Jim Conley’s testimony against Leo Frank was the centerpiece of the 1913 prosecution for the murder of thirteen-year-old Mary Phagan, and it remains one of the most contested witness accounts in American legal history. Conley, the African American sweeper at the National Pencil Company in Atlanta, told a Fulton County jury that Frank, the factory superintendent, had confessed the killing to him and ordered him to help hide the body. He said this after giving police four sworn statements that contradicted one another on nearly every important point. The jury convicted Frank in under two hours. Nearly seventy years later, another factory employee came forward and said Conley had acted alone.
Who Jim Conley Was
Conley held the lowest-paid job in the pencil factory. He moved through every floor collecting trash, cleaning production areas, and handling whatever physical labor was needed. He had a record of minor arrests and had served time on a chain gang before Phagan’s death. His contact with Frank at work was limited to receiving instructions about maintenance and waste disposal. The two men occupied very different rungs of the factory hierarchy, and that gap shaped how their accounts collided once police began asking questions.
Police initially had no reason to focus on Conley. They suspected the night watchman first, then turned to Frank. Conley became a suspect after investigators learned he could write, which contradicted the illiteracy he had claimed. Two handwritten notes had been found near Phagan’s body in the factory basement, crudely composed to look as though the murdered girl had written them, blaming “that negro hire down here” and referencing “a long tall black negro.” Who actually wrote those notes became the pivot of the whole case.
The Four Affidavits Before Trial
Conley gave police four sworn statements, each one different from the last.1National Archives. Progressive Era: Leo Frank Petition
In the first, he denied being able to read or write and denied knowing anything about the death. That version collapsed once police produced evidence of his literacy. In the second, he admitted writing the murder notes but said Frank had dictated them to him before the crime. In the third, he placed himself at the scene, describing how he had helped move Phagan’s body from the second floor to the basement using the factory elevator, claiming he acted under Frank’s orders and out of fear. The fourth statement smoothed the timeline into a coherent narrative. That final version was the one the prosecution built its case around.
Each revision kept Conley close enough to the crime to stay useful to investigators while pushing responsibility onto Frank.
What Conley Said on the Stand
Conley testified for three full days in Fulton County Superior Court. He told the jury that Frank called him into the second-floor office on the day of the murder and confessed to killing Phagan. He said Frank directed him to wrap the body in a cloth sack and carry it down to the basement. He described the physical effort of moving the weight and the specific instructions Frank gave for composing the notes meant to mislead police. His account was the only direct testimony placing Frank at the killing.
Why His Testimony Alone Could Not Convict
Georgia law did not allow a felony conviction based on the word of a single accomplice. Under what was then Section 1017 of the 1910 Penal Code, the prosecution needed independent evidence linking the defendant to the crime.2Justia. Georgia Code 24-14-8 – Number of Witnesses Required Generally; Exceptions; Effect of Corroboration Conley had confessed on the stand to helping conceal the body, which made him an accomplice by his own account. His testimony by itself could not support a guilty verdict.
The threshold Georgia courts applied was “slight evidence” of corroboration. It did not have to prove the crime, did not have to be direct, and did not have to be enough on its own to convict. It only needed to establish some independent connection between the defendant and the offense. Prosecutors offered testimony from other factory workers about Frank’s behavior that day, along with physical evidence at the scene. Whether that satisfied the statute became a recurring issue on appeal.
Sixteen Hours of Cross-Examination
Frank’s lawyers cross-examined Conley for sixteen hours across the three days. They walked him through the contradictions among his four affidavits. They pressed him on his criminal record and his admitted lies to police. Conley held to the version he had given on direct.
The racial context of that exchange was unusual for the early-twentieth-century South. As the National Archives observes, evidence from an African American witness “against a white person would have rarely been given credence.”1National Archives. Progressive Era: Leo Frank Petition Here it was, and the jury credited it. Whether Conley’s consistency on the stand reflected truth or preparation was, and remains, the central dispute of the case.
The Verdict
The jury deliberated less than two hours before returning a guilty verdict on August 25, 1913. Neither Frank nor his attorneys were in the courtroom. Judge Leonard Roan, worried the hostile crowd outside might lynch Frank on the spot if the verdict went against him, had advised the defense to keep their client away.1National Archives. Progressive Era: Leo Frank Petition Roan sentenced Frank to hang the following day. Conley, in a separate proceeding, was sentenced to one year on a chain gang as an accessory for his admitted role in concealing the body.
Frank’s appeals ran through the Georgia Supreme Court and then to the U.S. Supreme Court in Frank v. Mangum (1915), which rejected his claims that mob influence and his absence during the verdict had denied him due process.3Justia. Frank v. Mangum Governor John M. Slaton commuted the death sentence to life in June 1915, citing doubt about the verdict and noting physical evidence suggesting the elevator had not actually traveled to the basement on the day of the murder, contradicting a key part of Conley’s story.4Famous Trials. The Leo Frank Trial: Clemency Decision of Governor John M. Slaton A mob abducted Frank from the state prison farm two months later and hanged him near Marietta.
Alonzo Mann’s 1982 Statement
Alonzo Mann had been a fourteen-year-old office boy at the pencil factory in 1913. In a sworn statement published by The Tennessean in March 1982, Mann said he had seen Jim Conley carrying the limp body of Mary Phagan on the first floor of the factory, near the trapdoor leading to the basement. Conley, according to Mann, threatened to kill him if he told anyone. Mann’s mother told him to stay quiet, and he did, for nearly seven decades.5The Tennessean. ‘An Innocent Man Was Lynched’: Reporting Exonerated Leo Frank in the Murder of Mary Phagan
Mann’s account contradicted Conley’s testimony directly. Conley had told the jury he and Frank moved the body together using the elevator. Mann described Conley acting alone on the first floor. Mann’s version also matched what Slaton had noticed about the elevator in 1915. The Tennessean arranged for Mann to sit for a polygraph and a psychological stress evaluation. Both indicated he was telling the truth.5The Tennessean. ‘An Innocent Man Was Lynched’: Reporting Exonerated Leo Frank in the Murder of Mary Phagan
The 1986 Posthumous Pardon
Mann’s revelation reopened the effort to clear Frank’s name. A 1983 petition to the Georgia Board of Pardons and Paroles was denied because it sought to prove innocence outright, which the board treated as nearly impossible to establish for a case seventy years old. A 1986 petition, filed by the Anti-Defamation League, the American Jewish Committee, and the Atlanta Jewish Federation, argued that Frank had been denied justice rather than that he was innocent.6The New York Times. Georgia Pardons Victim 70 Years After Lynching
The board unanimously granted a posthumous pardon on March 11, 1986. It rested the pardon on two failures by the state: the failure to protect Frank’s life and preserve his opportunity for further legal appeal, and the failure to bring his killers to justice. The pardon did not declare Frank innocent, and it did not formally repudiate Conley’s testimony. What it did was acknowledge that the process that produced Frank’s conviction, and the process that ended his life before that conviction could be tested further, had broken down.6The New York Times. Georgia Pardons Victim 70 Years After Lynching