“Lynching An Affecting Look at Frank Case.” By Dan Hulbert. Atlanta Journal-Constitution. August 18, 2000.

[Excerpt]

Like Parade, the 1998 Broadway musical drama by Alfred Uhry and Jason Robert Brown, Lynching believes that Leo Frank (Jim Roof), the Atlanta pencil factory foreman, was probably innocent of the 1913 murder of his employee Mary Phagan (Amber Brooke), convicted by wildly unlucky circumstances, including his own background as a Northern-bred Jew. The two works further deduce from the trial transcript and other evidence that Jim Conley (Rob Cleveland), the factory sweeper, probably did strangle the 13-year-old Marietta girl – or at least concocted a bizarre tale to frame Frank as a desperate lecher, knowing that as a black man he’d otherwise hand whether he were guilty or not.