Sacco and Vanzetti: Did or didn't?

I like the Woody Guthrie song.

but they certainly WERE "labor heroes"! Here's a partisan account, but it rings true: http://flag.blackened.net/daver/anarchism/saccvanz.html

My own belief is that either might have been capable of violent actions in behalf of their ideals. But a cheap stickup, and killing a "fellow worker" in the process? we can prate about "circumstantial evidence" and such forever, without being able to come to a meaningful conclusion on Guilt or Innocence. But ONE thing is CERTAIN: They did NOT have a fair trial.

Here's a description:

One of the peculiar characteristics of the Massachusetts system of justice in the 1920s was that the same judge who had presided at the trial would also have the right to hear appeals from the decision, and to decide whether or not a new trial ought to be granted. And so, the Sacco-Vanzetti defense team was obliged to submit its request for a new trial, on the grounds that new evidence had been discovered or something wrong had happened. They had to present this material to Judge Webster Thayer, the same judge who had presided at the first trial. And not surprisingly, Judge Thayer turned down all efforts to have a new trial. Now, today it would appear that there might be a conflict of interest in this. But after turning down one set of appeals, Judge Thayer was walking across the Dartmouth Campus (he was an alumnus of Dartmouth) and had caught up to a professor of constitutional law and political science who was walking across the campus also. It was after a Saturday football game, evidently. And Judge Thayer made the infamous comment, "Did you see what I did to those anarchist bastards the other day? That ought to hold them for awhile." The professor later stated publicly that the judge had said this to him, because he thought that Sacco and Vanzetti hadn't received a fair trial.
http://www.courttv.com/archive/greatesttrials/sacco.vanzetti/polenberg.html
MIHOP or LIHOP

pnorman

Sacco was probably guilty, but Vanzetti wasn't.

Still blows my mind a judge said that. Or that, while there was no proof they were guilty, they were probably guilty of other things and so deserved the guilty verdict. Ah, well, we've almost come full circle, haven't we?

:D

"If it had not been for these thing, I might have live out my life talking at street corners to scorning men. I might have die, unmarked, unknown, a failure. Now we are not a failure. This is our career and our triumph. Never in our full life could we hope to do such work for tolerance, for justice, for man's understanding of man as now we do by accident. Our words--our lives--our pains--nothing! The taking of our lives--lives of a good shoemaker and a poor fish peddler--all! That last moment belongs to us--that agony is our triumph."

Bartolomeo Vanzetti

:cry: :toast: