradicted that assertion by reading in court. This circumstance would be one of the strongest proofs that he had testified truthfully. It would demonstrate that, however bad he was in other respects and whatever falsehoods he might have stated elsewhere, he had come into court on the present occasion with a full knowledge of his precarious situation. He was convinced that his life depended on his veracity and was determined to tell the truth, even if it meant contradicting anything he might have previously stated. How easy it would have been for him, when asked by the counsel for the defense, "if he could read," to have replied in the negative.

Let us proceed to consider the question of whether the whole of the prisoners were implicated, assuming the captain and officers were guilty. In relation to this question, there is one circumstance that removes all doubts that the entire crew were partners in the crime. This extinguished, at once, the hope I had so fondly cherished in favor of Ferrer, the cook, and Costa, the cabin boy. This damning circumstance is the fact that not a single individual of the crew ever mentioned the robbery to the Portuguese, who were their companions for so many months. This unnatural silence proved that they were all equally implicated in the crime and all felt the necessity of keeping the secret. They had cast in their lot with their officers and were bound together as a band of brothers by a common sense of guilt and danger, with the captain being, like Byron’s Conrad, the master-spirit of the whole—"one formed to lead the guilty, guilt’s worst instrument."

The nautical gentlemen, who were brought forward by the counsel for the defense in numerous instances, although called on behalf of the prisoners, corroborated the evidence of the government witnesses. Almost all piracies are now committed by slavers, slavery being the only pretense on which a piratical vessel could nowadays be fitted out. Mr. Dunlap concluded by delivering an eloquent eulogy upon Capt. Trotter and the English navy generally for their gallantry.