Chapter I: Where the Case Stands Today

On October 23rd 1926 Judge Webster Thayer handed down his decision on the latest motions for a new trial, argued by the defense during the week of September 13th. The decision is a document of something more than thirty thousand words in length. A reader unskilled in the technique of legal judgment gets the impression that the document is more of a personal apologium and defense on the part of the court than the impartial decision of a judge. Not a spark of scientific spirit, or of the consciousness of the infinite possibilities of human error has edged its way into those long involved sentences.

The confession of Madeiros and the elaborate circumstantial case evolved from it by the defense, tending to prove that the South Braintree holdup was committed by members of the Morelli gang of Providence, is dismissed with the following statement:

In conclusion, in so far as the Madeiros affidavit is concerned, it
would have been an easy task for this court to transfer the
responsibility upon another jury, but if this were done it would be
the shirking of a solemn duty that the law places upon the trial
court. Guided by this solemn duty I have examined and studied for
several weeks without interruption, the record of the testimony upon
this motion and upon the Madeiros deposition; and being controlled
only by judgment, reason, and conscience, and after giving as
favorable consideration to these defendants as may be consistent with
a due regard for the rights of the public and sound principles of law,
I am forced to the conclusion that the affidavit of Madeiros is
unreliable, untrustworthy and untrue. To set aside the verdict of a
jury affirmed by the Supreme Judicial Court of this commonwealth on
such an affidavit would be a mockery upon truth and justice.
Therefore, exercising every right vested in this court in the granting
of motions for new trials by the law of this commonwealth, the motion
for a new trial is hereby denied.

Further on in this comment upon the plea that Department of Justice agents worked with the prosecution to obtain conviction for murder against Sacco and Vanzetti although they considered them to be innocent (based on the now famous affidavits of Letherman and Weyand):

Cases cannot be decided on the ground of public opinion, but upon
reason, judgment, and in accordance with law; for cases cannot be
decided on mystery, suspicion or propaganda but upon the actual
evidence that is introduced at the trial. If this were otherwise God
help the poor defendants in criminal cases, if they are to be
acquitted and convicted, not upon evidence and the law, but upon
public opinion, which might be formed as the result of an unwarranted
public opinion or propaganda.

This might seem to the unlegal mind of a man smoking a cigar at a street corner, a knife that cuts two ways. To continue further on:

Have Attorney General Sargent of the United States and his
subordinates and former Attorney General Palmer under the
administration of President Wilson (for most of the correspondence
took place under President Wilson’s administration) stooped so low and
are they so degraded that they were willing, by the concealment of
evidence to enter into a fraudulent conspiracy with the government of
Massachusetts to send two men to the electric chair, not because they
were murderers, but because they were radicals?

Judge Thayer answers, No. But will that be the verdict of fairminded men and women when the full truth of this case is known? Will that be the verdict of workingmen the world over who see their own image in Sacco and Vanzetti? In the face of the evidence as it stands would a plain mind, free from legal technicalities and sectional bitterness answer No?

This decision leaves one more chance of appeal to the Supreme Judicial Court before sentence, but as that court makes decisions only on points of law and not on the human merits of a case, the hope of reversal is slim. After that the only appeal is to executive clemency, or to the Supreme Court of the United States on the plea that the defendants were convicted without due process of law. A pretty forlorn hope.

Sacco and Vanzetti are not asking for pardon, they are asking for justice. Remember that when it became evident that Tom Mooney was innocent of the Preparedness Parade bombing for which he had been convicted in California, instead of his being freed, his sentence was commuted to life. He is still in jail a victim of executive clemency.

Sacco and Vanzetti want justice, not clemency.

Only an immense surge of protest from all classes and conditions of men can save them from the Chair.