WHAT’S THE STORY?

ONE hundred years ago today, two men were charged with robbery and murder in Braintree, Massachusetts. Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti were Italian immigrants to the USA who were eventually convicted and executed for crimes which many experts concluded they did not commit.

Both were attached to a group of anarchists. Their radical political leanings and status as Italian immigrants were major factors in the prejudice which pervaded the case from the outset, from the trial judge downwards.

The Sacco and Vanzetti case became a major international

cause celebre, with campaigns in many countries to have them freed, while anarchists carried out bombings of American diplomatic institutes. It remains a divisive and unexplained case to this day.

WHAT WERE THE DETAILS OF THE CRIME?

ON April 15, 1920, a robbery took place at the Slater and Morrill Shoe Company, on Pearl Street in Braintree. Security guard Alessandro Berardelli and paymaster Frederick Parmenter were robbed of two steel boxes containing the factory’s payroll of $15,776.51.

In the course of the robbery, both men were shot dead.

Two men armed with pistols shot Berardelli four times and Parmenter twice, the second and fatal wound inflicted in his back as he tried to flee. A Buick car containing other men picked up the two shooters and fled from the scene. The car was found two days later abandoned in some woods.

Police were already investigating a similar attempted robbery at a shoe factory in Bridgewater, just over 20 miles from the scene. Police chief Michael Stewart had speculated that Italian anarchists were behind that attempted robbery. His prime suspect was Mario Buda, who had lived with Ferruccio Coacci, a known anarchist who left for Italy before he could be deported.

Stewart thought Buda might be involved in the second robbery and murder at Braintree and had used his car – not a Buick – to transport the killers. That car was in a garage and the owner was told to call the police if someone came to collect it.

Buda, an acquaintance called Ricardo Orciani, Sacco and Vanzetti all arrived to collect the car and while Buda escaped – he was not seen again for seven years – Sacco and Vanzetti left on a streetcar.

They were both quickly arrested and were found with guns, bullets and anarchist literature. Orciani had an alibi for both crimes and was freed.

Sacco and Vanzetti were charged with the crime of murder on May 5, 1920, and were indicted on September 14. The case went to trial on May 21, 1921, at Dedham, Norfolk County.

HOW DID THE TRIALS PROCEED?

JUDGE Webster Thayer, a known anti-immigrant figure, presided over a shockingly one-sided jury that had been selected from local well-to-do citizenry such as the Freemasons.

Thayer also picked a quarrel with the accused’s chief counsel, Fred H Moore, a socialist from California who defended many trade unionists.

Thayer told reporters that “no long-haired anarchist from California can run this court” and the poor relationship between the two men coloured many opinions on the jury against Sacco and Vanzetti.

The jury were also irritated by the fact the defendants were not fluent in English – the transcript of their trial shows how much they misunderstood even simple questions.

The prosecution made much of ballistics evidence that seemed damning at first sight, and they also had eyewitnesses placing both men near the scene of the crime. The defence rested on other eyewitnesses, who testified that Sacco and Vanzetti were not the men involved. Crucially, both Sacco and Vanzetti had eyewitnesses who testified to their alibis, including an Italian consulate official who swore a statement that Sacco was in Boston on April 15.

The main prosecution witnesses changed their version of events from the grand jury indictment hearings to become certain of their identification – Sacco had previously been taken to meet one of them, Mary Splaine, by police investigators.

It mattered not a whit. Even though the robbery-murders had all the hallmarks of a professional “hit”, a theory state police supported, they never took the stand. The jury took just a few hours to convict Sacco and Vanzetti. They were sentenced to death.

WHY DID THE CASE CAUSE SUCH A FURORE?

ANARCHISTS across the USA funded a defence committee and, although he was eventually dismissed from the case, Fred H Moore used his vast network of contacts in the international trade union movement to publicise what he saw was a miscarriage of justice.

There then began the long process of appeals, one of which was based on a confession by a convicted criminal Celestino Medeiros, who said he had committed the robbery-murder in Braintree. He was part of the Morelli crime gang whose leader, Joe Morelli, looked very like Sacco.

Despite a global campaign against their death sentence, Sacco and Vanzetti were executed in the electric chair at Charlestown State Prison on August 21, 1927. Celestino Medeiros was executed in the same chair just before Sacco and Vanzetti.

There was uproar in many countries, while the case has been examined in many documentaries and fictional works.

In the 1990s, the great Scottish director and playwright Bill Bryden wrote a radio play based on his research, which concluded that Sacco and Vanzetti were innocent.

WERE THEY INNOCENT?

Even some of their supporters concluded that the evidence against Sacco in particular was damning, but such was the conduct of the police investigation, the prosecution and the judge, that both men would have been cleared long before they went to the chair.