Sacco And Vanzetti

The Sacco-Vanzetti affair is the most famous and controversial case in American legal history. In our history, justice has not always resulted in fairness, but instead in the denial of the rights of ordinary citizens. In the 1920's, a tumultuous decade of social unrest, numerous Americans were discriminated against for their political or religious beliefs and ethnicity. It was a decade of intense nationalism, in which the rights of immigrants were violated in such events as the Red Scare and Palmer Raids. In May of 1920, the infamous trial and conviction of Italian immigrants Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti began. Since this time, there has been much controversy as to their guilt. Could they have truly received a just trial in such a social climate? Did Sacco and Vanzetti's ethnicity and political beliefs affect their trial and convictions? It is believed

by many that these factors, rather than justice, played the greater hand in the trial. The dominating motives behind the convictions of Sacco and Vanzetti were not, as has been argued, the evidence and testimony presented against them, but rather the personal biases and nativist mentality of the trial players in light of the defendants' anarchist views and Italian background.

On the afternoon of April 15, 1920, in South Braintree, Massachusetts, two gunmen robbed and killed a paymaster and his guard as they transferred $15,776 from the Slater & Morrill Shoe factory. Three weeks later, Sacco and Vanzetti were arrested in a police trap and were found with numerous anarchist pamphlets and weapons. Both men were self-proclaimed anarchists and atheists, and in 1917, followed anarchist leader Luigi Galleani to Mexico in order to avoid the American draft. However, neither man had any previous criminal record and both were well-respected citizens in the Italian American community. Although not originally under suspicion for the crimes, both men were held by police and eventually indicted for the crimes. On July 14, 1921, after a seven-week trial, the two immigrants were convicted of murder. Finally, after a six-year waiting period of appeals, Sacco and Vanzetti were executed (Montgomery 4-14).

Their arrests thus came during the Palmer raids of 1919-1920 and the mass hysteria of anti-immigration feelings. As one popular Senator of the period stated about immigrants, "All forces of government should be utilized to run these fellows down and hang them"( qtd. in Avrich 165). Could a fair and impartial jury be found against such a political climate? It seems unlikely. The jury of Dedham, Massachusetts trial consisted of twelve white men of a variety of occupations such as real estate, sales, grocery, and machinery (Montgomery 84). As one researcher states, "The jury was selected. They were all cut out of the same bolt of cloth: staid, torpid, highly patriotic, oblivious to progress or a progressive idea..."(Montgomery 83). In a time of such turmoil and anti-immigration beliefs, the evidence suggests that these white males had a difficult time forgoing their internalized social prejudices in order to judge Sacco and Vanzetti fairly. One may argue that these jurors could give the men every fair consideration, as U.S. citizens doing their duty (Montgomery 84). At the time, however, wasn't the duty of the citizens to save the country from the "dirty Reds?" And how do such critics answer to the obvious prejudice of jury foreman, Walter R. Ripley? Ripley, a stockkeeper and former chief or police, was a man who entered the courtroom each day and saluted the flag: an ideal patriot. In the years after the trial, friend William Daly stated in an affidavit, that on his way to Dedham, Ripley responded to a question of Sacco and Vanzetti's innocencewith, "Damn them, they ought to hang them anyway!" (Feuerlicht 202) This was the leader of the jury: a man with a seemingly nativist mentality and prejudice towards non-Americans.

Perhaps had the jury been the sole factor in the convictions of Sacco and Vanzetti, our argument would be based mostly on speculation of intrinsic character flaws. However, evidence suggests the jury was influenced by more than popular thought and Massachusetts conservative views. The tactics used by Prosecutor Frederick Katzmann are shown to have played specifically to the patriotism of the jury (Feuerlicht 241). In addition, rather than using facts alone, Katzmann relied heavily on speculative witnesses and confusing testimonies. Feuerlicht describes how, of the sixteen eyewitnesses the prosecution produced, none were able to "positively identify" Sacco at the Quincy preliminary hearing (106). Yet, a year later at the trial, seven were able to identify Sacco with some certainty. The defense, on the other hand, provided seventeen witnesses who testified that Sacco and Vanzetti were not seen at the crime, and only two of whom were uncertain of their testimonies (Feuerlicht 106). Witnesses from the prosecution were also shown to change their testimonies with time. Lola Andrews, for instance, saw the escape vehicle from a window 60-80 feet away from. She was able to testify with certainty, one year later, that she saw a man "whose forehead was high, the hair was brushed back and it was between 2 and 2 Ð... inches in length and had dark eyebrows"(Frankfurter 12). However, friend Henry Kurlansky later testified that Andrews had confided to him that, "The government took me down and wanted me to recognize those men...I have never seen them and I can't recognize them"(Frankfurter 20). On the defense's side, those testifying with alibis for the two defendants were mostly Italian immigrants who spoke poor English: yet another strike against the defense in the eyes of the jurors.

The evidence presented at the trial also leaves doubts as to how mere facts alone could have proven Sacco and Vanzetti's guilt. The prosecution introduced only three main pieces of evidence found at the scene of the crime: a cap believed to be Sacco's, a gun, and the "fatal bullet" (Transcript). The cap was found 18 inches from the guard's body, was 6 7/8 size, and had a tear on the inside. The cap was believed to be Sacco's, as his caps also had tears in them from a nail he hung them upon. In 1927, however, Braintree Chief Gallivan testified that he had put the tear in the cap when it was found in order to look for owner identification (Feuerlicht 215-17). In addition, Katzmann illegally took a cap from Sacco's home to present as evidence at the trial. However, it was a size 7 1/8, in obvious contrast to the cap found by the police.(Feuerlicht 216) The gun found on Vanzetti at his arrest was another piece of evidence for the prosecution. While the gun was the same type of gun as the dead guard's, it was also