Judge Thayer stared at his bench as if he were unaware of the man addressing him. The judge’s impassivity nettled Vanzetti and as he continued his voice showed it. His eyes seemed to flash at the bent figure whom he had once called a black-gowned cobra.
“Is it possible that only a few on the jury, only two or three men, who would condemn their mother for worldly honor and for earthly fortune; is it possible that they are right against what the world, the whole world has say it is wrong and that I know that it is wrong? If there is one that I should know it, if it is right or if it is wrong, it is I and this man. You see it is seven years that we are in jail. What we have suffered during these seven years no human tongue can say, and yet you see me before you, not trembling, you see me looking you in your eyes straight, not blushing, not changing color, not ashamed or in fear.
“Eugene Debs say that not even a dog—something like that—not even a dog that kill chickens would have been found guilty by American jury with the evidence that the Commonwealth have produced against us. I say that not even a leprous dog would have his appeal refused two times by the Supreme Court of Massachusetts—not even a leprous dog....
“We know that you have spoke yourself and have spoke your hostility against us, and your despisement against us with friends of yours on the train, at the University Club of Boston, on the Golf Club of Worcester, Massachusetts. I am sure that if the people who know all what you say against us would have the civil courage to take the stand, maybe your Honor—I am sorry to say this because you are an old man, and I have an old father—but maybe you would be beside us in good justice at this time.”
The record of Vanzetti’s first trial is incomplete, and though the phrase does not appear in the transcript or in the newspaper accounts, Thayer was said by members of the Defense Committee who were in the courtroom to have instructed the jury that the defendant’s beliefs were “cognate with the crime.” Vanzetti now threw that in Thayer’s face, as well as the fact that his sentence for attempted robbery was double that of other prisoners in Charlestown convicted of actual robbery. At the recollection he struck angrily against the rail of the cage with his notes.
“You know if we would have Mr. Thompson, or even the brother McAnarney in the first trial in Plymouth, you know that no jury would have found me guilty. My first lawyer has been a partner of Mr. Katzmann, as he is still now. My first lawyer of the defense, Mr. Vahey, has not defended me, has sold me for thirty golden money like Judas sold Jesus Christ. If that man has not told to you or to Mr. Katzmann that he know I was guilty, it is because he know that I was not guilty. That man has done everything indirectly to hurt us. He has made long speech with the jury about things that do matter nothing, and on the point of essence to the trial he has passed over with few words or with complete silence. This was a premeditation in order to give the jury the impression that my own defender has nothing good to say, has nothing good to urge in defense of myself, and therefore go around the bush on little things that amount to nothing and let pass the essential points either in silence or with a very weakly resistance.
“We were tried during a time that has now passed into history. I mean by that, a time when there was a hysteria of resentment and hate against the people of our principles, against the foreigner, against slackers, and it seems to me—rather, I am positive of it, that both you and Mr. Katzmann has done all what it were in your power in order to work out, in order to agitate still more the passion of the juror, the prejudice of the juror, against us.... But the jury were hating us because we were against the war, and the jury don’t know that it makes any difference between a man that is against the war because he believes that the war is unjust, because he hate no country, because he is a cosmopolitan, and a man that is against the war because he is in favor of the other country that fights against the country in which he is, and therefore a spy, and he commits any crime in the country in which he is in behalf of the other country in order to serve the other country. We are not men of that kind. Katzmann know very well that. Katzmann know that we were against the war because we did not believe in the purpose for which they say that the war was done. We believe it that the war is wrong, and we believe this more now after ten years that we understood it day by day—the consequences and the result of the after war. We believe more now than ever that the war was wrong, and we are against war more now than ever, and I am glad to be on the doomed scaffold if I can say to mankind: ‘Look out; you are in a catacomb of the flower of mankind. For what? All that they say to you, all that they have promised to you—it was a lie, it was an illusion, it was a cheat, it was a fraud, it was a crime. They promised you liberty. Where is liberty? They promised you prosperity. Where is prosperity? They have promised you elevation. Where is elevation?’”
He accused Katzmann of breaking the agreement not to mention the Plymouth trial, he accused the Commonwealth of being more responsible than the defense for the delays, he accused Thayer of deliberately handing down his Plymouth decision on Christmas Eve “to poison the heart of our family and of our beloved,” for even though they did not believe in “the fable of the evening of Christmas,” nevertheless “we are human, and Christmas is sweet to the heart of every man.”
The marble-faced clock had ticked off forty minutes. Vanzetti disregarded his notes now. In his long-deliberated conclusion he had no need of them. His deep-set eyes took on the searing quality that Chief Stewart had remarked on seven years before.
“Well, I have already say that I not only am not guilty of these two crimes, but I never commit a crime in my life—I have never steal and I have never kill and I have never spilt blood, and I have fought against the crime, and I have fought and I have sacrificed myself even to eliminate the crimes that the law and the church legitimate and sanctify.