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Q. Do
you think Sacco and Vanzetti were innocent?
Do I think Sacco and Vanzetti were innocent?
Given the distance in time and place, it's impossible to say with absolute certainty that they were innocent. However,
I am about 98 percent sure -- 99 percent for Vanzetti. Along with all their perfectly believable alibis, there are larger
questions of behavior. The men simply never behaved like guilty men. They never hid their actions before their arrests.
They did not flee or hide anything. Once arrested, they lied a lot on the night they were questioned but it's reasonable
to believe they were covering up their anarchistic activities. Neither on that night nor in the seven years remaining
did either man say or do anything that would suggest his guilt. Finally, the whole Morelli gang scenario (see Chapter
11) is so much more believable than the guilt of Sacco or Vanzetti.
Q. Do you think they had a fair trial?
Absolutely not. The
judge was biased to the point of being ridiculous. Any of his out-of-court statements about the men would today instantly
guarantee them a new trial. The D.A. also stepped far over the line of fairness and would, today, probably have been
reprimanded for his conduct, including the probable suborning of perjury among witnesses. This question is also my final
answer to the first. A Mass Superior Court judge once said to me that, if they did not get a fair trial, it does not
matter whether they were innocent or guilty. A fair trial is guaranteed to all criminals, guilty or innocent, and without
one, an injustice has been done.
Q. Do you think Sacco
and Vanzetti were framed? If so, who do you think framed them?
Do you think Sacco and Vanzetti were framed? If by framed, you mean someone
outside of the D.A.'s office set them up to be arrested and to take the rap for someone else, then no. Chief Michael
Stewart did spring a trap for men he genuinely thought guilty of the crime. He told a mechanic to notify him if anyone
came for the car he thought involved in the burglarly. That's how they were caught, but that wasn't really a frame-up
in that Stewart was not out to get these two men. Throughout the whole trial, the entire prosecution genuinely believed
Sacco and Vanzetti guilty. The only possible claim of a frame-up might be in the bullets, one of which, you may
recall, seem to have been substituted for a ballistics test. I guess that would constitute a frame-up but again, I don't
believe the prosecution thought they were framing innocent men. They simply saw men, they were sure were guilty, about
to get away for lack of strong evidence and they took drastic measures.
Q. Do you think Sacco and
Vanzetti were arrested because of the fact that they were European Anarchists?
They were not arrested as anarchists.
No one knew at the time of their arrest that they were anarchists. That was not revealed until the first questioning.
Once it was discovered, however, it most likely made many assume them to be guilty. The Italian side is a little tougher.
It was known, prior to the arrests, that the man who owned the "getaway car" was Italian and so were his assumed accomplices.
So even before their arrest, whoever sprung that trap by picking up the car was reckoned to be Italian. This, and the
later Italian aspects of the trial, most definitely contributed to their conviction. Italians then, and to a certain
extent now, have this gangster image and Sacco and Vanzetti, while mild-mannered men, lived up to it both in their sinister
mugshots (see the book) and in the shouting out they did in court when outraged by the lies witnesses were telling.
Q.
What were some of the results of the
execution of Sacco and Vanzetti?
The execution of Sacco
and Vanzett sparked protests around the world. Riots disrupted every European capital, claiming a few lives. American
embassies were stoned in a few countries. Protests took place from Sydney Australia to Tokyo, Johannesburg, and all across
South America. As I note in the book, there had never been such a worldwide outcry for justice in a criminal trial and
there hasn't been since. After the execution, however, the outcry died away pretty quickly. Some magazines continued
to denounce America, and especially Massachusetts, but with a worldwide depression starting a couple of years later, the execution quickly
became history.
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