“This is what I say: I would not wish to a dog or to a snake, to the most low and misfortunate creature of the earth—I would not wish to any of them what I have had to suffer for things that I am not guilty of. But my conviction is that I have suffered for things I am guilty of. I am suffering because I am a radical and indeed I am a radical; I have suffered because I was an Italian, and indeed I am an Italian; I have suffered more for my family and for my beloved than for myself; but I am so convinced to be right that if you could execute me two times, and if I could be reborn again two other times, I would live again to do what I have done already.
“I have finished. Thank you.”
He stood there, a spare, slightly stooped figure, his face pale behind the screen of the swooping mustache, eyes still glittering with suppressed emotion. Judge Thayer’s precise arctic voice broke the silence, moving on in a few phrases to the sentencing. There was a hushed tenseness as everyone leaned forward to catch the ritual words:
“First the Court pronounces sentence of Nicola Sacco. It is considered and ordered by the Court that you, Nicola Sacco, suffer the punishment of death by the passage of a current of electricity through your body within the week beginning on Sunday, the tenth day of July, in the year of our Lord, one thousand nine hundred and twenty-seven.”
Except for Thayer’s voice there was only the muffled sound of a few women sobbing.
“It is considered and ordered by the Court that you, Bartolomeo Vanzetti—”
Vanzetti’s interrupting voice was like a stone shattering thin ice. “Wait a minute, please, your Honor,” he called out. “May I speak with my lawyer, Mr. Thompson?”
Thompson, within the bar enclosure, was so taken aback that all he could do was to mutter to the court, “I do not know what he wants to say.”
Judge Thayer brushed aside the interruption. “I think I should pronounce the sentence. Bartolomeo Vanzetti, suffer the punishment of death—”
Sacco broke in, shrill and furious, and as he stood he stretched his arm and pointed at Judge Thayer. “You know I am innocent!” he shouted, his facial muscles bunched in fury. “That is the same words I pronounced seven years ago! You condemn two innocent men!”