Sent to Governor [he noted in his diary] a letter saying that in Sacco-Vanzetti sentence thousands of citizens felt that they had not had a fair trial and asking the Governor to call leading and trusted men to his advice.
As both the sender and the recipient were aware, the letter, dated April 11, was more nearly a command:
Your Excellency,—
Two men, having been tried by the Courts of Massachusetts for murder, have now been sentenced to death. Upon you falls the heavy and responsible duty of carrying out the sentence unless you are moved to take other action. Confidence in the Courts of Massachusetts, which has justified itself for generations, leads its citizens to assume the sentence given is just and should be carried out.
There are, however, we believe, thousands of citizens of the Commonwealth who, having read or studied such parts of the proceedings in the Superior Court as have appeared in the public press, have serious doubts as to whether these two men have had a fair trial.
They were, as the law requires, tried by a judge and jury and found guilty. Motions for a new trial on grounds of newly discovered evidence were heard by the same judge and denied. Exceptions on points of law were taken to the Supreme Court and unanimously overruled. But the Supreme Court could not under our law reconsider and revise the findings of fact of the trial court or the exercise of the trial judge’s discretion. Hence have arisen the doubts of the citizens for whom we venture to speak.
Knowing well your sense of justice, your integrity of purpose, and your courage when assured of the rightness of your position, we ask with great earnestness that you call to your aid several citizens of well known character, experience, ability, and sense of justice to make a study of the trial and advise you. We believe that it is due to the exceptional conditions of the case, to yourself, and to the State that these doubts be allayed and that it be made evident to all citizens that the Commonwealth has done full justice to herself as well as to these men, and also that you may have strong and intelligent support in whatever decision you may make.
Rt. Rev. William A. Lawrence
Additional signatures were superfluous. Nevertheless, as if to underline his position, the Bishop took care to have his letter signed by three most proper Bostonians—fellow Harvard Corporation member Charles Curtis, Jr.; Hernan Burr, as well known in the city as a lawyer and financier as he was unknown elsewhere; and Roland Boyden of Ropes, Gray, Boyden and Perkins, a law firm whose name was said to have such magic force that it was seldom mentioned; one only thought it.
The letter was not immediately made public. Meanwhile, on April 12, Representative Roland Sawyer, a Congregational minister who for fourteen years had represented Ware and several other small western Massachusetts towns in the state legislature, drew up a resolution which he presented in the House of Representatives to provide for a special commission “to examine and review the proceedings of the Commonwealth against Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti.” Sawyer realized that the measure had no chance of passing but he felt that a public hearing on it would be the informal equivalent of a trial, and that additional evidence there presented would undermine the prosecution’s case to such an extent that it would make the carrying out of the death sentences impossible. Thompson favored Sawyer’s plan, but Frankfurter, after meeting with the Defense Committee in a downtown law office, decided against it. He told Sawyer that he had confidence in Fuller. Sawyer’s resolution was rejected in the legislature by a rising vote of 146-6.