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During his 1913 trial on charges of strangling a 13-year-old girl, anti-Semitic crowds outside the steamy courtroom in Atlanta chanted, "Hang the Jew." After the Governor courageously commuted his sentence from death to life imprisonment, he was kidnaped from his jail cell and lynched. For more than 70 years, defenders of the frail, scholarly Leo Frank have fought to reverse the verdict against him as unjust and bigoted. Last week Frank was finally given a belated measure of justice when a Georgia board awarded him a posthumous pardon.
Although Frank was denied a pardon in 1983, this time, the Georgia pardons and paroles board accepted the arguments of attorneys representing Jewish organizations that Frank had been denied justice. "The state failed to protect Frank or guarantee him an appeal," said Pardons Board Chairman Wayne Snow. "The truth is, we were interested in doing the right thing."
CONGRESS A Vote to Ban Lie DetectorsMore than 2 million Americans last year underwent the frequently nerve-racking experience of taking a lie-detector test, or polygraph examination, a threefold increase in a decade. Fully 98% of the tests were ordered not by police but by private employers, who used them mainly to screen job applicants. Now Congress, many of whose members view the tests as a violation of civil rights, is moving to curtail them. Last week, by 236 to 173, the House voted to prevent the general use of the tests by U.S. businesses. Polygraphs, said Montana Democrat Patrick Williams, "in effect require testifying against oneself." The ban would exempt employers such as nursing homes and companies working for U.S. intelligence agencies.