Daley said he did not believe the Guineas were guilty, and that it was not reasonable to suppose a man would go and rob a factory where he had worked and was well known, and in broad daylight.
“Damn them, they ought to hang them anyway!” Ripley had replied.
Of course there could be no corroboration of Daley’s statement, for Ripley had been dead now for over two years.
On October 1 Thompson, Hill, Moore, and the McAnarney brothers appeared in an almost empty courtroom to argue the supplementary motions. Again the defendants were brought in and placed in the cage. Sacco was still tanned from his outdoor work at the Bridgewater hospital. Vanzetti looked waxen, his eyes more deeply sunk than ever. Rosina was there with Ines, as was the indefatigable Mrs. Evans. Ines had on a pink dress and bonnet, and both defendants’ faces lighted up as Sacco held her for a moment in the cage. When Rosina started to walk away toward Mrs. Evans, Ines became frightened at being left alone with two strangers. She howled until her mother took her away.
Judge Thayer’s step lacked none of its briskness as he strode into the room, and his face had lost none of its masklike quality, even though this prolonged case impinged on him now like a recurring bad dream. “There seems to be no justification or excuse for the delays in filing affidavits,” he announced in pettish protest. “The court has several times set dates for the completion of filing affidavits on both sides. Apparently no attention has been paid to these orders.”
When the report that Sacco was not insane was read to the court, Sacco smiled ironically. Thompson, his self-assurance unruffled, urbanely at home where Moore had appeared the bumptious stranger, nevertheless seemed to feel it necessary to explain his presence in the radical galley. “It is supposed that these defendants have radical opinions,” he announced, in opening the argument for the Ripley motion. “Mr. Hill and I do not hold such opinions,” he went on, refraining from glancing at Moore, “and we are not here supporting such opinions. I think I shall be believed also when I say that we are not here for pecuniary reasons. We think we are rendering humble service to the institutions of law and order by coming here to argue that an error has been committed.
“I have no reason to believe that either one of these two defendants has ever endeavored by threats or in any other improper way to obtain undue influence in the court. Some of their enthusiastic friends may have done so, but this fact ought not to weigh against the defendants.
“That’s why Mr. Hill and I are here,” he concluded. “It’s because some of our friends have talked in the way Daley says Ripley talked.”
Thompson then spent the morning arguing the Ripley motion. In the afternoon Hill took over. “From the time I had been in the courtroom fifteen minutes,” he later told the Lowell Committee, “and had my first talk with the judge I did not have any doubt as to what the result of the case would be, independent of its actual merit, and that was not because I felt that there was anybody who was consciously trying to do wrong, but I thought everybody connected with the case had got themselves into a state of mind, a mental condition where reason had practically ceased to operate and prejudice and emotion had taken its place.”