Facing the chair

by John Dos Passos

In weighing the testimony against Vanzetti, it should be borne in mind that the prosecution admitted it had no evidence that Vanzetti took any part in the shooting. He was never given a preliminary examination on the South Braintree crime and did not know on what ground he would be linked with that crime until he heard it at the trial.

The prosecution sought to connect him with the murder by producing one witness—solitary, uncorroborated and conceded by the prosecution to be “mistaken” in one part of his observations—who claimed fourteen months after the event, to “identify” Vanzetti as among the bandits; two detached witnesses who claimed to have seen him on the morning of the crime in or near Braintree; one other who claims to have seen him in the bandit-car some miles distant after the crime; one witness who claimed to have seen him in a trolley car in another town on the evening before or following the crime, and by an attempt to show that a revolver found in Vanzetti’s possession belonged to Berardelli, one of the men murdered, but this fizzled completely.

The defense countered by introducing impeaching evidence of all the so-called “identifications” and by bringing strong alibi witnesses.

Of the score of witnesses for both sides who described some portion of the murder scene, 35 claimed to have gotten a sufficiently good view to describe the face of one or more of the bandits. The only one of these who identified Vanzetti was Michael Levangie, gate tender for the N. Y., N. H. & H. railroad at South Braintree. This man was in his shanty on the west side of the tracks when the shooting occurred. He had lowered the gates for an oncoming train; then he saw an automobile coming from the east.

In that car sitting beside the driver, Levangie said, a man waved a revolver at him, motioning him to raise the gates, and the car sped across. The man with the pistol snapped the trigger at the gateman as the automobile passed. Levangie declared the driver was dark complexioned, with black hair, heavy brown moustache, cheek-bones sticking out, slouch hat, army coat. He identified the driver as Vanzetti.

The District Attorney in his closing argument admitted that Vanzetti could not have been at the wheel, as the testimony was overwhelming that the driver was a light, consumptive looking man. The defense brought four witnesses who absolutely impeached Levangie’s assertions in toto:

Henry McCarthy, fireman on the New Haven, talked with Levangie a few minutes after the shooting. Levangie told him he didn’t get a look at the bandits, and was so scared he ran for cover. McCarthy volunteered to testify for the defense after reading Levangie’s assertions in the newspapers.

Edward Carter, shoe-worker for Slater and Morrill, testified that Levangie told him at 4:15 P. M. that day, the driver was light-complexioned.

Alexander Victorson, a freight clerk at South Braintree, heard Levangie say immediately after the shooting, “it would be hard to identify those men.”

John L. Sullivan, gate tender who takes shifts with Levangie, was told by Levangie, about two weeks before the trial that he had been interviewed by J. J. McAnarney, counsel for the defense, and that he had told him he was unable to identify anyone. Under cross-examination, Levangie first acknowledged that he remembered this interview. Later he declared, “I don’t remember anything about it,” and denied having ever told anyone that he was unable to identify the bandits. Asked if he had ever described the driver as a “light-complexioned, Swedish or Norwegian type of person,” he answered, “No, sir.”