Peter Miller's riveting 2006 documentary -- simply titled Sacco and Vanzetti -- explores the issues related to the case in detail, and seems to make as much of the men's political convictions as he does of their personal sensibilities, and the manner in which they conducted themselves throughout their ordeal. Their thoughts and feelings -- in fact their personal philosophies -- about their predicament are well documented in numerous heartfelt, eloquent letters they each wrote to their respective families. Indeed, they provide a remarkable insight into not only their legal saga, but the political climate and ideological fervour that prevailed throughout this period, all of which had subsumed their trial and subsequent appeals. Such was the nature of the content and the sentiments of their correspondence, on their own they did much to convince many high profile folks of their innocence, regardless of any consideration of the rights and wrongs of the case itself.
War of the Words
The case attracted the attention of an extraordinary number of notable folks -- almost all of whom were simpatico with the pair's cause -- both in the US and elsewhere. These included H. G. Wells, Madame Curie, Harold Laski, Woody Guthrie, Albert Einstein, Walter Lippmann, Robert M. Lovett, Arthur M. Schlesinger, Sr., John Dewey, Upton Sinclair, and last but not least, the Sage of Baltimore himself, H. L. Mencken, who as we have seen added no small measure of colour and flavour to the proceedings of the Scopes Trial (see Episode One). For his part Wells -- one of the era's most famous socialists as well as literary figures -- waded into the controversial waters surrounding the case with the following:
"Executing political opponents as political opponents after the fashion of Mussolini and Moscow we can understand, or bandits as bandits; but this business of trying and executing murderers as Reds, or Reds as murderers, seems to be a new and very frightening line for the courts of a State in the most powerful and civilized Union on earth to pursue."
Wells also apparently used the trial and the controversy surrounding it to observe that Americans were "too thin-skinned" when it came to copping grief from foreigners, a situation which when one considers the European response to the invasion of Iraq for example (Freedom Fries anyone?), does not appear to have changed much in more recent times. On this point of contention, he had this to say:
"One can scarcely let a sentence that is not highly flattering glance across the Atlantic without some American blowing up."
Shortly after S&V's arrest, there was a huge bomb set off in Wall Street in New York. The 1920 Wall Street Bombing as it was called, killed almost 40 people and injured over three times more than that, was the deadliest act of terrorism on U.S. soil up to that point. Investigators suspected that anarchist supporters of S&V carried out this attack, but this has never been proven. Although one of S&V's associates was suspected of perpetrating the bombing, the case has never been officially solved, and indeed remains open to this day.
Needless to say, all of this anarchic turmoil created a climate of fear, suspicion, paranoia, contempt and loathing in America, with senior politicians, law enforcement officers and other Federal and state officials especially keen to arrest the tide of violence, radicalism and unrest by any means available to them, legal or otherwise.
More than just being an interesting aside, the following gives us a graphic insight into the tactics used by law enforcement officers in the battle against radicals at the time, which for some folks may have some contemporary resonance. Before their arrest, Federal agents had detained one of Sacco and Vanzetti's suspected associates. After several days of being subjected to what we now call 'enhanced interrogation techniques', the ill-fated detainee apparently wandered a tad too close to, or jumped from, an open window on the 15th floor of the Bureau of Investigation (the forerunner of the FBI) HQ in New York. It was either that or the agents during said interrogation lost their grip on the 'witness' after he 'fessed up -- or their patience when he wouldn't -- as it was not uncommon for the prototype G-Men to encourage greater cooperation and more accurate, timely recall on the part of witnesses, suspects or persons of interest who were ostensibly assisting them with their enquiries by dangling them by their ankles outside the windows of high-rise buildings.
In this of course they were merely demonstrating their patriotic duty in fighting evildoers and protecting and preserving truth, justice and the American way; to ensure they achieved that objective in a business-like fashion were happy to provide a 'helping hand' as it were in converting the reticent witness into a more cooperative, compliant informant. Either way, this being the case, in doing so, the hapless witness of course succumbed to the immutable dictates of Mother Gravity that unfailingly accompany defenestration -- whether accidental, enforced or self-initiated -- and, in what can best be described as his last act of anarchism as it were, he left a large, unsightly mess on the public sidewalk directly below!
Anarchy and Old Sparky
As for S&V themselves, although both men were actually convicted in 1921 for the Braintree crime, for the next six years there were several appeals, motions, and petitions for a new trial. Yet despite there being a massive amount of conflicting evidence and unreliable witness testimony that pointed either directly to the innocence of the men, or at the very least provided serious, way beyond reasonable doubts about their guilt, the appeals failed and the original verdicts upheld. In the minds of many in the media and the general public then, the "guinea wops" were as guilty as sin, and for others the fact that they were anarchists -- at the time second only to communists as American society's political outliers -- was more than enough to convince folks that they deserved a one-off appointment with 'Old Sparky'.
The original presiding trial judge Webster Thayer, a rabid bigot and arch-conservative political reactionary, despised anarchists and radicals and their ilk as much as he did immigrants, especially "guinea wops". He publicly at least once referred to S&V as those "anarchic bastards", and his conduct of the trial (and similarly his judicial oversight of the subsequent appeals process), was not exactly a textbook example of legal impartiality. To say Thayer had a burning hard-on for the accused is an understatement of riotous proportions, so much so that he expressly asked to preside over the appeal process, something that was unprecedented in the Massachusetts legal system, indeed in most jurisdictions. For many to this day, this fact alone points to the S&V trial as a monumental, unparalleled travesty of justice.
Over the years of the marathon legal process the waters 'dividing' guilt and innocence for the actual crime for which they were accused and charged became increasingly muddied by the pair's political beliefs -- or more accurately -- people's perceptions of them because of their beliefs. Like the Rosenbergs and one might now say Tsarnaev, their conviction appeared to be something of a forgone conclusion, their execution preordained and inevitable -- even necessary -- by the authorities and much of the media. Even some of their 'supporters' in the broad labour movement were inclined to think that the execution of Sacco and Vanzetti would benefit their cause, although for obvious reasons those that did for the most part were careful of making these sentiments known publicly. Yet the notion that S&V were of more value to the movement dead than alive prevailed in some quarters, irrespective of their guilt or innocence.
In any event, according to writer Robert D'Attilio, there was ample evidence of jury bias, perjury by witnesses for the prosecution, of illegal activities by the police and the Feds involved in the investigations (as evidenced by the aforementioned anecdote regarding the police interrogation techniques), an actual confession to the crimes by a convicted bank robber, and further evidence that identified the gang involved in the previous robbery about a year before for which Vanzetti himself had already been charged and convicted. (It should be noted that prior to the Braintree trial, 'first-time offender' (FTO) Vanzetti himself had already been found guilty and sentenced to fifteen years -- the absolute maximum -- for the Bridgewater rap. This also was unprecedented, in that FTO's rarely received the maximum.)
All of these were ruled on and rejected by Judge Thayer, the very same judge who earlier had so severely sentenced Vanzetti for the 1919 of the two crimes. The judge himself would even rule on a motion accusing him -- Thayer -- of judicial prejudice. With all this in mind, regardless of the men's guilt or innocence, the legal process that characterised the trial was stacked against them. And then some!
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