The next move was Governor Fuller’s. He who a few weeks before had announced that he had not formed an opinion had now become the court of last appeal. In a few more weeks a stroke of his pen would have to decide whether it would be freedom for the two men, commutation of their sentences to life imprisonment, or death. To Thompson, who visited him privately, he announced that he could make no investigation unless he was requested to do so by Sacco and Vanzetti. Thompson promised to see that such a request was made.
The written and telegraphed appeals, requests, and suggestions now reaching the governor by the hundreds were signed with such nationally known names as Rabbi Stephen Wise, novelist Gertrude Atherton, President Emeritus David Starr Jordan of Stanford University, and biographer Ida Tarbell. A Massachusetts communication was signed by author and doctor Richard Cabot; John Hays Hammond, the North Shore millionaire industrialist; Harvard philosopher William Ernest Hocking; Harvard teacher and essayist Bliss Perry; and historians Samuel Eliot Morison and Arthur Schlesinger. The name of Dean Pound of the Harvard Law School headed a petition signed by Francis Sayre, the son-in-law of Woodrow Wilson.
The tone of most of these appeals was conciliatory, not to say flattering. That most tirelessly—some thought tiresomely—liberal of clergymen, John Haynes Holmes of New York’s Community Church, expressed his strong faith in Governor Fuller’s fairness. Fiorello La Guardia, who had served with Fuller in Congress, wrote optimistically to the New York World that the governor was “free from bigotry and prejudice and will investigate fairly and fully.” The Nation believed, in an open letter, that the governor would fearlessly face the great issue that had aroused not only masses of Americans but millions all over the world. Only the Communists, seeing no advantage from their point of view in conciliating anybody, kept up a counterpoint of invective, the Daily Worker denouncing Fuller as “that toothless troglodyte and flunky of the mill owners.”
Cardinal O’Connell, as urbane and adept a weigher of words as could be found in the Commonwealth, suggested an investigating commission indirectly when he urged that the governor reach his decision “by making use of every human aid that he can possibly gather.” Fuller himself, in an unexpected interview with Joseph Lilly of the Brooklyn Eagle, said that he did not know whether to appoint a commission or go over the case himself.
There were rumors that Charles Evans Hughes would soon head a Sacco-Vanzetti commission, then contrary rumors that there would be no commission after all. The Transcript continued to denounce the substitution of “public opinion in place of judicial conclusions.” Nine out of ten of the city’s lawyers were agreed that when the courts had spoken, contrary voices should become mute. Robert Goodwin and Joseph Proctor, Jr., of the august firm of Goodwin, Proctor, Field and Hoar, felt it their civic duty to try to offset the unaccountable aberration of Ropes, Gray, Boyden and Perkins by declaring that for Fuller to appoint a fact-finding commission would be an abdication of the powers of his office.
Although the Massachusetts Supreme Court could not reply directly to its critics, it managed to find a semiofficial defense in the pamphlet “Sacco and Vanzetti in the Scales of Justice,” written and published by its Reporter of Decisions, Ethelbert Vincent Grabill. For the reporter, the Massachusetts legal structure was a parthenon inherited from the Puritans, and he claimed that he had been moved by the spirit of his ancestors to attempt to “bring a wandering citizenry back to confidence in our courts, in their proceedings, and in our Governor, and fortify and strengthen those who have not wandered.” Grabill was untroubled by the proceedings at Dedham. For him it was “doubtful if Judge Thayer’s charge was ever equalled for clearness, completeness and fairness.” He considered it presumptuous for anyone to ask the governor to appoint a review commission, and complained that “having persons passing around ... petitions on the subject tends to stir up opposition to our Constitution and laws.”
Not until two weeks after the sentencing did Fuller finally ask District Attorney Ranney for the Sacco-Vanzetti records. On May 4 Thompson brought the governor a formal petition in which Vanzetti asked to be set free from his sentence. Carefully Vanzetti avoided the word pardon with its connotation of admitted guilt; he emphasized that he was asking for justice, not mercy. He pointed out to the governor that it would be unlikely for robbers to linger near the scene of a crime “in order to address public meetings in behalf of persecuted radicals.” Beyond this, the lengthy presentation was mostly a recapitulation of points that had been made in the various motions—Proctor’s equivocations, the dubious character of the chief witnesses, Judge Thayer’s prejudice, and the issue of radicalism.
The petition came from Vanzetti alone. True to his resolve to take no further part in the defense, Sacco refused to sign it. As a result, he was again examined to determine whether he should be considered mentally responsible. Dr. Abraham Meyerson, who conducted the examination, reported that:
There is no question that the seven years of his incarceration, mainly without employment and entirely preoccupied by his situation, have helped bring about an abnormal state in which his fanaticism has been intensified to an obsession. Though he is not insane, his inaccessibility to all reasoning and his emotional reactions are pathological. His mind has lost the flexibility which enables a man to adjust normally to situations.
Governor Fuller received the petition without comment. On May 8 he tripped going upstairs and tore a tendon in his left leg. While he was confined to his Beacon Street house, reporters noted that among his visitors were the McAnarney brothers and ex-District Attorney Katzmann.