A lengthy dispute ensued, Katzmann defending his cross-examination as “tending to attack the credibility of this man as a witness.” Over Moore’s loudly voiced objections Judge Thayer decided to let the district attorney question Sacco further as to what he meant by loving a free country.
Frank Sibley, writing with the afternoon deadline only a few minutes away, pricked up his ears at the “interest of the United States.” He could scarcely believe it when he heard the judge’s caustic voice ask about preventing crimes from being committed “by the authorities.” Before he had a chance to think twice, the telegraph boy had taken away the yellow sheet of paper with the phrase on it. The phrase appeared in the evening Globe. When Sibley wrote his more extended story for the next morning’s edition he omitted it. “I couldn’t credit my remembrance, and so did not use the vicious sentence,” he wrote Attorney General J. Weston Allen a few months later. His colleague Shea of the Post had also picked up the remark and used it.
The next day Judge Thayer summoned Sibley to his chambers and angrily insisted that he said no such thing. Sibley, having consulted with Shea, refused to back down even when shown that the transcript of the court stenographic notes did not contain the phrase. Just then a bailiff appeared to announce the arrival of the jury, and Thayer huffily broke off the conversation.
As the cross-examination continued, Sacco found himself caught in a web of words of which he could see each strand as it formed, from which he knew he could break out if only they would let him. But always it was the yes or no answer demanded, always the cutting-off of his explanation, that made it seem as if he had come back from Mexico merely to eat better food and to make more money and to be with his wife and speak a more familiar language. “Food, wife, language, industry—that is love of country, is it?” Katzmann asked him, and he found himself answering yes. The rules, the thin threads of questions twisted about him, smothering his replies. He could feel the anger of frustration pulsing through him at the reiterations. Deftly the district attorney led him into the trap.
“What did you mean when you said yesterday you loved a free country?”
“First thing I came to this country—”
“No, pardon me. What did you mean when you said yesterday you loved a free country?”
“Give me a chance to explain.”
“I am asking you to explain now.”
Suddenly Sacco felt himself clear of the web, standing free at last with his own thoughts. The frustrations of his arrest and imprisonment, the long months in jail, the legal niceties that had sealed his mouth in the courtroom, now found violent relief in a cascade of words. As he talked on, his wiry body seemed to grow tense and his eyes snapped fire. At first some of the jurors smiled, but before he had finished everyone in the courtroom was listening intently.