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Revisiting Sacco & Vanzetti
Most history textbooks today assert that Sacco and Vanzetti, the two Italian anarchists convicted of a brutal murder on circumstantial evidence, were convicted unfairly by a bigoted judge and jury on the basis of being anarchists. What is rarely mentioned is the fact that the decision was appealed and reviewed by a wide variety of men, including highly educated and reputable men, all without leaving any serious doubt about the conviction. For example, is there any textbook for high school students that dares to discuss the report of Governor Fuller of Massachusetts after his extensive review of the case? His review included serious work from other men of high reputation he recruited for an impartial investigation, namely, President Abbott Lawrence Lowell of Harvard University, President Samuel W. Stratton of M.I.T., and former judge Robert Grant. After detailed investigation of alleged new evidence, interviews of the jury members and Vanzetti, interviews of other major figures in the legal proceedings, reviews of the court record, and so forth, they all agreed that there was no basis for a new trial and no reason to call the trial unfair or the decision incorrect. You can read Governor Fuller's report online at http://www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/SaccoV/fulleropinion.html.
That report is one small part of a fascinating Web site, Professor Doug Linder's Famous Trials site at the University of Missouri-Kansas City. His section on Sacco and Vanzetti provides a useful summary of the evidence in the trial. His table of evidence includes several modern updates, such as evidence from a 1961 ballistics test suggesting that one of the bullets from the crime scene probably was fired by the gun that Sacco had - confirming one of the points that swayed the jury. In fact, Sacco was almost certainly guilty. There is a chance that Vanzetti was not - the case against him was weaker. From Dr. Linder's evidence page:
In 1943, Carlo Tresca, perhaps the best-connected anarchist leader of the time (and the man originally chosen to be Sacco's and Vanzetti's defense lawyer) said: "Sacco was guilty, but Vanzetti was not." In November 1982, Francis Russell (author of highly-regarded book on the Sacco-Vanzetti trial) was informed in a letter from the son of Giovanni Gamberi, one of four members of a group formed in 1920 to arrange the Sacco-Vanzetti defense, that "Sacco was guilty" and "Vanzetti innocent as far as the actual participation in the killing."
If Vanzetti was not guilty of the actual murder, was he not still part of the plot that resulted in the murder? In any case, it certainly hurt his defense that he was caught lying about various issues in the case. For example, according to Dr. Linder's notes:
After Sacco and Vanzetti's execution, defense attorney Moore revealed that Sacco and Vanzetti had probably gone to Bridgewater to get Boda's car so that they could use it to collect dynamite from comrades who had hidden it. They thought this explanation was too damaging, and they stuck with their unlikely story.
Ah, they couldn't give an honest explanation for being in a particular location after the crime because the truth might be damaging: they were terrorists on their way to get a load of dynamite.
Shed a tear for dear brother Sacco and brother Vanzetti, primitive terrorists who clearly were threats to society, now made martyrs and heroes of the Left.
Cut down before their prime! If only they had gotten away with that crime and hundreds of others, including blowing up school buses and hijacking airplanes, if only they had founded a well-connected terrorist organization and succeeded in creating a new state through their anarchy and terror, they might be in the enviable position today of being heroes to the United Nations and potential recipients of oh, about $350 million of US aid.