The discussion of the testimony against Vanzetti and against Sacco must
be supplemented with a number of other considerations. In the first
place, there were 22 persons on the stand for the defense on the issue
of identifications, who had at least as good an opportunity to see the
crime and the criminals as the several state witnesses, and who said
positively that these were not the bandits.
In the second place, 13 witnesses put on the stand by the prosecution
for the purpose of establishing some facts of the crime, of whom several
were excellently placed to make identifications, and certainly seemed
anxious to apprehend the guilty persons, could not identify either of
the defendants.
Thirdly, the government sought to bolster its testimony by evolving a
far-fetched and intangible theory of “consciousness of guilt” at the
time of arrest, which in turn brought into the limelight the
circumstances of the arrest and the defendants’ unpopular social views.
There are also a number of other points which consumed much time,
clouded the issues, and really had no bearing upon the case.
Testimony contradicting that of Mary Eva Splaine and Frances Devlin was
given by Frank Burke, lecturer, who observed the bandits escape from a
much better vantage point than either woman. He was on Pearl street near
the New Haven tracks and in the immediate path of the escaping car.
He stood within ten feet of the automobile. He saw two men in it, both
dark. The bandit leaning out of the rear seat pointed an automatic
pistol at him and pulled the trigger, but there was no explosion. Burke
got a full view of the man who the prosecution claimed was Sacco. He
described him as very full-faced—flat, and a broad, heavy jaw; needed a
shave badly, “dark complexioned, looked rather a desperate type of man.”
But Burke declared that neither bandit was Sacco nor Vanzetti. He had an
unobstructed view of the car as it fled, while the view of Miss Splaine
and Miss Devlin was cut off by the cobbler shop. From a distance of ten
feet instead of 80 as in the case of Misses Splaine and Devlin he
described the man on the right side front seat who the government claims
was Sacco.
Winfred Pierce and Laurence Ferguson, shoe-workers on third floor of
Hampton House, saw bandit-car escape from a window directly above where
Miss Splaine and Miss Devlin observed the car. Pierce saw one bandit
shoot at his friend, Carl Knipps. Both described the bandit leaning out
of the car and shooting, but declared neither Sacco nor Vanzetti was
that man.
Barbara Liscomb, a woman of about thirty, of good personality, employed
as a heeler, on the third floor of the Rice and Hutchins factory. She
looked from a window directly above the room in which Pelser worked. She
had heard shots, ran to the window; saw two men lying on the ground; a
dark man with a pistol in hand standing over Berardelli. He wheeled
around and pointed the pistol at her. She fainted, but in the instant of
observation, she declared the image of the bandit was firmly implanted
in her mind. “I shall remember that face all my life. That man was
neither of the defendants. Of that I am positive.”
Mrs. Jennie Novelli, trained nurse, saw a big touring car drive slowly
up the street shortly before the murder occurred and took particular
notice of the chauffeur and the man beside him, whom she thought at
first she recognized. Asked if either of these men were Sacco or
Vanzetti she answered, “No, they were not.”
Albert Frantello, worker in Slater and Morrill plant. Passed from one
factory building to another at 2:55 p. m. Saw two men leaning on fence
in front of Rice and Hutchins factory. Was close enough to touch them.
Frantello, who is American of Italian descent, is certain Sacco and
Vanzetti are not those two men. Was interviewed by state police
officers, and was not summoned by prosecution.
One of the men whom Frantello described was the bandit with whom it was
sought to identify Sacco.
Daniel J. O’Neil, 19 years old, a business school graduate, got off the
train from Boston and was sitting in a taxi-cab with a Mr. Gilman when
he heard the shooting. He got a distinct impression of at least one of
the bandits at a distance of 155 to 170 feet from the automobile. He
said positively that neither of the defendants was the man he saw.
Five among 22 defense witnesses were laborers shoveling in an excavation
across the street from the shooting. They were foreigners who had to
speak through interpreters. In cross-examination it was sought to show
that they had been too scared or too far from the scene of action to see
anything. Their testimony was not broken down, but presumably was
accorded little weight. One of them, a Spaniard by the name of Pedro
Iscorla, was 40 or 50 feet from crime-action; had gone to get a drink of
water. Says man who shot policeman (that is Berardelli) was high and
thin, slim. Light complexion, 5 feet 8 or 9. Man who shot paymaster was
a little shorter and dark.
Emilio Falcone, was a hundred feet from crime-action. Saw man who did
shooting; he was light, tall. Not Sacco nor Vanzetti. Henry Cerro,
granite-cutter from Vermont, also worked in excavation. Saw shooting 90
feet away. Parmenter was shot by a light-haired man, he declared.
Five other witnesses were working on the railroad some distance from the
crossing and claimed to have run up toward the gate house in time to see
the bandit-car cross the track. Angelo Ricci, section gang foreman was
put on later by the government to show that they had not left the place
where they were at work. Under cross-examination he had exclaimed, “What
the hell, I did the best I could; when you’ve got 24 men you can’t put a
string on them. I told them to stop and if they sneaked around the piles
of dirt I couldn’t help it.” One of these laborers, Joseph Cellucci,
wearing the uniform of a sailor from the training station at Newport
News, declared he stood within 10 or 12 feet of the car, and that one of
the bandits fired a shot at him which left him deaf for 3 days. He
described that man and another sitting beside the driver; both about 20
years old. Neither one was Sacco nor Vanzetti, he declared.
Another of them, Nicola Gatti, is especially important because he had
been a neighbor of Sacco in Milford eight years back. Had he seen him in
the bandit-car he could not have failed to remember. Said he got a good
view of the two men in front (with one of them it was sought to identify
Sacco) and one behind. Asked if either of the defendants were any of
these men, he answered, “No.”
Thirteen prosecution witnesses testified to facts pertinent to the exact
moment of the murders, or in connection with the escape—but did not
identify. Of these, several could not have been expected to make
identification, but others had an excellent view. Five of these have
already been discussed under Sacco’s case because they were in a
position to see the bandit whom the government sought to identify with
Sacco. The others are Shelley Neal, Mrs. Annie Nichols, Harris A.
Colbert, Daniel Buckley, Mrs. Alta Baker, F. C. Clark, John P. Lloyd,
and Julia Kelliher.
Neal was an important government witness because he attempted to
identify the bandit-car with an automobile stationed against the
entrance of the express office, in the morning when the money arrived.
He claims to have seen neither Sacco nor Vanzetti.
A summary of the identification testimony for the government and for the
defense is now in place. Of 35 witnesses called, 7 were unable to make
any identifications; 22 were certain that neither Sacco nor Vanzetti
were the men they had seen; 4 identified Sacco—two of them making
serious changes from former testimony, and the other two thoroughly
discredited; only one, the man whom the prosecution itself was obliged
to “interpret,” identified Vanzetti.
The prosecution contended that the defendants, by their action, attitude
and utterances on the night of May 5, when they where arrested,
displayed consciousness of guilt of the South Braintree murders.
Officer Michael Connolly who arrested Sacco and Vanzetti in a trolley
car going into Brockton, asserts that as he approached them Vanzetti put
his hand in his hip pocket and that thereupon he, Connolly, said: “You
keep your hands in your lap or you will be sorry.” Connolly further
testified that a revolver was taken off Vanzetti by Officer Vaughn, who
boarded the car at the next station, and that he, Connolly kept him
covered until he delivered him at the police station. This story
Vanzetti absolutely contradicted. With officer Connolly making the
arrest was officer Vaughn. Vaughn said he took the revolver from
Vanzetti’s right hip pocket (Transcript, p. 1280). Connolly said it was
in left (Transcript p. 1284).
In the automobile which carried the arrested men to police station,
Connolly testified that Sacco twice reached his hand to put it under his
overcoat, and that he told him to keep his hand outside his clothes and
on his lap. That some conversation about keeping hands where they belong
may have taken place is confirmed by Officer Merle A. Spear, driving the
automobile, who testified to hearing Sacco say, “You needn’t be afraid
of me.” The government drew from this testimony a deduction of
“consciousness of guilt.” What, they ask, could have prompted men to
resist arrest, unless there was a murder on their conscience?
“The consciousness of guilt” made so much of by Judge Thayer was the
consciousness of the dead body of their comrade Salsedo lying smashed in
the spring dawn two days before on the pavement of Park Row.
XI
AFTER THE TRIAL
Since the conviction of Sacco and Vanzetti on July 14th 1921, that
shocked a large part of humanity as has no legal decision since Dreyfus
was sent to Devil’s Island, the Defense Committee, backed up by
contributions from all over the United States and from every part of the
world where a labor movement exists has managed so far to stave off the
sentence. The motion for a new trial that has just been denied was the
seventh; first under Fred H. Moore and later under William G. Thompson,
an eminent Boston attorney, president of a committee of the
Massachusetts Bar Association, who has had the courage and sense of duty
as citizens to take up vigorously and at the risk of loss of practice
and friends an unpopular cause. It is largely due to Mr. Thompson’s
personal influence and his general reputation for conservatism and
integrity that lawyers and ministers and college professors and
newspaper readers generally are becoming interested in the case. Now
that the _Boston Herald_ has come out editorially for a new trial, and
suggested the appointment of an unprejudiced commission to review the
whole course of the case, there is growing, if belated, agitation in
liberal and intellectual circles. The people of Massachusetts are
beginning to get an inkling of the fact that in so grave a miscarriage
of justice there is more at stake than the lives of two Italian
radicals.
The first motion for a retrial argued in October 1921 was based on the
claim that the verdict was not in accord with the evidence. It was
denied.
Four more motions were based on newly discovered evidence. The first
charged irregularities in the jury room. The foreman of the jury,
Ripley, a former Chief of Police of Quincy, who must have carried great
weight with his fellow jurors, stated to the defense that he had in his
pockets at the trial some cartridges of similar make and calibre to some
of those in evidence, and that there was some discussion between him and
other jurors about them. Presumably they were used for purposes of
comparison and inference. At all events such secret evidence directly
violates the conception of due process of law, which insists that a man
shall have the opportunity to subject to the test of cross-examination
all evidence offered against him. A friend of Ripley’s also gave an
affidavit to the effect that Ripley, before the trial and knowing he was
to sit on the jury, said to him, “Damn them, (Sacco and Vanzetti), they
ought to hang them, anyway.”
The motion was denied.
The second motion for a new trial was based on the testimony of Louis
Pelser. Prior to the trial, according to the defense’s affidavits,
Pelser said that he witnessed the shooting of the paymaster and his
guard. He saw a wounded man sink into the roadway, and because the
bullets were firing toward the window of the Rice & Hutchins factory,
where he worked, he dropped under a bench and did not move until the
bandit-car crossed the railroad tracks 500 feet away. At least, this was
his story to an investigator for the defense.
On the witness stand, however, Pelser made a positive identification of
Sacco as one of the bandits. On cross-examination he said he had lied to
the defense’s investigators. Four months afterward he signed a long
affidavit saying that his original statement was true, that the
testimony he gave at the trial was untrue and that he gave it because he
was coerced by the District Attorney. In his affidavit he asserted that
the words: “He (Sacco) is the dead image” of the bandit were put into
his mouth by the District Attorney.
Six months later Pelser recanted his recantation in a statement to the
District Attorney. This time he said his statement to the defense’s
investigator was untrue, that his trial testimony was true, that the
statement made after trial was untrue and the last statement to the
District Attorney true.
In connection with the second motion the defense filed an affidavit
sworn to by Roy E. Gould, an itinerant vendor of razor paste, who
alleges that the bandit on the right-hand side of the fleeing car fired
at him and that a bullet went through his coat. He was arrested by the
police, but was released when he convinced them of his innocence. He
told the officers that he would be able to identify the bandits, and
gave them his name and address. The prosecution did not call Gould.
Through the mention of his name in a newspaper article the defense,
after laborious search through half a dozen States, found him at
Portland, Me., eight months after the trial. He was confronted with the
convicted men and swore that they were not the bandits he saw on the day
of the shooting. Motion denied.
The defense, in its third motion for a new trial, produced affidavits to
show that Carlos E. Goodridge, one of the prosecution’s important
witnesses, had a criminal record in several States. At the trial
Goodridge said he rushed out of a poolroom on hearing the shots,
observed the bandit-car whizzing by and saw Sacco in the front seat, and
that Sacco tried to shoot him.
It so happened that some months before the trial one of the defense
counsel had been instrumental in prosecuting Goodridge on a charge of
having stolen a victrola. The news of the arrest of Sacco and Vanzetti
on May 5, 1920, was followed by the visit to the jail of many who said
they had seen the bandits. Goodridge, the defense asserted, did not go.
However, he was taken to court to plead guilty on the same day that
Sacco and Vanzetti were taken to court. Subsequently he told the
prosecution that he recognized the two Italians and was let out on
probation.
The affidavits of Goodridge’s life presented by the defense cover 160
pages. His real name was stated to be Erastus Corning Whitney. He is
said to have been convicted in New York of grand larceny before reaching
his twentyfirst year. After serving a three-year sentence he received
his freedom and a year later was again arrested for stealing a
relative’s jewelry. His second conviction was for a term of three years.
Upon his release he began stealing horses. He was indicted for stealing
a horse and buggy. The affidavits signed by District Attorneys,
sheriffs, ministers and others declared that Goodridge’s reputation for
veracity was bad, that he was a petty thief, a swindler of women, and a
confidence man. Motion denied.
The fourth motion for a new trial was concerned with the testimony of
Lola R. Andrews. According to the defense’s affidavits Mrs. Andrews was
interviewed by them five months before the trial. She said she did not
see Sacco, and her description of the man she saw, according to the
defense, was not that of Sacco. “He is not the man,” she said upon
seeing photographs of Sacco. The night before she was called by the
Commonwealth she told defense counsel that she did not know why she was
being called as she could not identify anybody.
Next day she made a positive identification of Sacco. Cross-examined on
the stenographic notes of her conversation with defense counsel she said
the stenographer had not transcribed his notes honestly. She branded as
a lie the statement made by the lawyer for the defense. During her
cross-examination she fainted three times and was assisted from the
room.
In an affidavit sworn to by Mrs. Andrews nine months after the trial she
declared that her original statement before trial was true, and that her
trial testimony was untrue and had been given under the coercion and
intimidation of the District Attorney’s office, which threatened to
reveal her private life.
(Six months later Mrs. Andrews, in a statement to the District
Attorney’s office, said that her first statement to the defense lawyer
was false, her trial testimony true, her subsequent affidavit to the
defense counsel untrue and her last statement true). Motion denied.
The fifth motion for a new trial was concerned with the exceedingly
important gun-and-bullet testimony. The Commonwealth held that the
bullet that killed Berardelli was fired from Sacco’s pistol. Two gun
experts for the defense said it was not.
The Commonwealth’s experts were Captain Charles A. Van Amburgh of the
Remington Arms Works and Captain William H. Proctor, for thirty years
head of the Massachusetts State Police.
According to the new evidence placed before the court, Captain Proctor
states that he had the death bullet and the Sacco pistol in his
possession for more than a year before the trial and that with Mr. Van
Amburgh he conducted certain tests with Sacco’s pistol. In his
affidavit, made on Oct. 22, 1923, more than two and a half years after
the trial, Captain Proctor stated that at the trial and at the moment of
making the affidavit he was entirely unconvinced that the mortal bullet
had passed through Sacco’s pistol. He said:
“At no time was I able to find any evidence whatever which tended to
convince me that the particular mortal bullet found in Berardelli’s
body, which came from a Colt automatic pistol, which I think was
numbered 3 and had some other exhibit number, came from Sacco’s
pistol, and I so informed the District Attorney and his assistants
before the trial.
“This bullet was what is commonly called a full metal patch bullet,
and, although I repeatedly talked over with Captain Van Amburg the
scratch or scratches which he claimed tended to identify this bullet
as one that must have gone through Sacco’s pistol, his statements
concerning the identifying marks seemed to me entirely unconvincing.
“At the trial the District Attorney did not ask me whether I had found
any evidence that the so-called mortal bullet, which I have referred
to as number 3, passed through Sacco’s pistol, nor was I asked that
question in cross-examination. The District Attorney desired to ask me
that question, but I had repeatedly told him that if he did I should
be obliged to answer in the negative; consequently he put to me this
question:
“Q. ‘Have you an opinion as to whether bullet number 3 was fired from
the Colt automatic which is in evidence?’ To which I answered, ‘I
have’.
“He then proceeded, Q. ‘And what is your opinion?’ A. ‘My opinion is
that it is consistent with being fired by that pistol.’
“That is still my opinion, for the reason that bullet number 3, in my
judgment, passed through some Colt automatic pistol; but I do not
intend by that answer to imply that the so-called mortal bullet had
passed through this particular Colt automatic pistol, and the District
Attorney well knew that I did not so intend, and framed his question
accordingly. Had I been asked the direct question, whether I found any
affirmative evidence whatever that this so-called mortal bullet had
passed through this particular Sacco’s pistol, I should have answered
then, as I do now, without hesitation, in the negative.”
Frederick G. Katzmann, who was District Attorney at the time of the
trial, and Harold P. Williams, later his successor, filed affidavits on
this motion. Mr. Katzmann stated that Captain Proctor told him that it
was his opinion that the mortal bullet had been fired from “a” Colt
automatic pistol. He did not say that it had been fired from Sacco’s
pistol. Mr. Williams said that Captain Proctor could not tell through
what pistol the mortal bullet had been fired. He also denied that
Captain Proctor’s attention had been “repeatedly” called to the question
whether he could find any evidence which would justify the opinion that
the death bullet came from the Sacco pistol.
In a sense the gun-and-bullet testimony is the crux of the case, for
Judge Thayer, in his charge to the jury, said in substance that the
jurors should consider Captain Proctor’s testimony that the death bullet
passed through Sacco’s pistol. In his summary the District Attorney said
to the jury, “You might disregard all the identification testimony and
base your verdict on the testimony of these experts.”
Additional new evidence to prove that the death bullet could not have
been fired from Sacco’s pistol was furnished to the court in the
micro-photographs made by Albert H. Hamilton, who has offered expert
testimony in many murder trials in which photographs taken under a
compound microscope have been placed in evidence.
Taking the mortal bullet and test bullets fired through Sacco’s pistol,
Mr. Hamilton pointed out several markings in the mortal bullet which he
said did not appear in those that were fired as a test. The prosecution
sought to show many similarities in the marking of both exhibits.
Photographs of Mr. Hamilton showed that the shell which the Commonwealth
claimed had been fired from Sacco’s pistol had a dent in the exact
centre where the firing pin struck it. The test shells, it was said, had
dents 23 degrees off centre. The prosecution urged that both were so
nearly in the middle as to make it certain that all had been fired from
the same pistol.
There followed the appeal to the Supreme Judicial Court in January 1926.
Despite a masterly argument by counsel for the defense the appeal was
unanimously denied.
Meanwhile new evidence had been discovered, the affidavits of Letherman
and Weyand tended to prove the contention of the defense that their
radicalism had been a deciding factor in these men’s conviction. The
confession of Madeiros and the circumstantial case erected by the
defense tending to prove that the South Braintree crime had been
committed by the Morelli gang of Providence (a case that though
circumstantial seems to a layman infinitely better founded than the
state’s case against Sacco and Vanzetti) gave the friends of Sacco and
Vanzetti fresh hope that at last a new trial would be granted. The
motions were denied.
Now there is only the growing force of public opinion between Sacco and
Vanzetti and the electric chair. A new appeal to the Supreme Judicial
Court is being prepared, but it seems hardly likely that the court will
reverse its firmly-entrenched decision. There remains the faint hope of
an appeal to the Supreme Court of the United States on the plea that the
men were convicted without due process of law.
Will the people of this country and the citizens of Massachusetts stand
by and see two men murdered by the dead weight of legal technicalities?
Madeiros, murderer and gunman, was granted a second trial, on the plea
that the judge had neglected to inform the jury that they should deem a
man innocent until he was proven guilty. It is hard for anyone not
versed in subtleties of the law to see why the same thing should not
apply to Sacco and Vanzetti. The words were probably pronounced solemnly
enough, but can anyone who has read over the account of the trial
solemnly affirm that the spirit was there?
“So you left Plymouth to dodge the draft, did you?” was Katzmann’s first
question to Vanzetti on the stand. “Did you love your country in the
last week of May, 1917? Is your love for the United States commensurate
with the amount of money you can get in this country per week? Did you
intend to condemn Harvard College?” were some of the questions put to
Sacco—many of them really invitations to an argument. And Sacco was
induced, and allowed by the judge, to make a long speech on his
offensive political opinions. Katzmann’s address to the jury ended with
the words “stand together, you men of Norfolk County!” And Judge
Thayer’s charge opened as follows: “Gentlemen of the Jury, the
Commonwealth of Massachusetts called upon you to render a most important
service. Although you knew that such service would be arduous, painful
and tiresome, yet you, like the true soldier, responded to that call in
the spirit of supreme American loyalty.” After three pages of this, he
proceeds: “Having cleared away any mist of sympathy or prejudice from
your minds and having substituted there trust, a purer atmosphere of
unyielding impartiality and absolute fairness, let us take up some of
the rights granted by law to the defendants....”
The men of Norfolk County stood together as best they knew, to defend
their institutions against reds, slackers, foreign agitators. Twelve
doughboys trying a German spy would have brought the same verdict. “Damn
them, they ought to hang them anyway” was the foreman’s opinion.
That was the history of the case from the outside. What was happening to
the two men in jail? Hope and despair in sickening alternations, and
then at last a sort of numbness. They, each of them, had moments of
breakdown. At one time Vanzetti was put in a cell near the heating plant
in Charlestown jail from which he could hear the hammering of men
getting the electric chair ready for an execution. It wore on his nerves
until the prison authorities became alarmed and sent him to the State
Asylum for observation. There he was found to be perfectly sane.
But Vanzetti serving out his sentence at Charlestown, at least has work
to keep him busy. In Dedham jail there is no provision for giving work
to prisoners awaiting sentence. Except for the daily hour of exercise,
Sacco has spent the whole six years shut up in a cell. At first he used
to go through all sorts of exercises to keep himself fit; but inevitably
the hopelessness of it got to him. He went on a hunger strike. After
thirtyone days he was removed, a wreck, to the State Farm at
Bridgewater. There he was allowed to do outside work. Once he was well
he was moved back to Dedham again for more days and weeks and months of
waiting. The thing that keeps these two men alive and sane is their
faith in themselves as champions, martyrs of the working class. Vanzetti
is very fond of the phrase of St. Augustine. _The blood of martyrs is
the seed of liberty._
For through the bars and walls of their jails these men must have felt
an inkling of the great heroic shadows they throw on the minds of
working men all over the world. In Russia, in Germany, in France, in the
Argentine, people have been profoundly moved by every step in the case.
There have been meetings, parades, bombs thrown, heads broken for Sacco
and Vanzetti, among men whose languages they may never know, the names
of whose towns they never heard. History is made up of these sudden
searchlights that for a moment make gigantic the drama of a single
humble man.
The tangible proof of this feeling is in the contributions that pour in
steadily to the Defense Committee, mostly collected from poor people, in
small sums, from people to whom giving up a dollar or two means missing
meals or cigarettes or moving picture shows. In the month of June 1926
contributions came in from Chicago, Newark, Pensacola, Fla., Kalispell,
Mont., Baltimore, Bound Rock, N. J., Bass River, Mass., New York,
Buffalo, Boston, Sandusky, Detroit, Zanesville, O., San Diego, Oshkosh,
Tulsa, London, England, Pueblo, Colo., Coney Island, Balboa, San
Francisco ... and a couple of hundred other places. Whatever the
outcome, the passionate effort evoked by this case will have been a
great proof, if not of working class strength, at least of working class
solidarity.
With the backing of the Italian population of the towns round Boston and
of a few liberal-minded Americans of old families who had enough
imagination and good citizenship to see that justice was dangerously
miscarrying, the Defense Committee has carried on the case. They have
been gravely hampered by a lack of knowledge of American customs, and by
the direct action of certain underground forces. There were found to be
undercover men working as collectors. Frank R. Lopez, an active member
of the Committee, was deported to Spain. Then there was the still
unsolved De Falco case.
One morning in January 1921 a certain Angelina De Falco, who claimed to
be a court interpreter at Dedham, called at the office of the Defense
Committee accompanied by a certain Cicchetti of Providence and offered
to get Sacco off in the trial that was to come. After several meetings
during which the woman tried to gain the confidence of Felicani and
Guadagni, two of the members of the Committee, she declared herself to
be an emissary of District Attorney Katzmann and of the clerk of the
court at Dedham. More meetings in restaurants and cafes. At length she
made them believe that for a certain sum of money she could get off both
Sacco and Vanzetti. But at the next interview she came back to her
original statement that she could only get Sacco off; Vanzetti was too
difficult on account of the previous conviction. Then Guadagni said
there was nothing doing. The committee was out to prove the innocence of
both men. She said that it would cost a great deal; the District
Attorney and his assistants and the foreman of the jury would all have
to be fixed; there would be a mock trial and the two men would be
acquitted. The morning of January 5th Mrs. De Falco telephoned the
Committee, presumably from Dedham, that everything was O. K. The seventh
they were supposed to go to Dedham to settle the matter.
The lawyers for the defense, fearing a trap, suggested that Mrs. De
Falco be invited to discuss terms in Boston instead of in Dedham. A good
deal annoyed she came into the office at 32 Battery Street. A dictaphone
had been put in to register the conversation. There in the presence of
Felicani, Guadagni, Mrs. Sproul and Orciani she repeated her
proposition. The price of the two men’s liberty was forty thousand
dollars. It was explained to her that they had no such sum on hand. She
said that if an advance of five thousand was paid, the case would be
adjourned till the autumn session in order to give the Committee all
summer to raise the money.
“And if the money is not raised will they be convicted?” asked Mrs.
Sproul and Guadagni. “Certainly,” replied Angelina De Falco.
Negotiations dragged on. Chief Counsel Moore was of the opinion that
they ought to swear out a complaint and have her arrested. They did so.
The case was tried before Judge Francis Murray in Boston, who dismissed
the charges, completely exonerating Mr. Katzmann, ruling that Mrs. De
Falco had been ‘indiscreet’, but not guilty of a criminal act.
Of course Mrs. De Falco may simply have been trying to play a little
game on her own, but the ugly doubt remains that there may have been
more to it than that. If you turn back to the Boston papers of that
period you will find that certain scandalous disclosures were being made
as to the actions of the district attorneys of Suffolk and Middlesex
counties.
Anyway that’s the last that was heard of Angelina De Falco. The mystery
is still unsolved.
What is going to be done if the Supreme Judicial Court continues to
refuse Sacco and Vanzetti a new trial? Are Sacco and Vanzetti going to
burn in the Chair?
The conscience of the people of Massachusetts must be awakened. Working
people, underdogs, reds know instinctively what is going on. The same
thing has happened before. But the average law-admiring,
authority-respecting citizen does not know. For the first time, since
Judge Thayer’s last denial of motions for a new trial, there has been a
certain awakening among the influential part of the community, the part
of the community respected by the press and the bench and the pulpit.
Always there have been notable exceptions, but up to now these good
citizens have had no suspicion that anything but justice was being meted
out by the courts. Goaded by the _New York World_ editorials, by Chief
Counsel Thompson’s eloquence, by the _Boston Herald’s_ courageous change
of front, they are getting uneasy. It remains to be seen what will come
of this uneasiness. The _Boston Herald_ suggests an impartial commission
to review the whole case. All that is needed is that the facts of the
case be generally known.
Everyone must work to that end, no matter what happens, that the facts
of the case may be known so that no one can plead ignorance, so that if
these men are killed, everyone in the State, everyone in the country
will have the guilt on them. So that no one can say “I would have
protested but I didn’t know what was being done.”
Tell your friends, write to your congressmen, to the political bosses of
your district, to the newspapers. Demand the truth about Sacco and
Vanzetti. Call meetings, try to line up trade unions, organizations,
clubs, put up posters. Demand the truth about Sacco and Vanzetti.
If the truth had been told they would be free men today.
If the truth is not told they will burn in the Chair in Charlestown
Jail. If they die what little faith many millions of men have in the
chance of Justice in this country will die with them.
Save Sacco and Vanzetti.
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