|
Leo Max Frank (April 17, 1884 – August 17, 1915) was a Jewish-American factory superintendent in Atlanta, Georgia who was convicted of the murder of a 13-year-old employee, Mary Phagan. His legal case, and lynching two years later, became the focus of social, regional, political, and racial concerns – particularly antisemitism. Various plays, films, and books have been written on or about the case over the years, such as the films ''The Gunsaulus Mystery'' in 1921 and ''They Won't Forget'' in 1937, the TV miniseries ''The Murder of Mary Phagan'' in 1988, and the Broadway musical ''Parade'' in 1998. Frank was posthumously pardoned in 1986 by the Georgia State Board of Pardons and Paroles, which said that its action was performed "()ithout attempting to address the question of guilt or innocence". The consensus of researchers on the subject is that Frank was wrongly convicted. The victim, Mary Phagan, had been strangled on April 26, 1913 and was found dead and apparently raped in the factory's cellar the next morning. There were two notes next to Phagan, which appeared to be written by her, implicating the night watchman Newt Lee. Over the course of their investigations, the police arrested five men, including Newt Lee, Jim Conley, a janitor at the factory, and Leo Frank. Frank was arrested on April 29 based on his nervousness while being interviewed and police officers' interpretations of admissions concerning his actions on the day of the murder. The Atlanta newspapers intensely covered the murder and investigation; the governor, noting the reaction of the public to press sensationalism after Lee and Frank were arrested, readied ten militia companies to repulse any potential mob action against the prisoners. Of those arrested, Frank was indicted on May 24, 1913 on the charge of murder, and the case opened on July 28 at the Fulton County Superior Court. A grand jury considered Conley for murder, but he was not indicted. He gave statements to the police that he was an accomplice after the fact, for which he would be found guilty and sentenced in 1914, and was the prosecution's main witness against Frank in the murder trial. Frank, who had been educated in New York, moved to Atlanta in 1908, marrying a local Jewish girl in 1910. He was elected president of the Atlanta chapter of the B'nai B'rith, a Jewish fraternal organization, in 1912. The Jewish community in Atlanta was the largest in the South, and the Franks belonged to a cultured and philanthropic social environment. Although the American South was not known for its antisemitism, Frank's northern culture and Jewish faith added to the sense that he was different. At this period in Atlanta's history there were a growing number of factories, many of which were Jewish owned, that employed poor rural workers, including children, with low wages, long hours, and in unsafe conditions. While the Atlanta Jewish elite was unusually assimilated into the political, economic, and social fabric of the city, they felt some unease both as a "people apart", and at the growing concerns locally regarding child labor at factories they owned. During the trial the prosecution alleged that Frank, with Conley's assistance, regularly met with women in his office for sexual relations. The prosecution based much of its case on the testimony of Conley, who many historians believe to be the true murderer. A guilty verdict was announced on August 25, 1913. Frank and his lawyers made a series of unsuccessful appeals; their final appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court failed in April 1915. Considering arguments from both sides as well as evidence not available at trial, Governor John M. Slaton commuted Frank's sentence to life imprisonment. By this time, the Frank case was a national issue. Newspapers outside Georgia expressed the belief that Frank's conviction was a travesty. Within Georgia, this outside criticism fueled hatred for Frank and antisemitic attacks against him. Immediately after the commutation, a crowd of 1,200 marched on the governor's mansion in protest. Two months later, Frank was kidnapped from prison by a group of 25 armed men and driven to Marietta, Mary Phagan's hometown, where he was lynched. The new governor vowed to bring these people to justice, but even though the lynchers included prominent citizens of Marietta, and their roles in the lynching were generally known locally, nobody was charged. ==Background== 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Leo Frank」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
|