Sacco was interrupted by a wrangle between Moore and Judge Thayer when Moore tried to bring in the details of the April 25 meeting at the Naturalization Club, “to lay a foundation for the explanation of the subsequent acts of the defendants.” Thayer ruled that the subsequent acts must be proved before any explanation could be offered, and the two debated noisily. When Sacco was finally allowed to continue, he told how on May 4 he had gone to Boston for the last time to pick up his passport. He had then taken the elevated to Hyde Park to see Orciani. The two met on River Street, went to Orciani’s house for the motorcycle, and then drove to Sacco’s home.
Sacco was more explicit than Vanzetti about why they had gone to West Bridgewater the following evening. “We decided in the meeting in Boston to get those books and papers,” he told the court, “because in New York there was somebody said they were trying to arrest all the socialists and the radicals and we were afraid to get all the people arrested, so we were advised by some friends and we find out and Vanzetti take the responsibility to go over to the friends to get the books out and get no trouble. The literature, I mean, the socialist literature.”
The dark cap that had been picked up near Berardelli’s body was produced and Sacco tried it on. He said it was too small—and so it seemed in the courtroom sketches made by the Post cartoonist, Norman (W. Norman Ritchie). With regard to the Colt taken from him at the Brockton police station, he explained that his wife had found it in a bureau drawer along with some bullets while she was cleaning up, and asked him what he was going to do with it. “I said, ‘Well, I go to shoot in the woods, me and Vanzetti.’ So I did. I took it in my pocket. I put the revolver over here and the bullets in my pocket, in my pocket back. Well, we started to talk in the afternoon, me and Vanzetti, and half past four Orciani and Boda came over to the house, so we started an argument and I forgot about to go in the woods shooting, so it was still left in my pocket.” The bullets he had bought on Hanover Street in 1917 or 1918.
His story of the trip to West Bridgewater and the subsequent arrest and questioning did not differ greatly from Vanzetti’s, although Sacco told in more detail of the identification witnesses coming to the Brockton station. In the conclusion of his direct examination he maintained that he had not been in South Braintree on April 15, 1920, and that he had never made an attack on anyone or participated in any crime, then or at any other date.
“Did you say you love a free country?” was Katzmann’s first rapier question. And when Sacco answered yes, the district attorney thrust again. “Did you love this country in the month of May 1917?” “I do not say,” Sacco told him, “I don’t want to say I did not love this country.” The other insisted. “Did you love this country in the month of May 1917?” “If you can, Mr. Katzmann, if you give me that—I could explain—” The district attorney had the Italian in the corner. “Do you understand that question? Then you will please answer it.” “I can’t answer it in one word,” Sacco insisted.
Katzmann’s voice was crusty with disbelief. “You can’t say whether you loved the United States of America one week before the day to enlist for the first draft?” “I can’t say in one word, Mr. Katzmann,” Sacco replied.
“Did you,” the district attorney finally asked him, “go away to Mexico to avoid being a soldier for this country that you loved?”
Sacco breathed deeply before he said “Yes.”
“And is that your idea of showing your love for this country?”
The other hesitated. He knew what he wanted to say but there was no way for him to say it, no means to surmount the barrier of this alien tongue. “Is that your idea of showing your love for America?” the contemptuous voice persisted. “Yes,” Sacco said, and again he found himself saying what he had not meant, what he did not want to say, to the courtly, smiling district attorney.