August 5, 2009 • 17 mins
When Sacco and Vanzetti were charged with murder, the Italian-born anarchists didn't receive a fair trial because of their political views and foreign birth. Learn more about the trial -- and its repercussions -- in this podcast from HowStuffWorks.com.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class from how
Stuff Works dot com. Hello and welcome to the podcast.
A big, warm welcome to my new co host Sarah Dowdy.
And Sarah just came back from Boston and had an
(00:21):
interesting tale to tell I did. Um. I was in
Boston a little while ago, and I was walking around
the North End kind of on a Cannoli tour, I'll
be honest, um, but a plaque caught my attention, Um,
and it was commemorating the site where the Sacco and
Vinzetti defense committee functioned from N seven. Seems like it
(00:43):
was kind of operating as maybe a yoga studio now
judging by the number of people with Matt's headed in,
but it looked like it was the site of an
important historical event. It was. And we've actually gotten a
lot of read requests for these second vent Setti trial,
so I'm glad we're doing this today. Um. But they
were two Italian immigrants accused of murder back in the
(01:06):
nineteen twenties. But to give a little background, maybe we
should talk about their lives before they got here. Yeah, um,
Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Venzetti both immigrated nineteen o eight.
Um Sacco was an edge tremmor at a shoe factory
in Massachusetts, Venzetti a fish peddler in Plymouth. So pretty uh,
basic guys. And they were both involved in a lot
(01:30):
of anarchist activities, which is sort of where the trouble starts.
They had both written for the Chronica Staversiva. Sorry if
I'm not pronouncing that correctly, but it was an Italian
anarchist newsletter, and so their names were already on the
list of people to watch at the time. And they
both belonged to the Grippo Autonomo sorry again, UM, an
(01:51):
anarchist cell in East Boston, UM that was really into
the violent overthrow of the government. So probably not thing
to be involved in. No lots of discovered bomb plots
with that particular group. So to go back to what
they're actually accused of. On April fifteenth, in nineteen twenty,
(02:12):
these two men were outside a shoe factory and they
had the payroll something about fifteen thousand dollars and they
were both shot and killed by a group of men,
and the eyewitnesses say that the robbers looked Italian, and
that's definitely where the troubles started. So they had I believe,
(02:34):
seen a buick that the men had gone away in.
So the police started with that one particular clue. They
were going to look for a buick, and they found
one in a nearby town at a garage, and I
think they talked to the mechanic and said that, you know,
if anyone came to call on it, let them know.
So when Saccho and Vinzetti showed up to carrying your pistols, unfortunately,
(02:58):
so good, nothing's working out for They showed up to
pick up the car, and of course the mechanic gave
a call into the police and told Saco Vansetti that
they didn't want to pick up the car right then.
It had the wrong plates, so they should come back.
And when they did return, the police were waiting for them.
And they also happened to lie to the police, which
(03:20):
later at the trial was used as a consciousness of
guilt excuse. Yeah. Over the course of the trial, there
were a lot of different stories that came out from
both of them. Vinzetti later said he was kind of
trying to protect his friends and fellow anarchists, but it's
not really going to fly in a Court of long Um.
But the trial in general ended up being a real mess.
(03:43):
Um Judge Webster there of the Massachusetts Superior Court who
tried the case, Um, here's a little language warning coming up.
It already called them anarchist bastards. So his opinion was
clearly skewed from the start, and a lot of other
problems that a really incompetent lawyer, even though he was
(04:04):
very invested in the case, he was just not up
to up to par when I don't I don't think
he was a local and he wasn't really familiar with
how things went in that part of the country. And
the jury was also very, very specially hand picked in
a way that wasn't impartial either. Yeah, and the witnesses
were kind of browbeaten, um people who sort of knew,
(04:28):
you know, knew something about their alibis. The Italian with
witnesses were especially pressured. Uh. It was just all a
big mess. And adding to the confusion, Saco and Vanzetti
didn't speak great English, and their interpreter, It's very possible,
wasn't even answering, wasn't giving them the questions it does.
(04:52):
They weren't getting the right questions and he may or
may not have been relaying the correct answers, so they
eventually replaced the first translator with someone else. But when
there's a language barrier, that's a big deal. It is
so Zacco and vin City were found guilty by the
jury in July fourte and sentenced to death, but the
trial went on for another what seven years? Six years afterwards,
(05:15):
the debate went on, for sure, UM, people kept on
calling for a retrial, and why this case is so
famous and why people are still talking about it is UM.
The effect after the trial, UM, intellectuals and leftists really
took up. UM took up the cause of getting these
guys a new trial, for one thing, because it had
(05:36):
been so unfair UM. But also a lot of people
felt that they had been UM. They they've been tried
on their anarchists police, not exactly and for the time well,
and some of it didn't even make sense to go
to the specifics of the trial. They were talking about
identifying these men, you know, as the people who came
to commit the murder. And one of their eyewitnesses was
(05:59):
someone who who originally had said that no, she couldn't
tell where from where she was who it was because
she had seen him from a distance of sixty eight
feet away and originally said, you know that, no, she
couldn't recognize him, but then was giving really detailed descriptions
of say, his hand. And there were other people who
(06:20):
again at the time said maybe they weren't even there,
they weren't looking, or when they saw guns they had hidden,
and then later said no, they could identify these men,
but there never was a strong identification. Actually, in the beginning,
many of the police officers had said that they thought
it was a gang of professional criminals and not you know,
to immigrants who had absolutely nothing on their records other
(06:40):
than these anarchist activities. UM. And that actually, you know,
the gang of professionals kind of seemed even more plausible
when Um Felostino Madeiras, who was already under a sentence
from murder. This is a bit after Um after the trial,
actually confessed to the crime that he did it with
(07:00):
the Joe Morelli gang, So, you know, a group of
seasoned criminals, not a fishmonger and shoe factory tremmor Well.
And another thing about the trial, they never even tried
to trace where the money would have gotten from this robbery,
where did that fifteen thousand dollars go because neither Sacho
nor Vanzetti had it in their bank accounts, nor had
(07:23):
they change anything about their lifestyles, nor did the people
in their lives seem to have any more money. So
if we can't identify them and they don't have the money,
you know, where is it? What was coming? What happened
except the prejudice in the court and the judge who
over and over again gave these ridiculous I mean, you
can read his summaries. One of them, I think at
(07:44):
near the end of the court is twenty five thousand
words about how what they've done was fair and they
don't need a retrial. But it's clearly not even remotely
objective if you give it a read. Yeah, And and
just to show um, you know how concerned people were.
There were demonstrations all around the world after after this trial,
(08:07):
and especially nearing the execution date UM, which was a
long time after they were UH tried, um seven years
they were in jail. UM. The governor of the state
UH set up an independent advisory committee that had Harvard President,
m T President, a former judge UH trying to you know,
(08:28):
decide if the trial had been fair. One good signifier
of how concerned people were about whether this trial was
fair is UM. The governor actually felt compelled to make
an independent advisory committee UM, consisting of Harvard's president M. T.
S President, a former judge UM, to actually go over everything.
(08:52):
Instead of UM. This would be, you know, to decide
if they were going to do a retrial or not UM,
or you know, whether he was going to issue clemency UM.
He decided not to. The advisory committee stood with him. UM.
So they were out of luck again. And when you
look at some of the things that happened during the trial,
it seems impossible that they didn't have a retrial. At
(09:14):
one point, I think they had a ballistics expert, or
at least an officer of the law, who had pre
arranged with the prosecutor how he wanted to present the
evidence of the gun that Sacho had, and they arranged
it to say the expert couldn't come in and say
that it was shot from Sacho's gun because it wasn't,
(09:35):
and he said that would be perjury. I can't come
into a court of blond say that. So instead they
arranged the language beforehand. So what the prosecutor said, and
what the expert answered made it sound like some double
negatives going on exactly. And when the court interpreted it
to the jury, that of course is how they interpreted it.
And for some reason the defense attorney didn't pick up
(09:56):
that line of questioning, and so it was just dropped.
He was pretty hapless, it seemed. Well. And later when
the expert came in and told that this happened, you
would have think you would think that that would be
grounds for a retrial right there. Yeah. In nineteen six nine,
a Supreme Court Justice uh William Douglas actually wrote that
someone reading the courtroom transcript would have difficulty believing that
(10:18):
the trial in which it deals took place in the
United States. It was just that backward. Some of its
heartbreaking when you are reading the transcript. I was reading
one little excerpt between came from Bossoco or Vanzetti and
the lawyer, and you can tell that he doesn't understand
the questions because they're asking him, you know, are you
a Bolshevik and he says he doesn't know a Bolshevism means,
(10:39):
said are you a Soviet? And no, he doesn't know
what Soviet means? And then they said, are you a communist?
And he answered that yes, that he bought some books
on astronomy. So we know the trial didn't go well. Um,
but you know, do we have any information now that
helps us Now did these guys commit the crime? Because
it became did become, as you had mentioned, quite the
(11:01):
kosleb of the day. Their second lawyer had spent quite
a bit of money putting out pamphlets and things and
very much trying to use the media to their advantage
to get a fair trial for these men. So do
we think they were innocent men involved in this trial
and just condemned before it ever started, or was there
some truth that maybe they had done some things they
(11:23):
shouldn't have done. Well later FBI ballistics reports kind of
suggested that Sacho probably was guilty, then Zetti probably not.
But there's a lot of disagreement on it still. I mean,
in part because all the evidence was so shoddy and
the witnesses testimonies are skewed and unreliable. Because there wasn't
(11:45):
a retrial, it's hard to tell even today when some
of the evidence was messed with. Two. I think the
gun was put together and taken apart so many different times.
At some point they weren't sure if it had been
damaged beyond beliefs exactly. And there was a hat that
was found at the crime scene that they made Sacho
try on and it turned out there was a hole
in it and someone said, oh, it was from a
(12:05):
bullet and then no, Actually the police had actually very
proto o Jays and it is UM. And I mean
another thing to keep in mind is just the climate
of the country at the time, and it was not
These guys were Italian immigrants and they were known anarchists. UM.
(12:26):
And that was a good step towards being guilty. Just
to start, UM. It was after World War One. Unemployment
was really high, UM, the economy was bad, UM. And
there was a red scare going on, which is not
the red scare that we normally think of. UM. You know, McCarthy, McCarthy. Um.
(12:47):
It was long before that. UM kind of started by uh,
President Woodrow Wilson's Attorney General Palmer, who had a bomb
explode outside of his house and then just of went
on an anti communist, UM, anti anarchist crusade, UM, kind
of gunning for a presidential bid himself. A lot of
(13:08):
people thought, uh, but he was responsible sort of for
heating up the the country with all this you know,
red fear. And you can see some of that in
the trial transcripts again or even from things the judge said,
there are a lot of examples talking about war because
sac on Venzetti were also draft dodgers, which did not
(13:30):
endear them to the jury. Did not help in Massachusetts,
and so they were asked several questions, you know, like
do you love your country? And oh, well, you ran
away from your country? You know, would you run away
from your wife if she needed you? Into these ridiculous,
hyperbolic just arguments, but the judge was talking about the
pure line of truth and elevating them on the blindness
(13:52):
and patriotism and in general inflaming the jury. And and
just a few years before this crime, there were a
lot of massive USTs and deportations, um due to Palmer
and um the creation of the General Intelligence Division, which
was actually headed up by Jedger Hoover, not a definitely
(14:14):
anti communist there um. And you know, immigration, uh quotas
started coming into play. Um. So there was a lot
of ethnic fear going on to well, and a lot
of people say and Saco Venzetti later said that the
reason they lied in the beginning was because of fear,
because of all these things that were going on. And
(14:34):
they had recently had a friend, a fellow anarchist, arrested
and put in custody and wasn't allowed to communicate with anyone,
and I think he committed suicide. Yeah, he supposedly jumped
off fourteenth floor of a building. And that's about the
time they had decided maybe they should start getting rid
of all of their anarchist pamphlets and such right as
(14:57):
they got arrested. And then Vanzetti later said, um, that's
what he was doing. He was helping friends clear out there,
um anarchist literature, kind of preparing for May Day raids.
And it's been suggested that sac On Venzetti were actually
on some sort of list and that maybe this was
(15:17):
just this particular charge was trumped up to get them
out at any cost and to get them deported. Sacho
and Vanzetti were actually executed on August twenty three, nine seven,
and before they were killed, Saco gave a quote, but
what good is the evidence and what good is the argument?
They're determined to kill us regardless of evidence, of law,
(15:38):
of decency of everything. If they give us a delay tonight,
it will only mean that they will kill us next week.
Let us finish tonight and weary of waiting seven years
to die when they know all the time and they
intend to kill us. End quote. So that gives you
an idea of what those seven years of appeals and
motions were like for Zacco and Benzetti when they were
sure that they were going to be executed, and they
(15:59):
were yeah, um, fifty years after their death, um, the
Massachusetts Governor, Michael D. Coccus um is she'd a proclamation
saying that they had not been treated justly and that
no stigma should be associated with their names. Kind of
a retrial too late, but um nevertheless, but something. Yeah. So,
(16:24):
whether you believe they're innocent or guilty, I think we
can say with fairness that their trial should have been redone.
And if you'd like to learn more about controversial court cases,
please check out the website and the Stuff You Missed
in History Class blog at www dot how stuff works
dot com for more on this and thousands of other topics.
(16:44):
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how stuff works dot com home page
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class from how
Stuff Works dot com. Hello and welcome to the podcast.
A big, warm welcome to my new co host Sarah Dowdy.
And Sarah just came back from Boston and had an
(00:21):
interesting tale to tell I did. Um. I was in
Boston a little while ago, and I was walking around
the North End kind of on a Cannoli tour, I'll
be honest, um, but a plaque caught my attention, Um,
and it was commemorating the site where the Sacco and
Vinzetti defense committee functioned from N seven. Seems like it
(00:43):
was kind of operating as maybe a yoga studio now
judging by the number of people with Matt's headed in,
but it looked like it was the site of an
important historical event. It was. And we've actually gotten a
lot of read requests for these second vent Setti trial,
so I'm glad we're doing this today. Um. But they
were two Italian immigrants accused of murder back in the
(01:06):
nineteen twenties. But to give a little background, maybe we
should talk about their lives before they got here. Yeah, um,
Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Venzetti both immigrated nineteen o eight.
Um Sacco was an edge tremmor at a shoe factory
in Massachusetts, Venzetti a fish peddler in Plymouth. So pretty uh,
basic guys. And they were both involved in a lot
(01:30):
of anarchist activities, which is sort of where the trouble starts.
They had both written for the Chronica Staversiva. Sorry if
I'm not pronouncing that correctly, but it was an Italian
anarchist newsletter, and so their names were already on the
list of people to watch at the time. And they
both belonged to the Grippo Autonomo sorry again, UM, an
(01:51):
anarchist cell in East Boston, UM that was really into
the violent overthrow of the government. So probably not thing
to be involved in. No lots of discovered bomb plots
with that particular group. So to go back to what
they're actually accused of. On April fifteenth, in nineteen twenty,
(02:12):
these two men were outside a shoe factory and they
had the payroll something about fifteen thousand dollars and they
were both shot and killed by a group of men,
and the eyewitnesses say that the robbers looked Italian, and
that's definitely where the troubles started. So they had I believe,
(02:34):
seen a buick that the men had gone away in.
So the police started with that one particular clue. They
were going to look for a buick, and they found
one in a nearby town at a garage, and I
think they talked to the mechanic and said that, you know,
if anyone came to call on it, let them know.
So when Saccho and Vinzetti showed up to carrying your pistols, unfortunately,
(02:58):
so good, nothing's working out for They showed up to
pick up the car, and of course the mechanic gave
a call into the police and told Saco Vansetti that
they didn't want to pick up the car right then.
It had the wrong plates, so they should come back.
And when they did return, the police were waiting for them.
And they also happened to lie to the police, which
(03:20):
later at the trial was used as a consciousness of
guilt excuse. Yeah. Over the course of the trial, there
were a lot of different stories that came out from
both of them. Vinzetti later said he was kind of
trying to protect his friends and fellow anarchists, but it's
not really going to fly in a Court of long Um.
But the trial in general ended up being a real mess.
(03:43):
Um Judge Webster there of the Massachusetts Superior Court who
tried the case, Um, here's a little language warning coming up.
It already called them anarchist bastards. So his opinion was
clearly skewed from the start, and a lot of other
problems that a really incompetent lawyer, even though he was
(04:04):
very invested in the case, he was just not up
to up to par when I don't I don't think
he was a local and he wasn't really familiar with
how things went in that part of the country. And
the jury was also very, very specially hand picked in
a way that wasn't impartial either. Yeah, and the witnesses
were kind of browbeaten, um people who sort of knew,
(04:28):
you know, knew something about their alibis. The Italian with
witnesses were especially pressured. Uh. It was just all a
big mess. And adding to the confusion, Saco and Vanzetti
didn't speak great English, and their interpreter, It's very possible,
wasn't even answering, wasn't giving them the questions it does.
(04:52):
They weren't getting the right questions and he may or
may not have been relaying the correct answers, so they
eventually replaced the first translator with someone else. But when
there's a language barrier, that's a big deal. It is
so Zacco and vin City were found guilty by the
jury in July fourte and sentenced to death, but the
trial went on for another what seven years? Six years afterwards,
(05:15):
the debate went on, for sure, UM, people kept on
calling for a retrial, and why this case is so
famous and why people are still talking about it is UM.
The effect after the trial, UM, intellectuals and leftists really
took up. UM took up the cause of getting these
guys a new trial, for one thing, because it had
(05:36):
been so unfair UM. But also a lot of people
felt that they had been UM. They they've been tried
on their anarchists police, not exactly and for the time well,
and some of it didn't even make sense to go
to the specifics of the trial. They were talking about
identifying these men, you know, as the people who came
to commit the murder. And one of their eyewitnesses was
(05:59):
someone who who originally had said that no, she couldn't
tell where from where she was who it was because
she had seen him from a distance of sixty eight
feet away and originally said, you know that, no, she
couldn't recognize him, but then was giving really detailed descriptions
of say, his hand. And there were other people who
(06:20):
again at the time said maybe they weren't even there,
they weren't looking, or when they saw guns they had hidden,
and then later said no, they could identify these men,
but there never was a strong identification. Actually, in the beginning,
many of the police officers had said that they thought
it was a gang of professional criminals and not you know,
to immigrants who had absolutely nothing on their records other
(06:40):
than these anarchist activities. UM. And that actually, you know,
the gang of professionals kind of seemed even more plausible
when Um Felostino Madeiras, who was already under a sentence
from murder. This is a bit after Um after the trial,
actually confessed to the crime that he did it with
(07:00):
the Joe Morelli gang, So, you know, a group of
seasoned criminals, not a fishmonger and shoe factory tremmor Well.
And another thing about the trial, they never even tried
to trace where the money would have gotten from this robbery,
where did that fifteen thousand dollars go because neither Sacho
nor Vanzetti had it in their bank accounts, nor had
(07:23):
they change anything about their lifestyles, nor did the people
in their lives seem to have any more money. So
if we can't identify them and they don't have the money,
you know, where is it? What was coming? What happened
except the prejudice in the court and the judge who
over and over again gave these ridiculous I mean, you
can read his summaries. One of them, I think at
(07:44):
near the end of the court is twenty five thousand
words about how what they've done was fair and they
don't need a retrial. But it's clearly not even remotely
objective if you give it a read. Yeah, And and
just to show um, you know how concerned people were.
There were demonstrations all around the world after after this trial,
(08:07):
and especially nearing the execution date UM, which was a
long time after they were UH tried, um seven years
they were in jail. UM. The governor of the state
UH set up an independent advisory committee that had Harvard President,
m T President, a former judge UH trying to you know,
(08:28):
decide if the trial had been fair. One good signifier
of how concerned people were about whether this trial was
fair is UM. The governor actually felt compelled to make
an independent advisory committee UM, consisting of Harvard's president M. T.
S President, a former judge UM, to actually go over everything.
(08:52):
Instead of UM. This would be, you know, to decide
if they were going to do a retrial or not UM,
or you know, whether he was going to issue clemency UM.
He decided not to. The advisory committee stood with him. UM.
So they were out of luck again. And when you
look at some of the things that happened during the trial,
it seems impossible that they didn't have a retrial. At
(09:14):
one point, I think they had a ballistics expert, or
at least an officer of the law, who had pre
arranged with the prosecutor how he wanted to present the
evidence of the gun that Sacho had, and they arranged
it to say the expert couldn't come in and say
that it was shot from Sacho's gun because it wasn't,
(09:35):
and he said that would be perjury. I can't come
into a court of blond say that. So instead they
arranged the language beforehand. So what the prosecutor said, and
what the expert answered made it sound like some double
negatives going on exactly. And when the court interpreted it
to the jury, that of course is how they interpreted it.
And for some reason the defense attorney didn't pick up
(09:56):
that line of questioning, and so it was just dropped.
He was pretty hapless, it seemed. Well. And later when
the expert came in and told that this happened, you
would have think you would think that that would be
grounds for a retrial right there. Yeah. In nineteen six nine,
a Supreme Court Justice uh William Douglas actually wrote that
someone reading the courtroom transcript would have difficulty believing that
(10:18):
the trial in which it deals took place in the
United States. It was just that backward. Some of its
heartbreaking when you are reading the transcript. I was reading
one little excerpt between came from Bossoco or Vanzetti and
the lawyer, and you can tell that he doesn't understand
the questions because they're asking him, you know, are you
a Bolshevik and he says he doesn't know a Bolshevism means,
(10:39):
said are you a Soviet? And no, he doesn't know
what Soviet means? And then they said, are you a communist?
And he answered that yes, that he bought some books
on astronomy. So we know the trial didn't go well. Um,
but you know, do we have any information now that
helps us Now did these guys commit the crime? Because
it became did become, as you had mentioned, quite the
(11:01):
kosleb of the day. Their second lawyer had spent quite
a bit of money putting out pamphlets and things and
very much trying to use the media to their advantage
to get a fair trial for these men. So do
we think they were innocent men involved in this trial
and just condemned before it ever started, or was there
some truth that maybe they had done some things they
(11:23):
shouldn't have done. Well later FBI ballistics reports kind of
suggested that Sacho probably was guilty, then Zetti probably not.
But there's a lot of disagreement on it still. I mean,
in part because all the evidence was so shoddy and
the witnesses testimonies are skewed and unreliable. Because there wasn't
(11:45):
a retrial, it's hard to tell even today when some
of the evidence was messed with. Two. I think the
gun was put together and taken apart so many different times.
At some point they weren't sure if it had been
damaged beyond beliefs exactly. And there was a hat that
was found at the crime scene that they made Sacho
try on and it turned out there was a hole
in it and someone said, oh, it was from a
(12:05):
bullet and then no, Actually the police had actually very
proto o Jays and it is UM. And I mean
another thing to keep in mind is just the climate
of the country at the time, and it was not
These guys were Italian immigrants and they were known anarchists. UM.
(12:26):
And that was a good step towards being guilty. Just
to start, UM. It was after World War One. Unemployment
was really high, UM, the economy was bad, UM. And
there was a red scare going on, which is not
the red scare that we normally think of. UM. You know, McCarthy, McCarthy. Um.
(12:47):
It was long before that. UM kind of started by uh,
President Woodrow Wilson's Attorney General Palmer, who had a bomb
explode outside of his house and then just of went
on an anti communist, UM, anti anarchist crusade, UM, kind
of gunning for a presidential bid himself. A lot of
(13:08):
people thought, uh, but he was responsible sort of for
heating up the the country with all this you know,
red fear. And you can see some of that in
the trial transcripts again or even from things the judge said,
there are a lot of examples talking about war because
sac on Venzetti were also draft dodgers, which did not
(13:30):
endear them to the jury. Did not help in Massachusetts,
and so they were asked several questions, you know, like
do you love your country? And oh, well, you ran
away from your country? You know, would you run away
from your wife if she needed you? Into these ridiculous,
hyperbolic just arguments, but the judge was talking about the
pure line of truth and elevating them on the blindness
(13:52):
and patriotism and in general inflaming the jury. And and
just a few years before this crime, there were a
lot of massive USTs and deportations, um due to Palmer
and um the creation of the General Intelligence Division, which
was actually headed up by Jedger Hoover, not a definitely
(14:14):
anti communist there um. And you know, immigration, uh quotas
started coming into play. Um. So there was a lot
of ethnic fear going on to well, and a lot
of people say and Saco Venzetti later said that the
reason they lied in the beginning was because of fear,
because of all these things that were going on. And
(14:34):
they had recently had a friend, a fellow anarchist, arrested
and put in custody and wasn't allowed to communicate with anyone,
and I think he committed suicide. Yeah, he supposedly jumped
off fourteenth floor of a building. And that's about the
time they had decided maybe they should start getting rid
of all of their anarchist pamphlets and such right as
(14:57):
they got arrested. And then Vanzetti later said, um, that's
what he was doing. He was helping friends clear out there,
um anarchist literature, kind of preparing for May Day raids.
And it's been suggested that sac On Venzetti were actually
on some sort of list and that maybe this was
(15:17):
just this particular charge was trumped up to get them
out at any cost and to get them deported. Sacho
and Vanzetti were actually executed on August twenty three, nine seven,
and before they were killed, Saco gave a quote, but
what good is the evidence and what good is the argument?
They're determined to kill us regardless of evidence, of law,
(15:38):
of decency of everything. If they give us a delay tonight,
it will only mean that they will kill us next week.
Let us finish tonight and weary of waiting seven years
to die when they know all the time and they
intend to kill us. End quote. So that gives you
an idea of what those seven years of appeals and
motions were like for Zacco and Benzetti when they were
sure that they were going to be executed, and they
(15:59):
were yeah, um, fifty years after their death, um, the
Massachusetts Governor, Michael D. Coccus um is she'd a proclamation
saying that they had not been treated justly and that
no stigma should be associated with their names. Kind of
a retrial too late, but um nevertheless, but something. Yeah. So,
(16:24):
whether you believe they're innocent or guilty, I think we
can say with fairness that their trial should have been redone.
And if you'd like to learn more about controversial court cases,
please check out the website and the Stuff You Missed
in History Class blog at www dot how stuff works
dot com for more on this and thousands of other topics.
(16:44):
Does that how stuff works dot com? Let us know
what you think. Send an email to podcast at how
stuff works dot com, and be sure to check out
the stuff you missed in History Class blog on the
how stuff works dot com home page
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