Sacco and Vanzetti: Judicial Murder
by More Prisoners of Eternity.
Defence committees were set up around the world and the case of Sacco and Vanzetti became an international cause celebre. Demands were made for a retrial and funds raised. Two appeals were held but the verdict was upheld in both cases. Sacco and Vanzetti were sentenced to die in the electric chair.
Whilst in prison awaiting execution Sacco was told by a gangster, Celestine Medeiros (also awaiting execution) that he had been part of the gang that had committed the crime. Judge Thayer refused a further retrial based on his testimony.
“It is true they can execute the body, but they cannot execute the idea which is bound to live.
(Niccola Sacco)
“I would not wish on any of them what I have had to suffer for things I am not guilty of. But I have suffered for things I am guilty of. I am suffering because I am a radical, and I am indeed a radical. I have suffered because I am an Italian, and I am indeed an Italian. If you could execute me two times, and if I could be reborn to other times, I would live again to do what I have already done”.
( Bartolomeo Vanzetti )
Sacco and Vanzetti were executed on 23 August, 1927. They both met their deaths with great calmness and assurance. Vanzetti, shook hands with his gaolers and thanked them for their kindness. His final words were “I wish to forgive some people for what they are doing to me”. Sacco, whose English was fractured at best, shouted “Viva I’anarchia! Farewell Mia Madre!”
Liberal opinion around the world was outraged at the severity of the punishment and what they believed was the injustice of the verdict. Petitions of condemnation were signed, politicians spoke out, and the press savaged the American judicial system. Others, however, reacted more strongly. In Buenos Aires the headquarters of Citibank were bombed as also was the Bank of Boston, and an attempt was made on President Hoover’s life. Niccola Sacco’s wife wrote a letter to the anarchist believed to be behind the bombings, Severino di Giovanni, thanking him for his efforts on her husbands behalf.
John Upton Sinclair, the socialist author and politician who had been a prominent and outspoken supporter of Sacco and Vanzetti, recalled meeting their defence attorney, Fred Moore, after the executions:” Alone in a hotel room with Fred, I begged him to tell me the full truth. He then told me that the men were guilty, and he told me in every detail how he had framed a set of alibis for them” . . . I faced the most ethical problem of my life. I had come to Boston with the announcement that I would write the truth about the case. But Sinclair doubted the credibility of Moore’s statement – I heard certain things about Fred Moore. I had heard that he was using drugs. In 1941, the anarchist Carlo Tresca, a member of the Sacco and Vanzetti Defence Committee stated that “Sacco was guilty but Vanzetti was not”. Mario Buda later claimed that Sacco was there. In 1952, labour leader, Anthony Ramuglia, claimed that he had been asked to provide a false alibi for Sacco by Fred Moore. In 1982, a letter emerged written by Giovanni Gambera, one of the four anarchist leaders who had organised Sacco and Vanzetti’s defence. In the letter he claimed that everyone within the anarchist inner-circle knew that Sacco was guilty and Vanzetti was not. In 1961, further ballistic tests were carried out on Sacco’s gun. The results showed that the bullets that killed Alessandro Berardelli had indeed been fired from it. These results were confirmed by more tests carried out in 1983. Though by this time no one could be sure that the gun being tested was Sacco’s at all. Regardless of what has come to light since it seems that the evidence to prove either Sacco’s or Vanzetti’s guilt beyond a reasonable doubt didn’t exist at the time of their trial. The proceedings were not conducted in a fair and impartial way, that their conviction was politically motivated,and that they were victims not just of a miscarriage of justice but of judicial murder.
“Any stigma and disgrace should be forever removed from the names of Niccola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti”.
(Michael Dukakis, Governor of Massachusetts, 1977) .
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