Boston a novel
thousand dollars--from Russia or any other place--everything could be
settled amicably. Vanzetti--since he was admitted to be innocent--would
be pardoned; while Sacco--who might possibly be guilty--would be judged
insane, and held until the excitement had died down!
VI
It was a war going on for the possession of public opinion; a day
and night campaign, with forays and sallies, rumors and alarms,
plots and counter-plots. The big guns thundered from the rear, and
independent sharp-shooters crept forth to do sniping. “Hundred percent
American” and “Pro Bono Publico” wrote letters to the _Transcript_,
and the defense committee changed its “Bulletin” from a monthly to
a fortnightly, and filled many columns with letters from friends of
social justice all over the world.
Prof. Felix Frankfurter, one of the liberals of the Harvard Law
School, published an article in the _Atlantic Monthly_, the Back Bay’s
palladium of culture, reviewing the case and exposing the manifold
errors of Judge Thayer. To Boston conservatism that was a frightful
scandal, and something had to be done at once. A champion was found, a
tremendous personage by the name of Wigmore, with so many titles and
honors that it took two and seven-eighths inches in “Who’s Who” to
recite them: a graduate of Harvard and of the Harvard Law School, Past
President of the American Institute of Criminal Law and Criminology,
Past President of the American Association of University Professors,
Commanding Member of the Staff of the Judge Advocate-General of the
United States Army with the rank of Major, Member of the United States
Section of the Inter-American High Commission, Chevalier of the Legion
of Honor of France, Member of the League of Nations Committee on
Intellectual Coöperation, and Dean of the Law School of Northwestern
University--a Methodist institution lifted to worldly magnificence by
Judge Gary of the Steel Trust.
This two hundred and forty centimeter gun went into action from its
emplacement a thousand miles away. Dean Wigmore wrote a broadside,
starting with two columns on the front page of the _Transcript_, and
expanding into seven half-columns on the next page. He gave Felix
Frankfurter one of those wiggings which professors exist to receive
and deans exist to administer. With annihilating wit he referred
to him, all through the two columns and the seven half-columns, as
“the plausible pundit”; he accused him of having made “errors and
misstatements which if discovered in a brief of counsel submitted in a
case would qualify him for proceedings for disbarment.”
Alas for poor Dean Bigwig! He had got his citations from Thayer,
or from some friend of Thayer’s; and never could it have entered
his bewigged head that a judge of the Superior Court of the august
Commonwealth of Massachusetts would practice the device of falsifying
a legal record, quoting statements incorrectly, and even making up
passages which he said were in the record, but which were not in the
record! If such procedures “would qualify a lawyer for proceedings
for disbarment,” what would they do to a judge of the Superior Court?
Apparently they would qualify him for the enthusiastic support of all
the courts and most of the newspapers of his Commonwealth, as well as
of the Dean of the Law School of the University of Judge Gary. They
would qualify him a few months later to have the banqueting alumni of
Dartmouth College stand up and cheer themselves hoarse for a five full
minutes by the watches of newspaper reporters.
Defending himself in his last decision, Judge Thayer had boasted that
the Supreme Judicial Court had “approved” the verdict of the Dedham
jury. Felix Frankfurter had pointed out that this was not true. All
that the higher court could do was to “affirm” the verdict, which in
the technical language of lawyers is an entirely different matter. The
dean now elaborately denied that Thayer had used the word “approved,”
and he accused Frankfurter of libeling Thayer. “It is a libel on the
worthy trial judge, in that it charges him with knowing falsity in an
official statement.”
Touching indeed the faith of poor Dean Wigmore in his “worthy trial
judge” a thousand miles away! Had this “worthy trial judge” failed to
furnish him with the full text of the decision? Or had the dean been
in such a hurry to burst into the _Transcript_ that he hadn’t stopped
to examine the document for himself? All that Felix Frankfurter had
to do in his reply was to refer the worthy dean to the sentence in
Judge Thayer’s opinion, as printed in the Amended Bill of Exceptions
over Judge Thayer’s signature, attested by the Clerk for the Superior
Court of Norfolk County, pages 366 and 367, where the word “approved”
was plainly to be read. So there was Dean Wigless, in the distressing
position of having furnished the rope to hang his friend, Judge Thayer,
for “knowing falsity in an official statement”!
And then the questions and answers about Sacco’s dialogue with
Katzmann, which Judge Thayer had invented and inserted into his
decision! The dean had accepted this bogus passage, and put it into
his letter to the _Transcript_, and the _Transcript_ had solemnly
published it. Now, said Frankfurter, “a careful search of the record of
Sacco’s cross-examination discloses no such questions and answers as
Dean Wigmore quotes. Will he not be good enough to give me a reference
to the page of the record?” Needless to say, Dean Baldhead would not
be that good! He would fail to mention the matter again; and the Back
Bay’s hatred of Felix Frankfurter, Viennese Jew, became so intense that
they started a tale of his having been hired by the defense to write
the _Atlantic Monthly_ article; they raised his price several thousand
dollars a day, until they had got it up to the colossal sum of one
hundred and forty thousand dollars! Such was opinion in that part of
Boston which Vanzetti described as “the golden rabble.”
VII
Rumors! Rumors! The State House was converted from a bootleggers’
joint to a poison gas factory. Every day new witnesses went to see
the Governor, and there was a new crop of stories as to what they had
told him, and what he had asked them. The Governor wants to know why
Vanzetti didn’t take the stand at the Plymouth trial! The Governor
has heard that Mrs. Brini got all the Plymouth witnesses together in
her home and told them what to say! The Governor has learned that the
_Springfield Republican_ got twenty thousand dollars from the defense
committee for its editorial on the case! And all these rumors were not
rumors, they were for practical purposes the truth; the Governor heard
them, and the Governor believed them. Surrounded as he was by men who
took bribes, how could he conceive that anybody would work for nothing?
Some one was causing state detectives to follow the witnesses for the
defense, and these detectives would come back with notebooks full of
formulas for the poison-gas factory under the golden dome.
Sometime previously the defense had got hold of the reports of
the Pinkerton detectives on the South Braintree crime. An amazing
revelation to Cornelia and Betty and Joe: those voices which had been
shouting to them in the days before the trial, when they had been
seeking witnesses, and failing to find them! The ghosts which had
shrieked in Dedham courtroom, unheard by mortal ear! The secrets which
had been in the head of Henry Hellyer on the witness-stand--the very
notes he had held in his hand! Now Cornelia and Betty and Joe might
go with this “Operative H.H.,” immediately after the South Braintree
crime, to interview Mary Splaine, the star identification witness; that
marvelous-eyed young woman who had looked out of a factory window in
the midst of shooting, and at a distance of eighty feet, in a period of
one or two seconds, had noted the minutest physical details of Sacco,
including a “good-sized left hand,” which he assuredly never had, and
“complexion of a peculiar greenish-white,” which he had after being
kept in Dedham jail for a year, but never while he was growing tomatoes
in Mr. Kelley’s garden!
Here in these reports you saw Mary Splaine in the company of Henry
Hellyer, Mike Stewart and Captain Proctor, inspecting the photographs
of criminals, and making a positive identification of Antonio
Parmisano, or “Tony the Wop,” as the bandit who had played the part
which was later attributed to Sacco. Captain Proctor set out to get
“Tony the Wop,” and discovered that he had been in jail on the day of
the crime--the one really safe place for wops in Massachusetts! And
meantime Mary had told to “H.H.” a detailed and circumstantial tale
about two men in the shoe-factory who had plotted and committed the
crime; she gave the names of the men, and recited a story which covered
the affairs of the shoe-factory for some eighteen years. Six days after
the arrest of Sacco and Vanzetti, the detective was entering his report
as follows:
“As opportunities occurred I made discreet inquiries about Mr. X,
who Miss Splaine accused of having been implicated in the murder
and robbery. My inquiries show that there is absolutely no ground
for Miss Splaine’s accusation and that Mr. X enjoys Mr. Slater’s
confidence.” (Mr. Slater was the owner.) “To-day I took the matter
up with Mr. Frayer” (the superintendent). “He ridiculed the idea of
Mr. X being implicated and further states that no serious attention
must be attached to Mary Splaine’s stories, because she is one of
the most irresponsible persons he ever came in contact with.”
And then, a little glimpse into the soul of an “operative,”
representing a great national detective agency and looking for bandits.
He knows that the police have got Sacco and Vanzetti and are planning
to put the crime onto them; and he reports how he questioned a laborer
who was digging a trench, close to the scene of the crime. He reports
this laborer as having had a very good chance to get a good look, and
adds, “Some one who can speak Italian ought to interview this man, as
if he went on the stand to-day he would say that Sacco and Vanzetti
were not the men.”
VIII
Witness after witness went to interview Governor Fuller and returned to
defense headquarters, reporting that the supersalesman had got his mind
centered on the Bridgewater crime. So Mr. Thompson did some inquiring
and pulled some wires, and managed to get from the lawyer of the shoe
company the reports on that earlier crime, made by the same “Operative
H.H.,” and another man, “J.J.H.” Here again the evidence wiped out
practically everything the government had proved. On the day of the
crime all four of the leading witnesses had described both the car and
the bandits differently from the way they later described them at the
trial.
These Bridgewater reports seemed of especial importance, because they
destroyed the witness “Skip” Harding, who saw the Bridgewater crime,
and at the trial identified Vanzetti as the shotgun bandit. Here in
the Pinkerton reports was “Skip,” talking with the police a few hours
after the crime, and that certainty which he had displayed upon the
witness-stand was wholly lacking. “I did not get much of a look at his
face, but think he was a Pole,” he said; and eight or nine days later
he again referred to the faces of the bandits, saying that he “did
not see them on the day of the hold-up.” The car he described as a
“black Hudson six,” and gave the registration number; as an automobile
mechanic, he knew cars. The police decided to prove that it was a
Buick. When Harding testified at the trial, he testified that it was a
Buick.
Every one of the other principal witnesses was discredited in the same
way. The witness Bowles, for example, had described the shotgun bandit
as having “red cheeks,” “slim face,” and “a closely cropped mustache,”