THE TRIAL
of
SACCO and VANZETTI
A Summary of the Outstanding
Testimony
by
LOUIS BERNHEIMER
“The Truth Shall Make You Free”
FOREWORD
Few murder cases have attracted the anxious attention of the entire civilized world over so long a period of time as the case of Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti at Dedham, Norfolk County, Massachusetts. These men, Italian radicals and aliens, were arrested during the “Red Raids” carried out by the United States Department of Justice in 1920, convicted of murder in connection with a payroll hold-up, and on April 9th, 1927, seven years after their arrest, sentenced to die in the electric chair.
Agitation for the release of Sacco and Vanzetti has taken place in every corner of the earth. Many celebrated men at home and abroad have declared them to be innocent, their defense has fought a heroic fight, while the machinery of the law has steadily brought them closer to death day by day, until there now stands between them and execution in the week of July 10th of this year, one man, Governor Alvin T. Fuller of Massachusetts.
Widespread ignorance on the part of the general public of the actual testimony on which the conviction of Sacco and Vanzetti was secured has made it advisable that a brief summary of the testimony of outstanding importance at the trial should be made.
The summary here offered, is based on the book by Professor Felix Frankfurter, of the Harvard Law School, “The Case of Sacco and Vanzetti,” itself based on the written record of the trial, published by Little, Brown, and Company in association with the Atlantic Monthly Company, Boston, Mass., and available at all bookstores.