US_Ch6_webquest2-Sacco_and_Vanzetti

=**Were Sacco and Vanzetti innocent and wrongly executed?**=

In your textbook, you'll read two small paragraphs about the case (p376-7), which point out the basics of the case but also says that the evidence was questionable and that the accused men were anarchists (which is true) and foreigners, which led people to assume they were guilty including the jury. That would assume that Americans at the time were all bigots and nativists and that the lawyer for Sacco and Vanzetti would agree to bigots being on a jury (lawyers on both sides must agree to jurors to keep a fair trial by jury).

On April 15, 1920 Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti robbed a shoe factory paymaster and security guard in Massachusetts and in the process the guard and paymaster were killed. Sacco and Vanzetti were found guilty in a verdict that took the jury three hours to come to. Critics claimed the jurors rendered judgment on their political activism even though each juror said anarchism was not any part of their decision. To compare, an anarchist from 1880 to 1930 was the equivalent of an Islamic Jihadist today. Anarchists nearly killed Henry Clay Frick (Homestead Strike) and did assassinate President McKinley. They shot people, made bombs, and blew things up and were serious about bringing down all government.


 * 8. Why were anarchists dangerous?**

Sacco and Vanzetti were sentenced to death in the electric chair and were executed after several appeals. Future Supreme Court justice Felix Frankfurter called for a new trial in his book //The Case of// //Sacco and Vanzetti,// which radicals have cited as their "bible" on the case as radicals try to argue that the government was against Sacco and Vanzetti just because they were anarchists. However, nine eyewitnesses identified Sacco as being at the scene and/or firing at the guard who was trying to defend himself and the paymaster, while four identified Vanzetti. Sacco and Vanzetti each told extensive lies about their guns and ammunition. Even a 1983 ballistics test found that the Peters cartridges found at the scene were the same as the ones Sacco had in his pocket. Sacco and Vanzetti had alibi witnesses, which proved not to be credible. Guiseppe Adrower, clerk at the consulate where Sacco claimed to be, said he didn't remember Sacco, then changed his testimony. Thirty years later, one alibi witness who said he saw Sacco in Boston admitted that he perjured himself for a group of Boston anarchists. In 1985, William Young and David Kaiser published //Postmortem: New Evidence in the Case of Sacco and Vanzetti//, which claimed that prosecutor Frederick Katzmann tampered with evidence, especially Sacco's pistol and the key "Bullet #3." Young and Kaiser also wrote that Katzmann substituted a bullet and shell for the originals at the scene. Professor James Starrs proved though that it was a defense expert who switched the gun barrel and Starr's also wrote in 1986 //Journal of Forensic Sciences// that the firearms panel was "significant and credible." Starrs also summarized the ballistics evidence in which experts concluded that Sacco's Colt fired the bullet that killed the guard. Evidence shows beyond a doubt that Sacco was involved if not the shooter - it was definitely his gun.

In 1941, one of Sacco's early anarchist defenders, Carlo Tresca told former radical turned conservative writer Max Eastman that Sacco was guilty. In 2005, a 1929 letter surfaced from socialist Upton Sinclair and his attorney, John Beardsley. Sinclair was conducting research for his book //Boston// and learned from Sacco and Vanzetti's attorney, Fred Moore, that the two were indeed guilty. Sinclair met with Moore in a hotel room and according to Sinclair "I begged him to tell me the full truth." Moore told Sinclair the men were guilty and provided details as to how he "formed a set of alibis for them." An embarassed Sinclare acknowledged he was "completely naive about the Sacco and Vanzetti case, having accepted the defense's propaganda completely." Sinclair now had to admit that the anarchists really were guilty. Sinclair also met Roger Baldwin, a friend of Sacco and Vanzetti's and an anarchist himself who (according to Sinclair) "told me there was no possible doubt of the guilt of the two men." The Sacco-Vanzettie Case provided American Liberals and Socialists with some of its most cherished ingredients - poor foreign immigrants claiming to be wrongly accused of a crime who were being railroaded to their executions. The problem as that the evidence shows that the two men were guilty and even Sacco and Vanzetti's biggest supporters knew it.


 * 9. What evidence do you think proves the most that Sacco and Vanzetti really were guilty?**

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