Boston a novel
spoils system--retired politicians, ex-district attorneys or city
solicitors--tools of the big corporations, put there as reward for
services. Most of them have spent a life-time protecting public service
and accident insurance companies, upholding laws against labor,
upholding vested privilege in every form. How many of them have been in
your pay, Rupert, before they went on the bench?”
She waited; and then remarked with a smile, “You could count faster if
you wanted to. I know of a judge who was counsel for a great banker
fearing indictment for perjury--and I know that he got that banker
off through a district attorney who was afterwards disbarred for
malfeasance in office.”
Rupert showed a desire to withdraw from this unprofitable discussion;
and his mother-in-law smiled.
“It was only in the most high-minded way, Rupert, I know! Our bankers
name men who have been in their pay, and then it is the fiction that
they forget gratitude! The public is expected to believe that men who
have been truckling and time-serving politicians become spotless and
noble-minded the moment they put on a black silk robe! But you know,
and I know, that you are hoping for the Supreme Judicial Court to hand
you Jerry Walker’s money. And you know that they are killing my two
boys for threatening property rights in New England.”
V
The old evidence was wiped out, but new appeared to take its place and
keep the case alive. First, the defense discovered Mrs. Kelly and Mrs.
Kennedy, the two women who had looked out of a window on the bandit
car, and had a perfect view of the one supposed to be Sacco. They had
made to Fred Katzmann statements to the effect that Sacco was not the
man, and Katzmann had kept this evidence from the defense for five
years. Thompson now demanded the reports, but Katzmann’s successor,
Ranney, was mysteriously unable to find them. This was the time for
Ranney to appear before Thayer and deliver his cynical pronouncement:
“I wonder if Mr. Thompson has not an exaggerated and too ethical notion
of the functions of a district attorney!”
Then the Madeiros confession. Celestino F. Madeiros was a young
Portuguese, member of a gang which had robbed a bank in Wrentham and
killed the cashier. He was in Dedham jail while his appeal was being
heard, and his conscience troubled him, he said, when Sacco’s wife came
to the prison with the baby. On November 18th, 1925, he scribbled on a
piece of paper: “I hear by confess to being in the South Braintree shoe
company crime, and Sacco and Vanzetti was not in said crime.” He handed
the paper to a trusty, who gave it to Nick.
A long investigation began. Madeiros told a detailed story of the South
Braintree crime, but refusing to name any of his associates. However,
a skilled lawyer knows how to get the facts out of a man, and the
job was attributed to a group of freight-car thieves and hold-up men
of Providence, known as the “Morelli gang.” Several of them were in
jail, and their records were traced; Cornelia now studied the career
of such persons as Bibba Barone, Steve the Pole, Gyp the Blood. Also
she listened to more wrangling in the committee, because the anarchists
resisted the efforts to pin the crime on the Morellis or anybody else.
“What for we play polissman for state Massachusetts?”
But Thompson went ahead, and collected a mass of affidavits to be
submitted in a motion for a new trial: which went the usual round, and
served the purpose of keeping Sacco and Vanzetti alive for another
year. Motion filed May, 1926; hearing before Judge Thayer, September;
decision and appeal, October; argument before the Supreme Judicial
Court, February, 1927; decision April, 1927; all very solemn and
very expensive, with ancient legal phrases and complicated rules,
making certain that no layman could be his own lawyer. Bart would
watch the game, and joke with Cornelia; he was glad to be kept alive,
of course--he could speak more words for the cause; but at the same
time he begrudged the money, which might better have been spent for
literature. Bartolomeo Vanzetti, the anarchist wop, had become fond
of William G. Thompson, the blue-blood lawyer, who was a learned and
a great-hearted man. “But he is very naïve,” said Bart, gently; “he
believe in the Supreme Court.”
The prisoner went on to explain. “It must be that way with a lawyer;
he think he have to get his what you call them, precedents, right. He
think if he can show how it was done before, then he has won. It is
like chess--you ever play chess, Nonna?”
“My brother-in-law used to be a champion.”
“Well, you make move, you say ‘check’ and you have won. It is a game.
But this is not a game, this is war. You say ‘check,’ and your enemy
he knock the figures off the board, he throw them in your face.” As
time passed, and the courts did this to the great lawyer, over and over
again, Bart would remind Cornelia, and add, patiently, “I think some
time they foolish Mr. Thompson.”
VI
Then came the confessions of Letherman and Weyand--two agents of the
Department of Justice, whose consciences had begun to trouble them.
They had got out of the secret service now, the war upon the Reds being
less active. They made affidavits, telling of the part which Federal
agents had played in getting the conviction of Sacco and Vanzetti.
They said, in substance, that the Department had felt sure that Sacco
and Vanzetti were not guilty of the South Braintree crime, but that,
since they were dangerous anarchists, it was desired to get them out
of the way. The Department had turned over to the district attorney’s
office a mass of evidence, in return for an agreement on the part of
the district attorney to help the Department get information. There
was much correspondence in the files of the Department in Boston which
would show what had been done.
So the energies of the defense were turned to getting hold of these
files. Thompson made application to the United States Attorney
General, Cal Coolidge’s village lawyer from Vermont; a strong, silent
protégé of a strong, silent statesman--and never more silent than now!
Thompson did not get the files, and neither did anybody else get them.
The attorney-general made no affidavit, and neither did any of his
subordinates, and there was not a squeak from Fred Katzmann or Harold
Williams, now a judge!
The motion for a new trial was argued before Judge Thayer in September
of 1926. A great sight was William G. Thompson that day, for his moral
sense was stirred, and he talked like an old-style prophet. He paid his
regards to Fred Katzmann:
“Just think of what it means, if your Honor please! Think of what it
means!
“Mr. Katzmann knew and knows to-day whether Fred Weyand and Lawrence
Letherman told the truth. That truth is a truth of vital importance.
Think what they say! The files of the Boston office are full of
correspondence with Mr. Katzmann and of documents showing the closest
coöperation between the Federal Agents and the District Attorney--not
Stewart--the District Attorney in the preparation of this case.
Every Federal agent who knew anything about it believed these men
to be innocent of murder. ‘Every one of us believed they ought to be
deported. They were anarchists, they did not believe in organized
government or private property.’
“Oh, how those words will ring around this world, ‘private property’!
Think what is going to be said about it! The man who does not believe
in private property in America may be killed whether he is guilty or
not. That is going to be said from one end of the world to the other if
this thing is allowed to go through. Can we afford it? I do not care
how high an opinion your Honor has of Mr. Katzmann. It may be he was
misled. Far be it from me to make any further or other attack on Mr.
Katzmann than simply what the facts warrant. He has remained silent in
the face of those accusations. Nothing that I can say is more eloquent
than that silence. I desire to say nothing in addition to that silence.”
VII
So much for the district attorney; and then Thompson turned his
attention to the village lawyer from Vermont, the strong, silent
protégé of a strong, silent statesman. Said he:
“And what do you say of the refusal to produce those papers? Take all
the circumstances, sir.... We have got a telegram from New York, but
we cannot get the papers in those Boston files. What inference does
your Honor tell the jury may fairly be drawn against a man if he is an
humble man who is in the possession of relevant evidence and refuses to
produce it? Do you tell them that it is going to help him or that it is
going to hurt him?
“Is there anything so exalted in the office of the Attorney General of
the United States that the inference that you draw against any other
men who hold back documentary evidence should not be drawn in this
case? I am not talking about him personally, of course; I am talking
about him in his official capacity. Personally, I have no doubt he is
an admirable citizen. But there is some reason of strong policy why
those papers are not produced here. What can that reason be? What can
it be? Are you going to say because Sacco and Vanzetti are Italians,
because they are poor folks, because they are aliens, because they
have no constitutional rights we will let Mr. Sargent hold back what
might set them free?”
And then Thompson turned upon Katzmann’s successor, Ranney, who had
argued that the “secrets” of the Department of Justice were sacred and
must be protected! Said Thompson:
“What are these secrets which they admit? They have then admitted
secrets, have they? There are secrets, are there? I thought there were
from the fact that it was not denied or contradicted. And I will say to
your Honor that a government which has come to value its own secrets
more than it does the lives of its citizens has become a tyranny,
whether you call it a republic, a monarchy, or anything else. Secrets!
Secrets! And he says you should abstain from touching this verdict of
your jury because it is so sacred. Would they not have liked to know
something about the secrets? The case is admitted by that inadvertent
concession. There are then secrets to be admitted....
“Mr. Ranney says that I have argued that all these Federal agents
ought to be in jail. I was not so bold as to make that suggestion, if
your Honor please. All I ventured to call your Honor’s attention to
was the fact that one of them already was in jail, namely, our friend,
Shaughnessey, sentenced for twelve years for highway robbery, a man
who was then investigating Sacco and Vanzetti, and going around with a
badge of the United States on him as his authority so to do. I do not
suggest what ought to be done to these agents. I do say, as a citizen,
that it is a shame that Weiss, a man capable of making the suggestions
that he made, and doing the things that he did in this case, should
still be wearing the uniform of the United States and boldly operating
around this town, and not even taking the trouble to come in here and
deny these charges.”
VIII
All that got under “Web” Thayer’s skin most frightfully; you had only
to watch his gray withered face and trembling hands while he listened.
It made him so furious that he took only five weeks to write his
decision--instead of the year he had been requiring hitherto! There
were persons who believed that the reason for the Sacco-Vanzetti
conviction had been ill-mannered I.W.W. lawyers from the wild and
woolly west; but here was a respectable lawyer, one of the leaders
of the Boston bar; and here was “Web” raging at him, with elaborate
and complicated sneers such as “Web” loved, and which exhibited his
learning, not merely in the legal field, but in the medical. Said “Web”: