Facing the chair

by John Dos Passos

This bandit, she said, was fairly thick-set, dark, pale, rather good looking, with clear features. His hair grew away from his temples, and was blown back. She “positively identified” Sacco as the bandit.

Under cross-examination Miss Devlin admitted she had testified in the preliminary hearing that the bandit was tall and well-built, while Sacco is only 5 feet 6 inches tall. She admitted she said then: “I don’t say positively he is the man.”

The Quincy police court record shows she said at the preliminary hearing that she got a better view of the chauffeur’s face than of the other bandit’s. This was manifestly impossible as the car was covered and had a left hand drive. But at the trial she declared that she never said that; and now said that she did not see the chauffeur’s face.

She admitted that Sacco was made to assume postures like that of the bandit for her in Brockton police station.

Answering questions by Prosecutor Harold Williams, Miss Devlin explained she had testified in the lower court that she couldn’t say positively that Sacco was the bandit “because of the immensity of the crime. I felt sure in my own mind, but I hated to say so, out and out.”

In spite of the seemingly impossible detail of the descriptions of these two young women, considering their position and the extreme brevity of the period of observation, in spite of the manner in which doubt at the preliminary hearings changed into certainty in the final trial, they were the strongest witnesses against Sacco.

The third of these witnesses, Louis Pelser, went to pieces on the stand. He was a shoe-cutter in the Rice and Hutchins factory, working on the first floor above the raised basement. Pelser asserted that through the crack of an opened window he saw a man sinking on the pavement, that he opened a window, and that he stood up amid flying bullets and did two things—he wrote down the number of the approaching bandit-automobile and he made a mental note of one bandit who was shooting at the fallen Berardelli. This witness declared that he noticed even the pin in the bandit’s collar.

“I wouldn’t say it was him,” Pelser said, “but Sacco is a dead image of him.”

Then Pelser proceeded to tangle himself up in lie after lie. He admitted he had lied to Robert Reid, defense investigator, “to avoid being a witness,” and that he had told Reid he didn’t see anything because he got scared and ducked under a bench. Next he denied ever discussing the case with any one previous to Reid’s interview with him, but later admitted he had talked with a state detective previous to that time.

Cross examination revealed that Pelser had been out of work for some time after the tragedy, and had been re-employed by Rice and Hutchins two months before the trial. Subsequently he told his foreman he had testimony to give. On the morning of the day Pelser appeared in court, he talked with Prosecutor Williams, was shown Sacco’s picture and was taken to identify him. Fourteen months had elapsed between the crime-date and the day on which Pelser purported to identify Sacco on the witness stand at Dedham.