The Trial Of Sacco And Vanzett Essay

, Research Paper

Tainted Justice: The Trial of Sacco and Vanzetti

Beneath the surface of economic prosperity and social liberation, America in the 1920’s was a place of great fear, distrust, and prejudice. The Russian Revolution of 1917 had heightened anxieties about global Socialist movements, and any political ideology which strayed from good old-fashioned white-Protestant patriotism was met with suspicion and often hostility. This “Red Scare” resulted in violations of the civil rights of many immigrants and other individuals in an attempt to protect American democracy against the cancer of socialism. It was amid this climate of fear and prejudice that two Italian immigrants, Niccola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti, fell victim to an American judicial system that reflected the prejudices of the society it presided over. The Italian ethnicity and radical political beliefs of Sacco and Vanzetti affected the process of their trial and its resulting conviction.

On April 15, 1920, two men ambushed and killed two employees of the Slater and Morrill shoe factory in South Braintree, Massachusetts. The murderers escaped with two payroll boxes, which contained $15, 776.51. On May 5, 1920, Sacco and Vanzetti were arrested and charged with the Braintree murders. On July 14, 1921, following a seven-week trial, they were found guilty of murder in the first degree. Seven years later, after numerous appeals and strong public protest, Sacco and Vanzetti were executed. These events have since spawned a large controversy as there is much evidence which suggests that Sacco and Vanzetti’s trial was unjust and the verdict may have been reached in a spirit of prejudice.

At the time of the trial, Massachusetts was considered one of the most conservative states in America, and it was from this pool of conservatism that 12 white males were selected to serve as the jurors in the trial. One researcher observed that the jurors were “all cut out of the same bolt of cloth; staid, torpid, highly patriotic, oblivious to progress or a progressive idea….” (Montgomery 83). Unfortunately for the defendants, the strength of their case lay in the testimony of many other Italian immigrants who swore that Sacco and Vanzetti were not the Braintree murderers. These witnesses often spoke very broken English with thick Italian accents. The jurors all lived in predominantly white communities, and having little contact with Italian immigrants in their day to day lives, had trouble understanding much of their testimonies. These testimonies were also easily misrepresented by the prosecution in attempts to incriminate the defendants (Frankfurter 23). The foreman of the jury, Walter R. Ripley, was a former police chief and a strong patriot. Each morning, upon entering the courtroom, Ripley would pause and perform a highly visible, highly symbolic salute of the flag. Before the trial, when the possibility of Sacco and Vanzetti’s innocence was brought up by a friend, Ripley responded “Damn them, they ought to be hanged anyway!” (Freuerlicht 202). By its nature, patriotism stands in opposition to any other opinion or belief that attempts to question or undermine the government. Could a jury possessing such patriotic sentiments have been considered able to provide two known anarchists a fair judgment. It seems very unlikely.

Throughout the trial, the prosecution, led by Frederick Katzman, produced many controversial witnesses. Of the sixteen witnesses used to identify Sacco as one of the South Braintree assailants, none were able to give a positive identification of Sacco at the trial’s preliminary hearings. However, during the actual trial, seven out of sixteen claimed to have been absolutely certain that Sacco was one of the murderers (Freuerlicht 204). Also, of all the eyewitnesses who claimed to have seen Sacco or Vanzetti at the scene of the crime, not one claimed to have seen the two men together (Fraenkel 309). One witness, a woman named Mary Splaine, had viewed the crime from a second story window across the street and from the crime scene. She claimed to have recognized Sacco as the man she saw in the back seat of the car which fled from the scene. More than a year after the crime, she clearly remembered Sacco as “a muscular, active looking man. His left hand was a good size hand, a hand that denoted strength. His forehead was high. His hair was brushed back and was about two to two-and-a-half inches in length, and he had dark eyebrows.” (Frankfurter 12) Another witness, Lola Andrews, testified that she had seen Sacco on the streets of Bridgewater on the day of the murders. However, her neighbor later testified that, only a few weeks after the crime, on her way back from the jail where Sacco and Vanzetti were being held, Andrews had held a conversation with him in which she had claimed that “The government took me down and wanted me to recognize those men…I have never seen them and can’t recognize them” (Frankfurter 12).

Katzman introduced three main pieces of evidence: a cap, believed to be Sacco’s, that was found at the near the body of one of the victims, a gun found on Vanzetti at the time of his arrest that allegedly belonged to the murdered guard, and the fatal bullet. The cap was the same color as Sacco’s and had a similar tear in it, but was two sizes too small and the tear was later found to have been put there by Braintree Chief of Police Gallivan while he examined it fo