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| Sunday, 6 November 2005 |
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Features |  |
| News Business Features Editorial
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Famous Trials that shook
the world :
Trial of Sacco and Vanzetti by Lionel Wijesiri
On April 15, 1920, a paymaster for a shoe company in Braintree, Massachusetts, USA and his guard were shot dead while carrying two boxes containing the payroll of the shoe factory. After the two robbers took the $15,000 they got into a car containing several other men and were driven away. Several eyewitnesses claimed that the robbers looked Italian. A large number of Italian immigrants were questioned, but eventually the authorities decided to charge Bartolomeo Vanzetti and Nicola Sacco with the murders. Because Sacco and Vanzetti had gone with two other Italians to a garage to claim a car that the local police believed to be connected with the crime, they were arrested. The arrest of Sacco and Vanzetti had coincided with the period of the most intense political repression in American history, the "Red Scare" in 1919-20. Both men had neither a criminal record, nor was there any evidence of their having had any of the money. However, they were long recognised by the authorities as militants who had been extensively involved in labour strikes, political agitation, and anti-war propaganda. The police argued that they had committed the robbery to acquire funds for their political campaign. Main evidence The trial started on May 21 1921. The main evidence against the men was that they were both carrying guns when arrested. Some people who saw the crime taking place identified Vanzetti and Sacco as the robbers. Others disagreed. Both men had good alibis. Vanzetti was selling fish in Plymouth while Sacco was in Boston with his wife having his photograph taken. The prosecution made a great deal of the fact that all those called to provide evidence to support these alibis were Italian immigrants. Trial Vanzetti and Sacco were disadvantaged by not having a full grasp of the English language. It became clear from some of the answers they gave in court that they, had misunderstood the question. The trial lasted seven weeks and on July 14, 1921, both men were found guilty of first degree murder and sentenced to death. This verdict marked, however, only the beginning of a lengthy legal struggle to save the two men. It extended until 1927, during which time the defence made many separate motions, appeals, and petitions to both State and federal courts in an attempt to gain a new trial. The defence lawyer understood that his clients' arrest and prosecution stemmed from their radical activities, and decided to expose the prosecution's hidden motive: its desire to aid the federal and military authorities in suppressing the Italian communist movement to which Sacco and Vanzetti belonged. He organised public meetings, solicited the support of labour unions, contacted international organisations, initiated new investigations, and distributed tens of thousands of defence pamphlets throughout the United States and the world. His aggressive strategy transformed a little known case into an international cause. The case resulted in anti-US demonstrations in several European countries and at one of these in Paris a bomb exploded killing twenty people. Important figures in the United States and Europe became involved in the campaign to overturn the conviction. William Patterson, Dorothy Parker, John Howard Lawson, Bertrand Russell, George Bernard Shaw and H. G. Wells became involved in a campaign to obtain a retrial. In 1925 Celestino Madeiros, a Portuguese immigrant, confessed to being a member of the gang that killed the paymaster and the guard. He also named the four other men who had taken part in the robbery. The Madeiros brothers were well-known criminals who had carried out similar robberies. However, the authorities refused to investigate the confession made by Madeiros. Statement On April 9, 1927, when the case was heard for the last time by the Massachusetts supreme judicial court and upon finally being sentenced to death, Vanzetti made the following statement to the Judge:This is what I say: I would not wish to a dog or a snake, to the most low and misfortunate creature of the earth - I would not wish to any of them what I have had to suffer for things that I am not guilty of. But my conviction is that I have suffered for things that I am guilty of. I am suffering because I am a radical, and indeed I am a radical; I have suffered because I was an Italian, and indeed I am an Italian... If you could execute me two times, and if I could be reborn two other times, I would live again to do what I have done already. I have finished. Thank you" Along with this judgment, protest meetings were held again and appeals were made to the Governor. This public pressure, combined with influential behind-the-scenes interventions, finally persuaded the governor of Massachusetts, to consider the question of executive clemency for the two men. He appointed an advisory committee, headed by Lawrence Lowell, president of Harvard University. The committee, in a decision that was notorious for its loose thinking, concluded that the trial and judicial process had been just "on the whole" and that clemency was not warranted. Sacco and Vanzetti were executed on August 23, 1927. On that day over 250,000 people took part in a silent demonstration in Boston. The date became a watershed in twentieth-century American history. It became the last of a long train of events that had driven any sense of utopian vision out of American life. Their execution divided the nation while producing an uproar in Europe. Harvard Law Professor and later U. S. Supreme Court justice Felix Frankfurter condemned the prejudice of the presiding Judge (who reportedly said in 1924, "Did you see what I did with those anarchistic bastards the other day?") and procedural errors during the trial. These errors included the prosection's failure to disclose eyewitness evidence favourable to the defence. On August 23, 1977, exactly fifty years after their execution, Governor, of Massachusetts, Michael Dukakis issued a proclamation stating that Sacco and Vanzetti had not been treated justly and that" any disgrace should be forever removed from their names". |
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