Facing the chair

by John Dos Passos

The resolution presented indicates or at least raises a doubt that evidence has been or is being withheld by the Department of Justice relating to the guilt or innocence of these men. This in itself places the Department of Justice into serious question. It adds further doubt as to the guilt or innocence of the men charged and found guilty of crime. Regardless of the character or attitude of mind of these men toward our government or its institutions as a people we are deeply concerned that the power of government, or that of any of its departments shall at no time be used unconstitutionally to jeopardize the life and liberty of any person. And because of the serious charge thus made we recommend reaffirmation of our former demand for a retrial and reference of this resolution to the Executive Council, with directions that it proceed immediately to inquire into the charge made and to have determined the truth or falsity of this charge by Congressional investigation, if that be necessary.

The report of the committee was adopted by unanimous vote.

“The department of Justice in Boston was anxious to get sufficient evidence against Sacco and Vanzetti to deport them but never succeeded in getting the kind and amount of evidence required for that purpose. It was the opinion of the department agents here that a conviction of Sacco and Vanzetti for murder would be one way of disposing of the two men. It was also the general opinion of such of the agents in Boston as had any actual knowledge of the Sacco-Vanzetti case; that Sacco and Vanzetti, although anarchists and agitators, were not highway robbers and had nothing to do with the South Braintree crime. My opinion and the opinion of most of the older men in the government service, has always been that the South Braintree crime was the work of professionals.”

—from the affidavit of Lawrence Letherman, July 8, 1926.

“By calling these men anarchists, I do not mean necessarily that they were inclined to violence, nor do I understand all the different meanings different people would attach to the word ‘anarchists.’ What I mean is I think they did not believe in organized government or in private property. But I am also thoroughly convinced and always have been, and I believe that is the opinion and always has been the opinion of such Boston agents of the Department of Justice as had any knowledge on the subject, that these men had nothing whatever to do with the South Braintree murders, and that their conviction was the result of co-operation between the Boston agents of the Department of Justice and the District Attorney. It was the general opinion of the Boston agents of the Department of Justice having knowledge of the affair that the South Braintree crime was committed by a gang of professional highwaymen.”

—from the affidavit of Fred J. Weyand, Boston, July 1, 1926.

FACING THE CHAIR

The evening of May 5th, 1920, Nicola Sacco, an Italian, working as edger in a shoe factory, and Bartolomeo Vanzetti, also an Italian, a fishpeddler, were arrested in a streetcar in Brockton, Massachusetts. The two men were known as radicals and were active in Italian working class organizations in the vicinity of Boston. In Sacco’s pocket at the time of his arrest was a draft of a handbill calling a meeting to protest against the illegal imprisonment and possible murder of Salsedo by agents of the Department of Justice. Salsedo was the anarchist printer whose body was found smashed on the pavement of Park Row under the windows of the New York offices of the Department of Justice, where he and his friend Elia had been held without warrant for eight weeks of the third degree. Sacco and Vanzetti were armed when arrested and lied when questioned about their friends and associates. It came out later that they had been trying to get the Overland car of a man named Boda out of a garage in order to go about the country to their friends’ houses warning them of a new series of red raids they had been tipped off to expect. At the same time they were collecting radical newspapers and any literature that might seem suspicious to the police. They were arrested, because the garage-owner phoned the police, having been warned to notify them of the movements of any Italians who owned automobiles.

A couple of weeks before, the afternoon of April 15, a peculiarly impudent and brutal crime had been committed in South Braintree, a nearby town, the climax of a long series of holdups and burglaries. Bandits after shooting down a paymaster and his guard in the center of the town had escaped in a Buick touring car with over fifteen thousand dollars in cash. It was generally rumored that the bandits were most of them Italians. The police had made a great fuss but found no clue to the identity of the murderers. Public feeling was bitter and critical. A victim had to be found. To prove the murderers to have been reds would please everybody. So first Vanzetti was taken over to Plymouth and tried as one of the men who had attempted to hold up a paytruck in Bridgewater early in the morning of the previous Christmas Eve. He was convicted and sentenced to fifteen years imprisonment. Plymouth is owned by the largest cordage works in the world. Several years before Vanzetti had been active in a successful strike against the Cordage. Then he was taken to Dedham and tried with Sacco for the murder of the paymaster and his guard killed in South Braintree. After a stormy trial they were convicted of murder in the first degree. Since then sentence has been stayed by a series of motions for a new trial. One appeal to the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts has been refused and another is pending.

The most important evidence that has come up in the course of the motions is the series of affidavits procured by the defense, proving, as the labor press has always claimed, that operatives of the Department of Justice were active in the trial, and lacking evidence on which to deport Sacco and Vanzetti as radicals, helped in the frameup by which they were convicted as murderers.