The jurors arrived at their first stop, South Braintree, just as the noon whistles were blowing, and at once the cars were surrounded by curious factory workers. Katzmann had to order a retreat to Braintree for lunch. When the cavalcade returned, the factory windows were filled with faces but Pearl Street itself was free. From the railroad crossing the procession followed the route of the bandit car along the side roads through Randolph and Stoughton and Brockton to West Bridgewater. The dust churned, covering the men in the cars, coating their faces like masks. The jurors were shown Simon Johnson’s house, the Elm Square Garage, the house where Coacci and Boda had lived, and then the Manley Woods. A motorcycle was parked beside the bridle path, and as the assorted jurors, lawyers, police, and newspapermen made their way to where the Buick had been found, they surprised the cyclist and his girl making love under a bush. Their last stop was the gate-tender’s shanty at the Matfield crossing. At the end of the day they had covered ninety-one miles, and Dever thought each of them had absorbed about a pint of dust. There was no place for the jurors to get a bath, either—he noted ruefully—after they got back to the courthouse.
Tuesday morning, June 7, when Assistant District Attorney Williams made the opening statement for the Commonwealth, set the pattern for the month to follow. Sacco and Vanzetti, handcuffed to each other and to a deputy, with three blue-uniformed policemen in front, three to the rear, and two on either side, were marched from the jail down Village Street past the cemetery, then up Court Street to the courthouse. A trooper, with a bandolier of a hundred rounds slung across his shoulder and a rifle in his saddle boot, rode sternly ahead of them, while a second mounted trooper followed as a rear guard. At the midday recess the prisoners were marched back to the jail. This martial procession took place four times a day.
Once in the courtroom the defendants were placed in the cage and their handcuffs removed. Then followed a pause of some minutes until the diminutive judge in his built-up heels strode through the door, his black silk gown billowing behind him. At his appearance Clerk Worthington rapped with his gavel and gave the peremptory command “Court!” Everyone stood up. For the first time the public was allowed in the courtroom. Among the spectators were Mrs. Glendower Evans, representing the New League for Democratic Control; Cerise Carman Jack, the wife of a Harvard professor, representing the New England Civil Liberties Committee; and Lois Rantoul of the Federated Churches of Greater Boston, a relative of Harvard’s President Lowell. Felicani was present, as were most of the members of the Defense Committee and the Italian consul, the aloof pince-nezed Marquis Ferrante di Ruffano, on instructions from his government.
In informal preliminary discussions the prosecution and the defense had come to an agreement not to bring up the subject of radicalism during the trial. Katzmann had also offered to agree “that no particular bullet came from any particular gun” and refrain with the defense from trying to prove one way or the other whether the murder bullets had been fired from Sacco’s automatic or Vanzetti’s revolver. Moore had refused, exclaiming melodramatically that he was being asked to turn his sword into a shield, and insisting on being free to have the bullets and guns examined by experts. Officially Moore, assisted by William Callahan—the lawyer engaged for Sacco and Vanzetti in the Brockton police court—represented Sacco, and officially the McAnarney brothers represented Vanzetti, but this was merely a maneuver to give both Jerry McAnarney and Moore the right to argue before the jury and to cross-examine. In reality Moore was as completely in charge as if he had been captain of a ship.
The contention of the Commonwealth, Assistant District Attorney Williams said in his explanatory statement,
is that this crime was committed by five men; that use was made of this stolen Buick car which after its theft from Dr. Murphy of Natick had been kept in the curtained shed of the Coacci house in West Bridgewater; that on the morning of the murder it was taken from the Coacci house and was driven to South Braintree; that they picked up Vanzetti at the East Braintree station; that the men who guided and drove that car were very familiar with the localities of West Bridgewater and the roads leading to and from that section; that they went down to the railroad crossing after the shooting, and made that hairpin turn to throw their pursuers off the scent ... that they proceeded by those back roads, Oak Street and Chestnut Street, until they got to the old turnpike, which, though a rough road, furnished a direct means of access to the West Bridgewater locality; and they tore down there and either started to take Vanzetti over to Plymouth and for that reason went over the Matfield crossing or went over there with the idea of perhaps disposing of something in the Matfield River ... found it inadvisable to do that which they intended to do, came back over the Matfield crossing and subsequently abandoned their car in the region adjacent to the Coacci house.
Williams claimed he would later show that Mike Boda was seen driving a Buick touring car during the winter of 1920. Reminding the Jurymen of Puffer’s Place, the house they had seen the day before, he gave an unsubstantiated account of the police visiting the shed and finding traces of a hole recently dug in the dirt floor as well as tire marks to the left of the boards on which Boda had kept his Overland.
Although Judge Thayer later excluded references to the shed, and although no evidence was brought forward connecting Coacci, Boda, or Orciani with the South Braintree crime, Williams in his opening nevertheless managed to link them with it by innuendo.
The first witness to take the stand was Boston photographer John Farley, who had photographed the various buildings, places, and objects covered in the case and whose pictures were now offered to the jury as exhibits. Moore objected to the angles at which several of the pictures had been taken and there followed an inconclusive wrangle with the prosecution, to the visible annoyance of Judge Thayer.