In the last seventeen days before the executions, Hill and the other defense lawyers appealed to fourteen justices of four courts. The evening of Vanzetti’s seizure Musmanno took the train for Washington to file writs of certiorari with the clerk of the United States Supreme Court on the grounds that the actions of the Massachusetts courts were a denial of the rights of Sacco and Vanzetti under the Constitution’s fourteenth amendment, providing that “no State shall deprive any person of life, liberty, or property without due process of law.” Once these writs were filed, once the case had officially reached the Supreme Court, the young lawyer, boundlessly confident, was certain that one justice could be found from among the nine who would grant a stay of execution.
After finding that he could not yet file his papers because he had not brought the record of the proceedings, he went on to the Justice Department to see the acting attorney general, George Farnum, who had once served in Massachusetts as Assistant United States Attorney under Katzmann’s former aide, Harold Williams. Musmanno and Farnum afterward gave conflicting versions of what occurred in their interview. To Musmanno’s question, Farnum replied there was nothing in the files linking Sacco and Vanzetti with the South Braintree crime but added that there was matter in the files unfavorable to them. What this was he refused to disclose unless Musmanno would agree to keep it secret, and when the latter refused the conversation came to an end. Next day Jackson, Hays, Kane, and Walsh, representing the Citizens’ Committee, spent the morning with Farnum, to whom they had been shunted by Attorney General Sargent, then on vacation in Vermont. Farnum, repeating the Department’s refusal to make the files available to representatives of unofficial organizations, declared that they “contained no evidence tending to establish the guilt or innocence of Sacco and Vanzetti, or either of them, of the crime for which they were convicted in the Massachusetts courts, nor any evidence whatever of any collusion whatsoever between the State and Federal authorities prior to the arrest of Sacco and Vanzetti or prior, during or subsequent to the trial of these two men.”
Meanwhile, the contest of the courtrooms accelerated. At the same time that Musmanno was walking up the steps of the Capitol, Field, in Massachusetts, was presenting another petition for a writ of habeas corpus to Judge James Morton, Jr., of the United States District Court. Morton brusquely denied the petition and refused to allow any appeal. At 2:15 Hill and Evarts conferred with Justice Holmes in Beverly. Holmes listened to them with grave courtesy but said that he did not have the authority to meddle in the affairs of state courts, and that he would not feel justified in granting a stay of execution unless he felt that there was a reasonable chance that the Supreme Court would ultimately reverse the judgment against Sacco and Vanzetti. This he could not bring himself to believe, but he added that another of his fellow justices might see the matter in a different light.
With each rebuff the defense lawyers frantically sought out another judge, each time to receive again the inevitable answer.
While Hill was arguing vainly with Holmes in Beverly, Luigia, accompanied by Rosina, Felicani, and Mrs. Henderson, went to the prison. Warden Hendry met her at the gate. Although it was quite unprecedented, he had Vanzetti let outside his cell to meet his sister.
Vanzetti had recovered from his seizure of the day before. He was standing a few feet from the door as Luigia, followed by the others, walked down the corridor. Then he stepped forward and took her in his arms. In that moment the stooped, sallow prisoner in the convict’s gray shirt and trousers and the fading spinster with her tightly-drawn hair were as they had been in Villafalletto nineteen years before—he the curly-haired young man, she the shy sprouting girl of sixteen. During the hour allotted them they sat in the corner clasping each other’s hands as they talked about the old days and of their relatives and friends. Luigia said later that they had not spoken of her brother’s predicament nor of religion. At the hour’s end they embraced again and Vanzetti returned to his cell. Despondently Luigia walked back along the corridor.
From Charlestown Mrs. Henderson drove her to Marblehead to see Cardinal O’Connell at his summer home. The Cardinal, although surprised by the visit, invited them to tea on the lawn. William Cardinal O’Connell—who wintered in Nassau and was known as Gang-plank Bill by some of the less reverent faithful—modeled himself after a Renaissance prelate. Although a friend of Governor Fuller’s, he knew better than to take secular sides as had Bishop Lawrence. Men’s ways were not God’s way, he assured Luigia over the teacups. Later in the day he amplified his remarks in a neatly ambiguous statement to the Defense Committee:
Human judgment is fallible always at best, but it is the only human method of government which civilized life has developed. But the justice of God is perfect, and in the end He and His way, mysterious as they are, are our hope and our salvation.
Vanzetti had at least had the consolation of seeing his sister once more. But, as he wrote in a note of thanks to Mrs. Henderson,