Sacco and Vanzetti: Judicial Murder

Sacco and Vanzetti were immigrants who fled poverty in their native Italy, only to find the same in America. They were both also committed anarchists and followers of that advocate of violent revolution, Luigi Galleani.

Ferdinando Niccola Sacco, was a cobbler born in Foggia, Italy, in 1891. He emigrated to the United States when aged 17. He never really mastered the English language and never felt the need to do so as he rarely emerged from the emigre Italian community. Bartolomeo Vanzetti was a fishmonger from Villafaletto.

They didn’t meet one another until 1917, when both fled to Mexico to avoid the draft. This was to play heavily against them at their various trials. Their seeming lack of patriotism and unwillingness to fight for their adopted country only seemed to reinforce the view that they were an alien species in American society and as such intrinsically un-American. When, in fact, they were simply anti-war They were to stand trial accused of the murder of a payroll clerk, Frederick Parmenter, and a security guard, Alessandro Berardelli, who were delivering the payroll of $15,776 for the Slater Morill Shoe Company in Braintree, Massachusetts on 15 April, 1920. They were arrested on 5 May, 1920, in Brockton, as they were in the process of picking up a car believed to have been used in the robbery. The car belonged to Mario Buda, who was the known revolutionary, Luigi Galleani’s, chief bomb-maker. Buda, who accompanied Sacco and Vanzetti, along with a friend, escaped the police trap on a motorcycle. Sacco and Vanzetti were not so lucky however, and were arrested after boarding a streetcar. Both were found to be armed and in possession of anarchist literature. Sacco was also found to have shotgun shells in his pockets that were similar to those used in the crime. This was to prove to be vital evidence at the subsequent trials. Neither of them had criminal records.

Both Sacco and Vanzetti pleaded their innocence claiming that they were the victims of social and political prejudice; and there is little doubt that the presiding Judge, Webster Thayer (who had requested to preside at the trial) guided the jury toward a guilty verdict. He reportedly told the jury that, “This man (Vanzetti) although he may not have committed the crime attributed to him, is nevertheless culpable because he is the enemy of our existing institutions”. There is, however, no evidence of this in the Court transcripts. Both men were committed anarchists and it seems likely that they participated in the bombing campaigns of Luigi Galleani, at some level. They were known to Mario Buda and many of those who had previously been arrested were associates of theirs. Vanzetti, prior to his trial for murder had been convicted of armed robbery, when the Judge was again, Webster Thayer. Also, despite their declarations of innocence of the crimes of which they had been charged, neither of them disavowed their belief in violent revolution as a legitimate tool with which to oppose oppression. At the time of their arrest both Sacco and Vanzetti lied to the police. They did this fearing they would be deported, as indeed, Galleani had been in 1919. Their initial false testimony to the police was to seriously prejudice their case later.