The De Soto County news. [volume] (Arcadia, Fla.) 1898-1924, 1905-09-08
Condemned TO DIE.oN oIpBET.
Reprieve Came After Rope Had Been
AdJusted-served go Years.

Mrs. w, II. FELTON, tells the follow
ing pathetic story in recent issue Of
the Atlanta Journal:
The story of Charles Henry Franklin,
who was condemned to be hung In
Bib superior court over twenty years
ago, and who was respited on the gal
lows, after the rope had been tied on
his neck and his feet we're standing on
the death trap under the gallo VS. tree,
beggars romance and proves the truth
Of the old saying that fact is stranger
than fiction.
His respite procured a change in the
sentence and he was sent up as life
convict and served twenty-one years
Of this hard sentence, although he was
an innocent man all the time, and his
life had been sworn away by the real
murderer.
And this happened in Georgia The
real murderer confessed the crime on
his death-bed and told bystanders that
Franklin was an innocent sufferer.
This poor victim Of another's wrong
doirg had not only been so nearly
hung, but he served at the hardest
hardest work as life term con-
Wet in Coal City coal mines and on
railroad grades in summers heat and
winters frost, and at rock quarries,
where toll was the hardest and punish
ment severest. His wife died on the
day when the hangman's rope was
fastened on his poor neck-died from
grief, shame, humiliation and despair,
leaving little baby girl three days
old. Her suffering was greater. than
she could bear and her life left its
grief-stricken tenement to find per-
haps rest that she was deried here on
earth
This poor, wretched man had also
mother, whose agony was mmeasura-
BILE and who died as pauper, con-
sumed by the agony of her grief and
the condition Of her hopeless son, a
life convict in Georgia's changing.
This poor Mr.. franklin was 65 years
old when the prison doors we're opened
and he was told TO go, as he had been
cleared by the confession of the real
murderer.
But what was there for him on the
outside, after such bitter servitude
and degradation, except the liberty to
go where he pleased, the liberty to sub
sist and make living the best he
could for one Of his arms had been
mashed of in a lumber mill and he
was not only crippled in mind, but
manned in body, a pennyless pau
per, a homeless walf, having been dead
TO the world for twenty years and
thereby robbed OF the best of his life?
Is it not dreadful to know how he was
wronged?
True it is, he had the consciousness
OF being innocent, and his self-respect
doubtless sustained him in the hope
that God would be merciful and let
the truth prevail but who can meas
ure the depths Of suffering, as the years
rolled on, as his head whitened and
his health declined, and nothing APP
parently came to has relief?
He had never seen his child, that
three-day -old baby which survived the
mother on that awful day set for its
fathers execution, and when he found
her in Florida, after the prison doors
we're opened to him, she was herself a
mother and this poor victim of anoth-
er's sin was a grandfather.
In those dreadful convict camps the
life convict worked overtime and sent
the money to educate that child, and
that child's life was Swallowed and de-
pressed and hampered by the fact that
her father was once nearly hung and
still life convict in Georgia's peni-
tenitentiary condemned for murder
1t is simply too horrible to be ex-
pressed in words Noamount OF money
can .equalize the suffering and rightful
claim OF franklin to Justice and reha-
Utilization before his fellowman
He always protested his innocence,
but it availed him nothing, after the
jury decided against him. Just imag-
inc, II you can, how his poor heart
gasped and agonized and beat itself
against the the injustice OF man
The story Of Jean Vatican will ever
remain a classic in popular fiction, but
Jean Vatican could get out, and could
breathe the free-air, and circumvent
his enemies, and could do works OF
charity, was beloved by those who
knew him best even II he was all the
time in danger and forever bounded
by the law that sealed his fate as a
convict in France.
-Franklin's fate was inexpressibly |