Since the May 25 death of George Floyd, the U.S. justice system has itself been on trial. This is a good time, then, to also remember Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti, who were executed on Aug. 23, 1927, by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.
Both were poor working men, Italian immigrants with limited English who were political radicals and active with anarchist groups that sometimes advocated violence. They were arrested in April 1920 and charged with murdering two men during a payroll robbery three weeks earlier. Sacco and Vanzetti, who had not tried to flee or hide during that time, admitted their radical beliefs and associations but insisted they had nothing to do with the murders.
Their trial began on June 20, 1921, and lasted seven weeks. Both defendants were convicted and sentenced to death. The stolen money was never found.
Few criminal cases in this country have been appealed, analyzed, reinvestigated and resentenced as often as this one. Few have been the subject of as many articles and books. There were appeals based on trial procedures, on new evidence, on witnesses changing their testimony, on the confession of another man, a known criminal.
All appeals went back to the original presiding judge, Dartmouth College alumnus Webster Thayer, of Worcester, who denied them all and did everything he could to retain the verdicts of death.
Were either Sacco or Vanzetti guilty? It’s probably impossible to give a definitive answer. Over the years, many people in power have defended the trial verdicts while a host of others believed fervently in both men’s innocence. What is absolutely certain, however, is that they did not receive anything like a fair trial.
Very little evidence was produced against them; in the case of Vanzetti, essentially none. Their alibi witnesses were not heard, or, if they were able to testify, not believed. The accused men were not proved to have committed murder; they were condemned for their political beliefs and speech. Thayer later said as much. After attending a football game in Hanover, the judge famously remarked to Dartmouth professor James P. Richardson: “Did you see what I did with those anarchistic bastards the other day? I guess that will hold them for a while. Let them go and see now what they can get out of the Supreme Court!”
The trial took place at the height of the infamous post-World War I Red Scare, and the selection of jurors was highly prejudicial to the defense. The judge’s rulings and his charge to the jury were almost a call to convict. A fair trial it was not. (And five years later, the judge’s home was destroyed by a package bomb that injured his wife and their housekeeper.)
But the verdict of history has turned in Sacco and Vanzetti’s favor. Massachusetts Gov. Michael Dukakis declared Aug. 23, 1977, the 50th anniversary of their execution, Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti Memorial Day. His proclamation stated that Sacco and Vanzetti had been unfairly tried and convicted and that “any disgrace should be forever removed from their names.” He did not pardon them, because that would imply they were guilty. Neither did he assert their innocence. Bravo. Dukakis got it exactly right.
Sacco and Vanzetti were at first condemned in the press, but public opinion slowly shifted as people in the U.S. and across the globe became increasingly aware that the justice system was blind to justice. There were “Protests and demonstrations and strikes all over the United States, in Germany, England Australia, Switzerland, Paraguay, Mexico, on every continent except Antarctica,” as Susan Tejada wrote in one of many books about the case. The many illustrious people who denounced the unfair process and the death sentences included Albert Einstein, H.G. Wells, George Bernard Shaw and Eleanor Roosevelt.
In May 1927, their last appeal rejected, Vanzetti was quoted in the New York World in words that would become famous: “If it had not been for these things, I might have lived out my life, talking at street corners to scorning men. I might have died, unmarked, unknown, a failure. Now we are not a failure. This is our career and our triumph. Never in our full life can we hope to do such work for tolerance, for justice, for man’s understanding of man as now we do by an accident. … That last moment belongs to us — that agony is our triumph.”
Because of the multiple appeals and the powerful protest movement, the executions of Sacco and Vanzetti needed more than six years to complete. The sadistic killing of George Floyd on May 25 took just under 9 minutes. Nevertheless, the two cases have something important in common. These killings were known, and condemned, around the world. Floyd’s killing, caught on video, has added powerful fuel to the Black Lives Matter movement and to nationwide demands for police reform.
Protests demanding justice for Floyd have taken place in more than 2,000 cities in the U.S. and around the world, including New York, Los Angeles, Seattle and, notably, outside the White House. On May 30, 12 states called up the National Guard, and at least 12 cities imposed curfews. Most of the demonstrations have been peaceful, although there have been instances of looting and violence. Sometimes the violence has come largely from police, acting as if they wanted to showcase the evils the protesters were denouncing.
Police violence is not rare. For example, on May 25, the day George Floyd was killed in Minneapolis, police officers shot and killed at least five other men across the country. One of them was a decorated Marine veteran suffering from PTSD, whose wife had called the police seeking help, not an execution. According to The Washington Post, 1,026 people have been shot and killed by police in the past year, a fairly typical number. The rate of killing Black Americans is more than twice that for whites.
It is partly accidental that the names of Sacco, Vanzetti and Floyd have become so widely known, so emblematic of systemic injustice. Certainly none of them chose to die. The U.S. legal system has thousands of victims to its discredit, for reasons racial (the Scottsboro boys) or political (the Rosenbergs), or simply because the poor and outsiders do not get the sort of defense afforded to wealthy accused lawbreakers.
And the results of their sacrifice? For Sacco and Vanzetti, not much in the short run. Yet it is hard to imagine anything like their flawed and corrupt trial happening today in a case receiving wide attention. Moreover, the long reign of capital punishment is breaking up. Despite last week’s federal executions — the first in 17 years — in most of the world, and even in more and more of our own 50 states, this barbarous practice is heading for the scrap heap.
And as a result of George Floyd’s killing, spotlights are shining on police malpractice and some gains have been made at state and city levels. Unfortunately, the search for justice has become politicized. While most Democrats are seeking serious reforms, congressional Republicans have largely run for cover or even opposed real change. But electoral politics, now a big part of our problem, may yet become part of the solution. With multiple crises facing this country, there is surely hope that some good can result.
Here, in brief, is some of what we need: Make racism wrong again. If you want peace, work for justice. And show that Black lives do matter.
John Lamperti, of Norwich, is a professor emeritus of mathematics at Dartmouth College and the author of Enrique Alvarez Córdova: Life of a Salvadoran Revolutionary and Gentleman.