LAT: Upton Sinclair Letter Suggests Sacco & Vanzetti Were Guilty

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/state/la-me-sinclair24dec24,1,5561727,full.story?ctrack=1&cset=true

excerpt:

"This letter is for yourself alone," it read. "Stick it away in your safe, and some time in the far distant future the world may know the real truth about the matter. I am here trying to make plain my own part in the story."

Summary: A long-lost letter of Upton Sinclair casts new doubt on the innocence of Sacco and Vanzetti. While researching his fictionalized novel of the affair, "Boston," Sinclair learned from Sacco's and Vanzetti's defense attorney that the pair were guilty. (Guilty or not, it remains clear they did not get a fair trial.) But Sinclair felt he would be letting his readers and the Progressive movement down by not writing "Boston" with its presumption of S&V's innocence. Other Progressives perjured on S&V's behalf as well during the investigation and trial, in the interests of the movement.

The evidence was shaky, and I believe the judge gloated over his killing those "anarchist bastards," etc.

who were victims of judicial persecution. Long live Anarchy!

Sacco and Vanzetti, The murder and the myth by Robert H. Montgomery.
I am scared to read it kinda, because it would just make me mad. I am still hoping to find a copy of Howard Fast's "The Passion of Sacco and Vanzetti" Otherwise I only know the story from Vonnegut's "Jailbird". Is it sure that that letter is genuine? I think it is a betrayal of the progressive movement to allow it to be duped into protesting for people who were actually guilty. Unlike Parsons, Spies, Lingg, etc. who certainly never killed anybody.

First, whether or not the letter is genuine, it is one more piece of a much larger puzzle. Each person must evaluate the pattern on the puzzle, and not the significance of any one piece.

Second, whether or not S&V were guilty of the crime, the trial was not a fair trial under U.S. law. All citizens charged with a crime are constitutionally entitled to a trial conducted legally and with a presumption of innocence. Were this case up for appeal in a modern court, it would be rapidly overturned, imo.

Meanwhile, I'm interested in more authentication of the letter by nonpolitical experts, before forming further opinions. I neither doubt it nor endorse it - more information is needed.

Peace.

if an unfair trial makes a guilty person accountable, then it is not a bad thing. To me, results matter more than the process. The reason a "fair" trial is important is that it creates a greater likelihood that guilty people will be found guilty and innocent people will be found innocent.

No guilty person ever receives a trial which is as unfair as what they did to their victims.

Well, if the letter is genuine, then it becomes supposed inside information. Yet how can we trust that person if he admits he lied in the past. He then says "I lied publicly, but here is the truth privately" at least according to a defense attorney who violated his client's confidentiality and who may or may not be trustworthy.

Authenticating artifacts and placing them in context.

Furthermore, the trial, as you stated, was unfair. Here's to truth & the Constitution. :toast:

An Irish gang from Braintree.