View source for Sacco and Vanzetti

{{short description|Italian American anarchist duo executed by Massachusetts}}
{{other uses|Sacco and Vanzetti (disambiguation)}}
{{Use American English|date = August 2019}}
{{Use mdy dates|date=January 2020}}
[[File:sacvan.jpg|thumb|upright=1.2|Anarchist trial defendants Bartolomeo Vanzetti (left) and Nicola Sacco (right)]]
{{Anarchism US|history}}
'''Nicola Sacco''' ({{IPA|it|niˈkɔːla ˈsakko|lang}}; April 22, 1891 – August 23, 1927) and '''Bartolomeo Vanzetti''' ({{IPA|it|bartoloˈmɛːo vanˈtsetti, -ˈdzet-|lang}}; June 11, 1888 – August 23, 1927) were [[Italian diaspora|Italian immigrants]] and [[Anarchism in Italy|anarchists]], controversially accused of murdering Alessandro Berardelli and Frederick Parmenter, a guard and a paymaster, during the April 15, 1920, [[Robbery|armed robbery]] of the Slater and Morrill Shoe Company in [[Braintree, Massachusetts]], United States. Seven years later, they were executed in the [[electric chair]] at [[Charlestown State Prison]]. Some historians consider their conviction unfair due to [[prejudice]] against immigrants and radicals.

After a few hours' deliberation on July 14, 1921, the jury convicted Sacco and Vanzetti of [[first-degree murder]] and they were [[Capital punishment in Massachusetts|sentenced to death]] by the trial judge. [[Anti-Italianism]], [[anti-immigrant]], and anti-anarchist bias were suspected by some as having influenced the verdict. A series of appeals followed, funded largely by the private Sacco and Vanzetti Defense Committee. The appeals were based on recanted testimony, conflicting ballistics evidence, a prejudicial pretrial statement by the jury foreman, and a confession by an alleged participant in the robbery. All appeals were denied by trial judge [[Webster Thayer]] and also later denied by the [[Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court]]. By 1926, the case had drawn worldwide attention. As details of the trial and the men's suspected innocence became known, Sacco and Vanzetti became the center of one of the largest [[cause célèbre|causes célèbres]] in modern history. In 1927, protests on their behalf were held in every major city in North America and Europe, as well as in [[Tokyo]], [[Sydney]], [[Melbourne]], [[São Paulo]], [[Rio de Janeiro]], [[Buenos Aires]], [[Dubai]], [[Montevideo]], [[Johannesburg]], [[Mexico City]] and [[Auckland]].<ref name="Manhã 1927">Jornal Folha da Manhã, segunda-feira, 22 de agosto de 1927. {{ISBN|9781575888057|}}</ref><ref>{{cite web | title=MEXICAN REDS PROTEST ON SACCO AND VANZETTI; Demonstrate in Front of Our Consulate, Crying 'Down with Americans.' (Published 1926) | website=[[The New York Times]] | date=June 22, 1926 | url=https://www.nytimes.com/1926/06/22/archives/mexican-reds-protest-on-sacco-and-vanzetti-demonstrate-in-front-of.html }}</ref>

Celebrated writers, artists, and academics pleaded for their pardon or for a new trial. Harvard law professor and future Supreme Court justice [[Felix Frankfurter]] argued for their innocence in a widely read ''[[The Atlantic|Atlantic Monthly]]'' article that was later published in book form.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Frankfurter |first1=Felix |title=The Case of Sacco and Vanzetti : A Critical Analysis for Lawyers and Laymen |date=1927 |publisher=Little, Brown and Company |location=Boston}}</ref> Even the Italian [[Fascism|fascist]] dictator [[Benito Mussolini]] was convinced of their innocence and attempted to pressure American authorities to have them released.<ref>{{Cite book|last1=Cannistraro|first1=Philip V.|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=x6f4nAAACAAJ|title=Mussolini e il caso Sacco-Vanzetti|last2=Tibaldo|first2=Lorenzo|date=2017|publisher=Claudiana|isbn=9788868981204|language=it}}</ref><ref>{{Cite journal|last=Cannistraro|first=Philip V.|date=1996|title=Mussolini, Sacco-Vanzetti, and the Anarchists: The Transatlantic Context|url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/2124332|journal=[[The Journal of Modern History]]|volume=68|issue=1|pages=31–62|doi=10.1086/245285|jstor=2124332|s2cid=143847291|issn=0022-2801|url-access=subscription|archive-date=January 29, 2017|access-date=January 20, 2022|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170129083931/https://www.jstor.org/stable/2124332|url-status=live}}</ref> The two were scheduled to be executed in April 1927, accelerating the outcry. Responding to a massive influx of [[telegraphy|telegrams]] urging their pardon, Massachusetts governor [[Alvan T. Fuller]] appointed a three-man commission to investigate the case. After weeks of secret deliberation that included interviews with the judge, lawyers, and several witnesses, the commission upheld the verdict. Sacco and Vanzetti were executed in the electric chair just after midnight on August 23, 1927.<ref name="nytexecution"/>

Investigations in the aftermath of the executions continued throughout the 1930s and 1940s. The publication of the men's letters, containing eloquent professions of innocence, intensified the public's belief in their [[wrongful execution]]. A ballistic test performed in 1961 suggested that the pistol found on Sacco was used to commit the murders,<ref name="Russell 110">{{cite journal|title=Sacco Guilty, Vanzetti Innocent?|first=Francis|last=Russell|journal=American Heritage|volume=13|issue=4|date=June 1962|page=110|quote=Making independent examinations, Jury and Weller both concluded that 'the bullet marked III was fired in Sacco's pistol and in no other.'}}</ref> though later commentators have questioned its reliability and conclusiveness, given questions about the chain of custody and possible manipulation of evidence.<ref>{{cite web |url= https://www.nybooks.com/articles/1982/02/04/the-sacco-vanzetti-case-2/ |title= The Sacco-Vanzetti Case |author1= Francis Russell |author2= David E. Kaiser |date= 4 February 1982 |website= [[The New York Review of Books]] |access-date= August 23, 2025 |archive-date= April 24, 2025 |archive-url= https://web.archive.org/web/20250424072311/https://www.nybooks.com/articles/1982/02/04/the-sacco-vanzetti-case-2/ |url-status= live }}</ref> On August 23, 1977—the 50th anniversary of the executions—Massachusetts Governor [[Michael Dukakis]] issued a proclamation that Sacco and Vanzetti had been unfairly tried and convicted and that "any disgrace should be forever removed from their names". The proclamation however, did not include a pardon.<ref>{{cite web|url=https://todayinclh.com/?event=massachusetts-governor-dukakis-declares-sacco-and-vanzetti-day|title=- Massachusetts Governor Dukakis Declares Sacco and Vanzetti Day|website=Today in Civil Liberties History|date=August 27, 2013|publisher=Sam Walker, Professor Emeritus of Criminal Justice at the University of Nebraska at Omaha|access-date=11 December 2024|archive-date=January 20, 2025|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20250120131839/https://todayinclh.com/?event=massachusetts-governor-dukakis-declares-sacco-and-vanzetti-day|url-status=live}}</ref> 

==Background==
[[File:Sacco e Vanzetti.PNG|thumb|left|Sacco and Vanzetti]]
Sacco was a shoemaker and a night watchman,<ref>{{cite book|author1=Michael A. Musmano|title=The Sacco-Vanzetti Case: A Miscarriage of Justice|date=January 1961|publisher=American Bar Association|pages=29, 30|volume=47|issue=1|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=0L78-cCVnDkC&pg=PA29|access-date=October 3, 2015}}</ref> born April 22, 1891, in [[Torremaggiore]], [[Province of Foggia]], [[Apulia]] region (in [[Italian language|Italian]]: ''Puglia''), [[Kingdom of Italy|Italy]], who migrated to the United States at the age of seventeen.<ref>''The New York Times'', March 5, 1922</ref> Before immigrating, according to a letter he sent while imprisoned, Sacco worked on his father's vineyard, often sleeping out in the field at night to prevent animals from destroying the crops.<ref>Groff, B. (2019) Analysis: Selected prison letters of Nicola Sacco. Salem Press Encyclopedia.</ref> Vanzetti was a [[fishmonger]] born June 11, 1888, in [[Villafalletto]], [[Province of Cuneo]], [[Piedmont]] region. Both left Italy for the US in 1908,<ref>{{Cite book|
url=https://books.google.com/books?id=lm0SCspDOjQC |pages=13, 31 |title=Sacco and Vanzetti: The Anarchist Background |first= Paul |last= Avrich |publisher= [[Princeton University Press]] |year= 1996 |isbn= 9780691026046}}</ref> although they did not meet until a 1917 strike.<ref name="truTV Legacy of">{{cite web| url = http://www.trutv.com/library/crime/notorious_murders/not_guilty/sacco/6.html| title = The Legacy of Sacco & Vanzetti| first = Russell| last = Aiuto| publisher = [[truTV]]| access-date = July 9, 2010| archive-date = November 16, 2018| archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20181116081929/https://www.trutv.com/library/crime/notorious_murders/not_guilty/sacco/6.html| url-status = live}}</ref>

The men were believed to be followers of [[Luigi Galleani]], an Italian anarchist who advocated revolutionary violence, including bombing and assassination. Galleani published ''[[Cronaca Sovversiva]]'' (''Subversive Chronicle''), a periodical that advocated violent revolution, and a bomb-making manual called ''[[La Salute è in voi!]]'' (''Salvation Is within You!''). At the time, immigrant [[Italian anarchists]]—in particular the [[Galleanist]] group—ranked at the top of the United States government's list of dangerous enemies.<ref>Avrich, Paul, ''Sacco and Vanzetti: The Anarchist Background'', Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press, {{ISBN|9780691026046}} (1996), p. 134</ref> Since 1914, the Galleanists had been identified as suspects in several violent bombings and assassination attempts, including an attempted mass poisoning.<ref>''The New York Times'': [https://www.nytimes.com/1916/02/14/archives/chicago-anarchists-held-in-poison-plot-two-friends-of-missing-cook.html "Chicago Anarchists Held in Poison Plot", February 14, 1916] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180726172043/https://www.nytimes.com/1916/02/14/archives/chicago-anarchists-held-in-poison-plot-two-friends-of-missing-cook.html |date=July 26, 2018 }}, accessed July 12, 2010</ref><ref>Avrich, Paul, ''Sacco and Vanzetti: The Anarchist Background'', Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press, {{ISBN|9780691026046}} (1996), p. 98</ref><ref>Anonimi Compagni (Anonymous Fellow Anarchists), ''Un Trentennio di Attività Anarchica, 1914–1945'', Edizioni L'Antistato, Cesena (1953) (reprinted 2002), pp. 195–197</ref> Publication of ''Cronaca Sovversiva'' was suppressed in July 1918, and the government deported Galleani and eight of his closest associates on June 24, 1919.<ref name="writing.upenn.edu">{{cite web|url=http://www.writing.upenn.edu/~afilreis/88/sacvan.html|title=The Sacco-Vanzetti Case (overview)|website=Upenn.edu|access-date=September 15, 2008|archive-date=April 21, 2020|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200421163918/http://www.writing.upenn.edu/~afilreis/88/sacvan.html|url-status=live}}</ref>

Other Galleanists remained active for three years, 60 of whom waged an intermittent campaign of violence against US politicians, judges, and other federal and local officials, especially those who had supported deportation of alien radicals. Among the dozen or more violent acts was the bombing of [[United States Attorney General|Attorney General]] [[A. Mitchell Palmer]]'s home on June 2, 1919. In that incident, Carlo Valdinocci, a former editor of ''Cronaca Sovversiva'', was killed when the bomb intended for Palmer exploded in the editor's hands. Radical pamphlets entitled "Plain Words" signed "The Anarchist Fighters" were found at the scene of this and several other midnight bombings that night.<ref name="writing.upenn.edu"/>

Several Galleanist associates were suspected or interrogated about their roles in the bombing incidents. Two days before Sacco and Vanzetti were arrested, a Galleanist named [[Andrea Salsedo]] fell to his death from the US [[United States Department of Justice|Justice Department]]'s [[Bureau of Investigation]] (BOI) offices on the 14th floor of [[Park Row Building|15 Park Row]] in New York City.<ref name="charles"/> Salsedo had worked in the Canzani Printshop in [[Brooklyn]], to where federal agents traced the "Plain Words" leaflet.<ref name="charles">McCormick, Charles H., ''Hopeless Cases, The Hunt For The Red Scare Terrorist Bombers'', Lanham, Maryland: University Press of America, pp. 60–61. Quote: "Elia claims to have been soundly asleep when Salsedo allegedly climbed out the window a few feet away from him, then silently jumped into eternity. Nor did he hear the agents running into his room to find out what had happened; he was snoring loudly when they entered."</ref>

Roberto Elia, a fellow New York printer and admitted anarchist,<ref>Tejada, Susan, ''In Search of Sacco and Vanzetti: Double Lives, Troubled Times, and the Massachusetts Murder Case that Shook the World'', Boston: Northeastern University Press, 2012; {{ISBN|9781555537302}}, p. 117</ref> was later deposed in the inquiry, and testified that Salsedo had committed suicide for fear of betraying the others. He portrayed himself as the 'strong' one who had resisted the police.<ref>David Felix, ''Protest: Sacco-Vanzetti and the Intellectuals'', Bloomington: Indiana University Press (1965), pp. 75–76, 80</ref> According to anarchist writer [[Carlo Tresca]], Elia changed his story later, stating that Federal agents had thrown Salsedo out the window.<ref>McCormick, ''Hopeless Cases'', p. 60</ref><!-- for more on setting back the Bureau: <ref name="McCormick2005">{{cite book|last=McCormick|first=Charles Howard|title=Hopeless Cases: The Hunt for the Red Scare Terrorist Bombers|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Vcvhrdr6drgC&pg=PA60|year=2005|publisher=[[University Press of America]]|isbn=9780761831327|pages=60–}}</ref>-->

===Hold-Up Robbery===
[[File:Vanzetti's revolver.jpg|thumb|Vanzetti's .38 Harrington & Richardson top break revolver]]
[[File:Sacco Pistol.jpg|thumb|Sacco .32 Colt Model 1903 automatic pistol]]

[[File:Savage 1907 (6825677636).jpg|thumb|175px|right|.32 Savage Model 1907 semi-automatic pistol]]
The Slater-Morrill Shoe Company factory was located on Pearl Street in [[Braintree, Massachusetts]]. On April 15, 1920, two men were robbed and killed while transporting the company's payroll in two large steel boxes to the main factory. One of them, Alessandro Berardelli<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:KZNR-DNQ|title=FamilySearch|website=[[FamilySearch]]|access-date=February 16, 2021|archive-date=March 5, 2016|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160305004403/https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:KZNR-DNQ|url-status=live}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web|url=https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:MX1Y-BH9|title=FamilySearch|website=[[FamilySearch]]|access-date=February 16, 2021|archive-date=March 8, 2016|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160308235152/https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:MX1Y-BH9|url-status=live}}</ref>—a security guard—was shot four times<ref name="auto">{{Cite web|url=https://www.mass.gov/info-details/sacco-vanzetti-investigation-and-arrest|title=Sacco & Vanzetti: Investigation and arrest|website=Mass.gov|access-date=February 16, 2021|archive-date=March 30, 2020|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200330190041/https://www.mass.gov/info-details/sacco-vanzetti-investigation-and-arrest|url-status=live}}</ref> as he reached for his hip-holstered .38-caliber, [[H&R Firearms|Harrington & Richardson]] revolver; his gun was not recovered from the scene. The other man, Frederick Parmenter—a paymaster who was unarmed—was shot twice:<ref name="auto"/> once in the chest and a second time, fatally, in the back as he attempted to flee.<ref name="Reed">{{Cite journal |last1=Reed |first1=Barry C. |title=The Sacco-Vanzetti Case: The Trial of the Century |journal=American Bar Association Journal |volume=46 |issue=8 |pages=867–869 |date=1960 |issn=0002-7596 |jstor=25721262  }}</ref> The robbers seized the payroll boxes and escaped in a stolen dark blue [[Buick]] that was carrying several other men.<ref>{{cite web|last1=Frankfurter|first1=Felix|title=The Case of Sacco and Vanzetti|url=https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1927/03/the-case-of-sacco-and-vanzetti/306625/|website=The Atlantic|publisher=The Atlantic Monthly Group|access-date=October 2, 2015|date=March 1927|archive-date=May 27, 2020|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200527154655/https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1927/03/the-case-of-sacco-and-vanzetti/306625/|url-status=live}}</ref>

As the car was being driven away by Michael Codispoti, the robbers fired wildly at company workers nearby.{{r|Reed}} A coroner's report and subsequent ballistic investigation revealed that six bullets removed from the murdered men's bodies were of [[.32 ACP|.32 automatic (ACP) caliber]]. Five of these .32-caliber bullets were all fired from a single semi-automatic pistol, a .32-caliber [[Savage Model 1907]], which used a particularly narrow-grooved barrel rifling with a right-hand twist.{{r|Reed}}<ref>Watson, Bruce, ''Sacco and Vanzetti: The Men, the Murders, and the Judgment of Mankind'', p. 127</ref> Two of the bullets were recovered from Berardelli's body.<ref name="AND">Anderson, Terence, Schum, David A., and Twining, William L., ''Analysis of Evidence'', 2nd ed., Cambridge University Press, {{ISBN|9780521673167}} (2005), p. 22</ref><ref>Watson, Bruce, p. 127</ref> Four .32 automatic brass shell casings were found at the murder scene, manufactured by one of three firms: [[Peters Cartridge Company|Peters]], [[Winchester Repeating Arms Company|Winchester]], or [[Remington Arms|Remington]]. The Winchester cartridge case was of a relatively obsolete cartridge loading, which had been discontinued from production some years earlier. Two days after the robbery, police located the robbers' Buick; several 12-gauge shotgun shells were found on the ground nearby.{{r|Reed}}

===Arrests and indictment===
[[File:Mario Buda.jpg|thumb|175px|right|Mario Buda]]
[[File:Image-20-680x1024.png|thumb|175px|Ferruccio Coacci]]
[[File:Image access 800.jpg|thumb|175px|Ricardo Orciani]]
An earlier attempted (unsuccessful) robbery of another shoe factory payroll had occurred on December 24, 1919, in [[Bridgewater, Massachusetts]], by four persons identified as Italian who used a car that was seen escaping to Cochesett in West Bridgewater. A delivery truck for the L.Q. White Shoe Factory was taking a $33,113.31 payroll with a driver, paymaster and a police constable. The assailants in a car tried to hijack the truck with one robber using a pistol and the other a double-barrelled shotgun.<ref>Elman "Fired in Anger" p.414</ref> Police speculated that Italian anarchists perpetrated the robberies to finance their activities. Bridgewater police chief Michael E. Stewart suspected that known Italian anarchist Ferruccio Coacci was involved. Stewart discovered that [[Mario Buda]] (aka 'Mike' Boda) lived with Coacci.<ref name="AVR1">Avrich, Paul, ''Anarchist Voices: An Oral History of Anarchism in America'', AK Press, {{ISBN|9781904859277}} (2005), ''Interview of Charles Poggi'', pp. 132–133</ref>

When Chief Stewart later arrived at the Coacci home, only Buda was living there, and when questioned, he said that Coacci owned a .32 Savage automatic pistol, which he kept in the kitchen.<ref name="Avrich, Paul 1991 pp. 201–202">Avrich, Paul, ''Sacco and Vanzetti: The Anarchist Background'', {{ISBN|9780691026046}} (1991), pp. 201–202</ref> A search of the kitchen did not locate the gun, but Stewart found (in a kitchen drawer) a manufacturer's technical diagram for a Model 1907 of the exact type of .32 caliber pistol used to shoot Parmenter and Berardelli.<ref name="Avrich, Paul 1991 pp. 201–202" /><ref>Young, William, and Kaiser, David E., ''Postmortem: New Evidence in the Case of Sacco and Vanzetti'', [[University of Massachusetts Press]], {{ISBN|0870234781}} (1985), p. 23</ref> Stewart asked Buda if he owned a gun, and the man produced a .32-caliber Spanish-made automatic pistol.<ref name="Avrich, Paul 1991 p. 202">Avrich (1991), ''Sacco and Vanzetti'', p. 202</ref> Buda told police that he owned a 1914 [[Overland Automobile|Overland automobile]], which was being repaired.<ref name="Avrich, Paul 1991 pp. 201–202" /> The car was delivered for repairs four days after the Braintree crimes, but it was old and apparently had not been run for five months.<ref>{{cite book|author1=Michael A. Musmano|title=The Sacco-Vanzetti Case: A Miscarriage of Justice|date=January 1961|publisher=American Bar Association|page=29|volume=47|number=1|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=0L78-cCVnDkC&pg=PA29|access-date=October 3, 2015}}</ref> Tire tracks were seen near the abandoned Buick getaway car, and Chief Stewart surmised that two cars had been used in the getaway, and that Buda's car might have been the second car.<ref name="Avrich, Paul 1991 pp. 201–202" />

When Stewart discovered that Coacci had worked for both shoe factories that had been robbed, he returned with the Bridgewater police.  Mario Buda was not home,<ref name="Avrich, Paul 1991 pp. 201–202" /> but on May 5, 1920, he arrived at the garage with three other men, later identified as Sacco, Vanzetti, and Riccardo Orciani. The four men knew each other well; Buda would later refer to Sacco and Vanzetti as "the best friends I had in America".<ref>Avrich (1991), ''Sacco and Vanzetti'' p. 205</ref>

Sacco and Vanzetti boarded a [[streetcar]] but were tracked down and soon arrested. When searched by police, both denied owning any guns, but were found to be holding loaded pistols. Sacco was found to have an Italian passport, anarchist literature, a loaded .32 Colt Model 1903 automatic pistol, and twenty-three .32 automatic cartridges in his possession; several of those bullet cases were of the same obsolescent type as the empty Winchester .32 casing found at the crime scene, and others were manufactured by the firms of Peters and Remington, much like other casings found at the scene.{{r|Reed}} Vanzetti had four 12-gauge shotgun shells<ref name="Avrich, Paul 1991 p. 202"/> and a five-shot nickel-plated [[.38 S&W|.38-caliber]] Harrington & Richardson revolver, all looked exactly alike, similar to the 38 carried by Berardelli, the slain Braintree guard, whose weapon was not found at the scene of the crime. {{r|Reed}} When they were questioned, the pair denied any connection to anarchists.<ref name="jacobin-sv">{{cite news |last1=Trasciatti |first1=Mary Anne |title=The Killing of Sacco and Vanzetti |url=https://jacobin.com/2017/08/sacco-vanzetti-palmer-raids-anarchism-repression |access-date=8 April 2024 |work=Jacobin |date=23 August 2017}}</ref>

Orciani was arrested May 6, but gave the alibi that he had been at work on the day of both crimes. Sacco had been at work on the day of the Bridgewater crimes but said that he had the day off on April 15—the day of the Braintree crimes—and was charged with those murders. The self-employed Vanzetti had no such alibis and was charged for the attempted robbery and attempted murder in Bridgewater and the robbery and murder in the Braintree crimes.<ref name="WA">Watson, Bruce, ''Sacco and Vanzetti: The Men, the Murders, and the Judgment of Mankind'', New York: Viking Press, 2007, {{ISBN|0670063533}}, pp. 65–66, 74–76, 116–118</ref> Sacco and Vanzetti were charged with the crime of murder on May 5, 1920, and indicted four months later on September 14.<ref>[https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1927/03/the-case-of-sacco-and-vanzetti/306625/ The Case of Sacco and Vanzetti] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200527154655/https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1927/03/the-case-of-sacco-and-vanzetti/306625/ |date=May 27, 2020 }}. By Felix Frankfurter. ''The Atlantic'', March 1927.</ref>

Following Sacco and Vanzetti's indictment for murder for the Braintree robbery, [[Galleanists]] and anarchists in the United States and abroad began a campaign of violent retaliation. Two days later on September 16, 1920, Mario Buda allegedly orchestrated the [[Wall Street bombing]], where a time-delay dynamite bomb packed with heavy iron sash-weights in a horse-drawn cart exploded, killing 40 people and wounding 134.<ref name="AVR1"/><ref>Avrich (1991), ''Sacco and Vanzetti'' pp. 205, 213, 227</ref> In 1921, a booby trap bomb mailed to the American [[ambassador]] in Paris exploded, wounding his valet.<ref>"Bomb For Herrick Wounds His Valet In His Paris Home", ''The New York Times'', October 19, 1921. Note: Years later, the sender of the bomb was revealed to be [[May Picqueray]], a militant anarchist and editor of ''Le Réfractaire''.</ref> For the next six years, bombs exploded at other American embassies all over the world.<ref>Temkin, Moshik, ''The Sacco-Vanzetti Affair: America on Trial'', New Haven: Yale University Press (2009), {{ISBN|9780300124842}}, p. 63</ref>

==Trials==

===Bridgewater crimes trial===
Rather than accept court-appointed counsel, Vanzetti chose to be represented by John P. Vahey, a former foundry superintendent and future state court judge who had been practicing law since 1905, most notably with his brother [[James H. Vahey]] and his law partner [[Charles Hiller Innes]].<ref>{{cite news|title=Judge J. P. Vahe Dies At Plymouth|newspaper=[[The Boston Daily Globe]]|date=October 3, 1934}}</ref> James Graham, who was recommended by supporters, also served as defense counsel.<ref name="WA"/><ref>Ehrmann, pp. 73–74</ref> [[Frederick G. Katzmann]], the Norfolk and Plymouth County District Attorney, prosecuted the case.<ref>Watson, pp. 59–60; Sacco and Vanzetti, ''Letters'', p. 225n</ref> The presiding judge was [[Webster Thayer]], who was already assigned to the court before this case was scheduled. A few weeks earlier he had given a speech to new American citizens decrying Bolshevism and anarchism's threat to American institutions. He supported the suppression of functionally violent radical speech, and incitement to commit violent acts.<ref name="WA"/><ref>Ehrmann, p. 460</ref><ref>Young and Kaiser, pp. 21–23</ref><ref>Russell, ''Resolved'', p. 111</ref> He was known to dislike foreigners but was considered to be a fair judge.<ref>{{cite book|author1=Lisa N Sacco|editor1-last=Chermak|editor1-first=Steven|
editor2-last=Bailey|editor2-first=Frankie|title=Crimes and Trials of the Century|publisher=Greenwood Press|location=Westport Connecticut|isbn=
9780313341106|page=25|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=FPRslbPnMjwC&pg=PA26|access-date=October 3, 2015|date= 2007}}</ref>

The trial began on June 22, 1920. The prosecution presented several witnesses who put Vanzetti at the scene of the crime. Their descriptions varied, especially with respect to the shape and length of Vanzetti's mustache.<ref>Joughin, pp. 34–38</ref> Physical evidence included a shotgun shell retrieved at the scene of the crime and several shells found on Vanzetti when he was arrested.<ref>Joughin, p. 39</ref><!-- Need to summarize various other evidence, esp that Vanzetti lied upon arrest Joughin, pp. 38–42 -->

The defense produced 16 witnesses, all Italians from Plymouth, who testified that at the time of the attempted robbery they had bought [[Eel as food|eels]] from Vanzetti for [[Eastertide]], in accordance with their traditions. Such details reinforced the difference between the Italians and the jurors. Some testified in imperfect English, others through an interpreter, whose inability to speak the same dialect of Italian as the witnesses hampered his effectiveness. On cross examination, the prosecution found it easy to make the witnesses appear confused about dates. A boy who testified admitted to rehearsing his testimony. "You learned it just like a piece at school?", the prosecutor asked. "Sure", he replied.<ref>Joughin, pp. 42–43, 45–46; Ehrmann, pp. 115ff.</ref> The defense tried to rebut the eyewitnesses with testimony that Vanzetti always wore his mustache in a distinctive long style, but the prosecution rebutted this.<ref>Joughin, pp. 43, 46</ref>

The defense case went badly and Vanzetti did not testify in his own defense.<ref>Joughin, p. 46</ref> During the trial, he said that his lawyers had opposed putting him on the stand.<ref name="WA"/> That same year, defense attorney Vahey told the governor that Vanzetti had refused his advice to testify.<ref>Joughin, pp. 300, 304</ref> Decades later, a lawyer who assisted Vahey in the defense said that the defense attorneys left the choice to Vanzetti, but warned him that it would be difficult to prevent the prosecution from using cross examination to challenge the credibility of his character based on his political beliefs. He said that Vanzetti chose not to testify after consulting with Sacco.<ref name="WA"/> [[Herbert B.Ehrmann|Herbert B. Ehrmann]], who later joined the defense team, wrote many years later that the dangers of putting Vanzetti on the stand were very real.<ref name="Ehrmann, 114–5">Ehrmann, pp. 114–115</ref> Another legal analysis of the case faulted the defense for not offering more to the jury by letting Vanzetti testify, concluding that by his remaining silent it "left the jury to decide between the eyewitnesses and the alibi witness without his aid. In these circumstances a verdict of not guilty would have been very unusual". That analysis claimed that "no one could say that the case was closely tried or vigorously fought for the defendant".<ref>Joughin, pp. 10, 47</ref>

Vanzetti complained during his sentencing on April 9, 1927, for the Braintree crimes, that Vahey "sold me for thirty golden money like Judas sold Jesus Christ."<ref name="WA"/> He accused Vahey of having conspired with the prosecutor "to agitate still more the passion of the juror, the prejudice of the juror" towards "people of our principles, against the foreigner, against [[slacker]]s."<ref name="WA"/><ref>Amerika-Institut: [http://www.amerikanistik.uni-muenchen.de/studium/lehre/kursmaterial/material_kult/gkkultur2/syllabus/09.pdf ''Last Statements (1927), Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti''] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110719105610/http://www.amerikanistik.uni-muenchen.de/studium/lehre/kursmaterial/material_kult/gkkultur2/syllabus/09.pdf|date=July 19, 2011}}; accessed June 22, 2010.</ref>

On July 1, 1920, the jury deliberated for five hours and returned guilty verdicts on both counts, armed robbery and first-degree murder.<ref name="WA"/> Before sentencing, Judge Thayer learned that during deliberations, the jury had tampered with the shotgun shells found on Vanzetti at the time of his arrest to determine if the shot they contained was of sufficient size to kill a man.<ref name="WA"/><ref name="Joughin, 56">Joughin, p. 56</ref> Since that prejudiced the jury's verdict on the murder charge, Thayer declared that part a [[mistrial]]. On August 16, 1920, he sentenced Vanzetti on the charge of armed robbery to a term of 12 to 15 years in prison, the maximum sentence allowed.<ref name="WA"/><ref name="Ehrmann, 114–5"/><ref name="Joughin, 56"/>

Sacco and Vanzetti both denounced Thayer. Vanzetti wrote, "I will try to see Thayer death{{sic}} before his pronunciation of our sentence" and asked fellow anarchists for "revenge, revenge in our names and the names of our living and dead."<ref>Watson, Bruce, ''Sacco and Vanzetti: The Men, the Murders, and the Judgment of Mankind'', Viking Press (2007), {{ISBN|9780670063536}}, p. 264</ref>

In 1927, advocates for Sacco and Vanzetti charged that this case was brought first because a conviction for the Bridgewater crimes would help convict him for the Braintree crimes, where evidence against him was weak. The prosecution countered that the timing was driven by the schedules of different courts that handled the cases.<ref>Joughin, p. 9</ref> The defense raised only minor objections in an appeal that was not accepted.<ref>Joughin, pp. 47–48</ref> A few years later, Vahey joined Katzmann's law firm.<ref>Ehrmann, p. 151; Sacco and Vanzetti, ''Letters'', p. 225n</ref>

===Braintree crimes trial===
{{see also|History of Dedham, Massachusetts, 1900–1999#Sacco and Vanzetti}}
{{DedhamHistory}}
[[File:NorfolkCoCourt.JPG|thumb|[[Norfolk County Courthouse]], [[Dedham, Massachusetts]], site of the second trial]]
Sacco and Vanzetti went on trial for their lives on May 31, 1921, at [[Dedham, Massachusetts|Dedham]], [[Norfolk County, Massachusetts]], for the Braintree robbery and murders. [[Webster Thayer]] again presided; he had asked to be assigned to the trial. Katzmann again prosecuted for the Commonwealth. Vanzetti was represented by brothers Jeremiah and Thomas McAnraney. Sacco was represented by [[Fred Moore (attorney)|Fred H. Moore]] and William J. Callahan. The choice of Moore, a former attorney for the [[Industrial Workers of the World]], proved a key mistake for the defense. A notorious radical from [[California]], Moore quickly enraged Judge Thayer with his courtroom demeanor, often doffing his jacket and once, his shoes. Reporters covering the case were amazed to hear Judge Thayer, during a lunch recess, proclaim, "I'll show them that no long-haired anarchist from California can run this court!" and later, "You wait till I give my charge to the jury. I'll show them."<ref>Watson, pp. 116–117.</ref>

Authorities anticipated a possible bomb attack and had the Dedham courtroom outfitted with heavy, sliding steel doors and cast-iron shutters that were painted to appear wooden.<ref>{{Cite web |last=Linder |first=Doug |date=2001 |title=The Trial of Sacco and Vanzetti |url=http://law2.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/SaccoV/s%26vaccount.html |access-date=2022-11-10 |website=law2.umkc.edu |publisher=Kansas City MO: University of Missouri, Kansas City School of Law |page=5 |archive-date=November 10, 2022 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20221110044234/http://law2.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/SaccoV/s%26vaccount.html |url-status=live }}</ref><ref name="WAT">Watson, Bruce (2007), ''Sacco and Vanzetti: The Men, the Murders and the Judgment of Mankind'', New York: Viking Penguin, {{ISBN|9780670063536}}, pp. 103–104</ref> Each day during the trial, the courthouse was placed under heavy police security, and Sacco and Vanzetti were escorted to and from the courtroom by armed guards.<ref name="WAT"/>

The Commonwealth relied on evidence that Sacco was absent from his work in a shoe factory on the day of the murders; that the defendants were in the neighborhood of the Braintree robbery-murder scene on the morning when it occurred, being identified as having been there seen separately and also together; that the Buick getaway car was also in the neighborhood and that Vanzetti was near and in it; that Sacco was seen near the scene of the murders before they occurred and also was seen to shoot Berardelli after Berardelli fell and that that shot caused his death; that used shell casings were left at the scene of the murders, some of which could have been found to have been discharged from a .32 pistol afterwards found on Sacco; that a cap was found at the scene of the murders, which witnesses identified as resembling one formerly worn by Sacco; and that both men were members of anarchist cells that espoused violence, including assassination.<ref name="COM"/> Among the more important witnesses called by the prosecution was salesman Carlos E. Goodridge, who stated that as the getaway car raced within twenty-five feet of him, one of the car's occupants, whom he identified as being Sacco, pointed a gun in his direction.{{sfn|Reed|1960|p=869}}

Much of the trial focused on material evidence, notably bullets, guns, and the cap. Prosecution witnesses testified that ''Bullet III'', the .32-caliber bullet that had fatally wounded Berardelli, was from a discontinued Winchester .32 Auto cartridge loading so obsolete that the only bullets similar to it that anyone could locate to make comparisons were actually those found in the cartridges in Sacco's pockets.<ref name="truTV">{{cite web| url=http://www.trutv.com/library/crime/criminal_mind/forensics/ballistics/1.html | title= Ballistics: The Science of Guns| first= Katherine| last= Ramsland| publisher= [[truTV]] | archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080607062745/http://www.trutv.com/library/crime/criminal_mind/forensics/ballistics/1.html | archive-date=June 7, 2008 | url-status=live | access-date = July 9, 2010}}</ref>

In court, District Attorney Katzmann called two forensic gun expert witnesses, Capt. Charles Van Amburgh of [[Springfield Armory]] and Capt. William Proctor of the [[Massachusetts State Police]], who testified that they believed that of the four bullets recovered from Berardelli's body, ''Bullet III''—the fatal bullet—exhibited rifling marks consistent with those found on bullets fired from Sacco's .32 Colt Automatic pistol.<ref name="AND"/> In rebuttal, two defense forensic gun experts testified that ''Bullet III'' did not match any of the test bullets from Sacco's Colt.<ref>Russell, 1962, pp. 158–160</ref> 

After the trial, Capt. Proctor signed an affidavit stating that he could not positively identify Sacco's .32 Colt as the only pistol that could have fired ''Bullet III''. This meant that ''Bullet III'' could have been fired from any of the 300,000 .32 Colt Automatic pistols then in circulation.<ref name="GRA" /><ref name="NEV">Neville, John F., ''Twentieth-century Cause Cèlébre: Sacco, Vanzetti, and the Press, 1920–1927'', Greenwood Publishing Group, {{ISBN|9780275977832}} (2004), p. 52 (Note: Accents are incorrect in the original title)</ref> All witnesses to the shooting testified that they saw one gunman shoot Berardelli four times, yet the defense never questioned how only one bullets of the four found in the murdered guard's body was identified as fired from Sacco's Colt.<ref name="AND" /> At the grand jury hearing, Doctor Charles McGrath testified that all four bullets removed from Berardelli's body "looked exactly alike".  Hence it was concluded that both bullet III and Shell W, must have been planted several months before the trial.  

Vanzetti was being tried under Massachusetts' felony-murder rule, and the prosecution sought to implicate him in the Braintree robbery by the testimony of several witnesses: one testified that he was in the getaway car, and others who stated they saw Vanzetti in the vicinity of the Braintree factory around the time of the robbery.{{r|Reed}} No direct evidence tied Vanzetti's .38 nickel-plated Harrington & Richardson five-shot revolver to the crime scene, except for the fact that it was identical in type and appearance to one owned by the slain guard Berardelli, which was missing from the crime scene.<ref name="COM">''Commonwealth v. Nicola Sacco & Another: Background for Opinion'', Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts, 255 Mass. 369; 151 N.E. 839, January 11–13, 1926, Argued; May 12, 1926, Decided</ref><ref>{{cite journal|title=Sacco Guilty, Vanzetti Innocent? |first=Francis |last=Russell |journal=American Heritage |volume=13 |issue=4 |date=June 1962 |page=111 |quote=About the gun found on Vanzetti there is too much uncertainty to come to any conclusion. Being of .38 caliber, it was obviously not used at Braintree, where all the bullets fired were .32's}}</ref>  All six bullets recovered from the victims were 32 caliber, fired from at least two different [[Semi-automatic pistol|automatic pistol]]s.{{sfn|Reed|1960|p=868}} The prosecution claimed Vanzetti's 38 revolver of Berardelli, taken from his body during the robbery. No one testified of having seen anyone taking that gun, yet Berardelli had an empty holster and no gun on when found.{{r|Reed}}  Yet, witnesses to the payroll shooting had described Berardelli as reaching for his gun on his hip when he was cut down by pistol fire from the robbers.{{r|Reed}}

District Attorney Katzmann pointed out that Vanzetti had lied at the time of his arrest, when making statements about the .38 revolver found in his possession.  He claimed that the revolver was his own, and that he carried it for self-protection, yet he incorrectly described it to police as a six-shot revolver instead of a five-shot.{{r|Reed}} Vanzetti also told police that he had purchased only one box of cartridges for the gun, all of the same make, yet his revolver was loaded with five .38 cartridges of varying brands.{{r|Reed}}  At the time of his arrest, Vanzetti also claimed that he had bought the gun at a store (but could not remember which one), and that it cost $18 or $19 (three times its actual market value).<ref name="Bortman, Eli 2005 p. 40">Bortman, Eli, ''Sacco and Vanzetti (New England Remembers)'', Applewood Books, {{ISBN|9781889833767}} (2005), p. 40</ref> He lied about where he had obtained the .38 cartridges found in the revolver.{{r|Reed}}

The prosecution traced the history of Berardelli's .38 [[Harrington & Richardson]] (H&R) revolver. Berardelli's wife testified that she and her husband dropped off the gun for repair at the [[Iver Johnson|Iver Johnson Co.]] of Boston a few weeks before the murder.<ref name="COM"/> According to the foreman of the shop, Berardelli's revolver was given a repair tag with the number of 94765, which was recorded in its repair logbook with the statement "H. & R. revolver, .38-calibre, new hammer, repairing, half an hour".<ref name="COM"/> However, the shop books did not record the gun's serial number, and the caliber was apparently incorrectly labeled as .32 instead of .38-caliber.<ref name="COM"/><ref>Watson, Bruce, ''Sacco and Vanzetti: The Men, The Murders, and the Judgment of Mankind'', p. 126: Upon questioning by the prosecution, witnesses testified that the shop's incorrect labeling of Berardelli's revolver as a .32 instead of a .38 was a common mistake, as there were few outward visible differences between the .32 and 38-caliber Harrington & Richardson five-shot revolvers.</ref> The shop foreman testified that a new spring and hammer were put into Berardelli's Harrington & Richardson revolver. The gun was claimed and the half-hour repair paid for, though the date and identity of the claimant were not recorded.<ref name="COM"/> After examining Vanzetti's .38 revolver, the foreman testified that Vanzetti's gun had a new replacement hammer in keeping with the repair performed on Berardelli's revolver.<ref name="Watson, Bruce p. 126">Watson, Bruce, ''Sacco and Vanzetti: The Men, The Murders, and the Judgment of Mankind'', p. 126</ref> The foreman explained that the shop was always kept busy repairing 20 to 30 revolvers per day, which made it very hard to remember individual guns or keep reliable records of when they were picked up by their owners.{{r|Reed}} But, he said that unclaimed guns were sold by Iver Johnson at the end of each year, and the shop had no record of an unclaimed gun sale of Berardelli's revolver.<ref name="Watson, Bruce p. 126"/> To reinforce the conclusion that Berardelli had reclaimed his revolver from the repair shop, the prosecution called a witness who testified that he had seen Berardelli in possession of a .38 nickel-plated revolver the Saturday night before the Braintree robbery.<ref name="COM"/>

After hearing testimony from the repair shop employee that "the repair shop had no record of Berardelli picking up the gun, the gun was not in the shop nor had it been sold", the defense put Vanzetti on the stand where he testified that "he had actually bought the gun several months earlier from fellow anarchist Luigi Falzini for five dollars"—in contradiction to what he had told police upon his arrest.<ref name="COM"/><ref name="Bortman, Eli 2005 p. 40"/> This was corroborated by Luigi Falzini (Falsini), a friend of Vanzetti's and a fellow Galleanist, who stated that, after buying the .38 revolver from one Riccardo Orciani,<ref>Avrich (1991), ''Sacco and Vanzetti'': p. 199: Note: Orciani, who did not testify at trial, was the same person who had helped Mario Buda escape the police trap on May 5, 1920 at the Johnson garage via motorcycle.</ref> he sold it to Vanzetti.<ref name="COM"/><ref name="Bortman, Eli 2005 p. 40"/><ref>Avrich (1991), ''Sacco and Vanzetti'', pp. 158, 189, 202: Both Orciani and Falzini (Falsini), like Sacco and Vanzetti, were Galleanists.</ref>  The defense also called two expert witnesses, a Mr. Burns and a Mr. Fitzgerald, who each testified that no new spring and hammer had ever been installed in the revolver found in Vanzetti's possession.<ref name="COM"/>

The District Attorney's final evidence was a flop-eared cap claimed to have been Sacco's was the cap he tried on right in court, according two newspaper sketch artists who ran its cartoons the next day, it was too small, sitting high on his head. But Katzmann insisted the cap fitted Sacco and, noting a hole in the back where Sacco had hung the cap on a nail each day, continued to refer to it as his, and in denying later appeals, Judge Thayer often cited the cap as material evidence. During the 1927 Lowell Commission investigation, however, Braintree's Police Chief admitted that he had torn the cap open upon finding it at the crime scene a full day after the murders. Doubting the cap was Sacco's, the chief told the commission it could not have lain in the street "for thirty hours with the State Police, the local police, and two or three thousand people there."<ref>Watson, p. 317</ref>

Controversy clouded the prosecution witnesses who identified Sacco as having been at the scene of the crime. One, a bookkeeper named Mary Splaine, precisely described Sacco as the man she saw firing from the getaway car. From Felix Frankfurter's account from ''[[The Atlantic Monthly]]'' article:

<blockquote>Viewing the scene from a distance of sixty to eighty feet, she saw a man previously unknown to her in a car traveling at the rate of from fifteen to eighteen miles per hour, and she saw him only for a distance of about thirty feet—that is to say, for from one and a half to three seconds.<ref>{{cite news|last1=Frankfurter|first1=Felix|title=The Case of Sacco and Vanzetti|url=https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1927/03/the-case-of-sacco-and-vanzetti/306625/|newspaper=[[The Atlantic Monthly]]|access-date=2 October 2015|archive-date=May 27, 2020|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200527154655/https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1927/03/the-case-of-sacco-and-vanzetti/306625/|url-status=live}}</ref> </blockquote>

Further, if one or both men were guilty of such savage robbery murder, how did they get so many casual witnesses to lie for them? And what happened to the large stash of stolen money?  Yet cross examination revealed that Splaine was unable to identify Sacco at the inquest, but had recall of great details of Sacco's appearance over a year later. While a few others singled out Sacco or Vanzetti as the men they had seen at the scene of the crime, far more witnesses, both prosecution and defense, could not identify them.<ref name="Frankfurter">{{Cite web|last=Frankfurter|first=Felix|date=1927-03-01|title=The Case of Sacco and Vanzetti|url=https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1927/03/the-case-of-sacco-and-vanzetti/306625/|access-date=2021-03-08|website=The Atlantic|language=en|archive-date=May 27, 2020|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200527154655/https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1927/03/the-case-of-sacco-and-vanzetti/306625/|url-status=live}}</ref>

The defendants' radical politics may have played a role in the verdict. Judge Thayer, though a sworn enemy of anarchists, warned the defense against bringing anarchism into the trial. Yet defense attorney Fred Moore felt he had to call both Sacco and Vanzetti as witnesses to let them explain why they were fully armed when arrested. Both men testified that they had been rounding up radical literature when apprehended, and that they had feared another government deportation raid. Yet both hurt their case with rambling discourses on radical politics that the prosecution mocked. The prosecution further stressed its case, claiming that both men fled the draft<ref name="Frankfurter"/> by traveling to Mexico in 1917. 

====Jury====
The 12 jurors were sequestered at the courthouse for the entirety of the six-week trial.{{sfn|Parr|2009|p=59}} They slept on cots in the courthouse's grand jury room and bathed in the basement of the jail.{{sfn|Parr|2009|p=59}} To celebrate the 4th of July, they were brought to [[Scituate, Massachusetts]] and given a lobster dinner.{{sfn|Parr|2009|p=59}}

To get a full jury, courthouse officials had to go to extraordinary lengths. Over 600 men were interviewed, with the most common reason for dismissal being their opposition to the death penalty.{{sfn|Parr|2009|p=59}} One man, a sugar dealer, tried to pretend that he was deaf in an attempt to get out of serving on the jury. When he was discovered, by answering a question posed by the judge, Sacco and Vanzetti were sent into fits of laughter. {{sfn|Parr|2009|p=59}}

After 500 potential jurors were interviewed, but only seven selected, deputies from the Norfolk County Sheriff's office went out to workplaces, club meetings, concerts, and elsewhere to bring in additional potential jurors.{{sfn|Parr|2009|p=59}} One man, ultimately selected, was brought from his wedding dinner.{{sfn|Parr|2009|p=59}} The Quincy man had to postpone his honeymoon until after the trial.{{sfn|Parr|2009|p=59}} 

The jury ultimately reached a guilty verdict.{{Sfn|Avrich|1991|p=201}} The verdicts and the likelihood of death sentences immediately roused international opinion. Demonstrations were held in 60 Italian cities and a flood of mail was sent to the American embassy in Paris. Demonstrations followed in a number of Latin American cities.<ref>Watson, 178, 183–184</ref> [[Anatole France]], veteran of the campaign for [[Alfred Dreyfus]] and recipient of the 1921 [[Nobel Prize for Literature]], wrote an "Appeal to the American People": "The death of Sacco and Vanzetti will make martyrs of them and cover you with shame. You are a great people. You ought to be a just people."<ref>Watson, p. 184</ref>

===Defense committee===
[[File:Fred Moore (attorney).jpg|thumb|Defense attorney Fred Moore.]]
In 1921, most of the nation had not yet heard of Sacco and Vanzetti. Brief mention of the conviction appeared on page three of the ''New York Times''. Defense attorney Moore radicalized and politicized the process by discussing Sacco and Vanzetti's anarchist beliefs, attempting to suggest that they were prosecuted primarily for their political beliefs and the trial was part of a government plan to stop the anarchist movement in the United States. His efforts helped stir up support but were so costly that he was eventually dismissed from the defense team.<ref>{{cite book|author-first=Lisa|author-last=Sacco|editor1-last=Chermak|editor1-first=Steven|editor2-last=Bailey|editor2-first=Frankie|title=Crimes and Trials of the Century|publisher=Greenwood Press|location=Westport Connecticut|isbn=9780313341106|page=30|chapter=2|year=2007}}</ref>

The Sacco-Vanzetti Defense Committee was formed on May 9, 1920, immediately following the arrests, by a group of fellow anarchists, headed by Vanzetti's 23-year-old friend Aldino Felicani. Over the next seven years, it raised $300,000.<ref>Watson, p. 64.; See also: ''Financial Report of the Sacco-Vanzetti Defense Committee'' (Century Press, 1925)</ref> Defense attorney Fred Moore drew on its funds for his investigations.<ref>The Committee also supported Moore's request for grant money. See Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, ''The Rebel Girl: An Autobiography, My First Life (1906–1926)'', revised edition (Masses & Mainstream, 1973), p. 326</ref> Differences arose when Moore tried to determine who had committed the Braintree crimes over objections from anarchists that he was doing the government's work. After the Committee hired William G. Thompson to manage the legal defense, he objected to its propaganda efforts.<ref>Flynn, pp. 330–331</ref>

A Defense Committee publicist wrote an article about the first trial that was published in ''[[The New Republic]]''. In the winter of 1920–1921, the Defense Committee sent stories to labor union publications every week. It produced pamphlets with titles like ''Fangs at Labor's Throat'', sometimes printing thousands of copies. It sent speakers to Italian communities in factory towns and mining camps.<ref>Watson, p. 194.</ref> The Committee eventually added staff from outside the anarchist movement, notably Mary Donovan, who had experience as a labor leader and [[Sinn Féin]] organizer.<ref>Watson, p. 265.</ref> In 1927, she and Felicani together recruited Gardner Jackson, a ''[[The Boston Globe|Boston Globe]]'' reporter from a wealthy family, to manage publicity and serve as a mediator between Committee's anarchists and the growing number of supporters with more liberal political views who included socialites, lawyers and intellectuals.<ref>Kempton, pp. 42–44</ref> Jackson bridged the gap between the radicals and the social elite so well that Sacco thanked him a few weeks before his execution:

<blockquote>We are one heart, but unfortunately we represent two different class. ... But, whenever the heart of one of the upper class join with the exploited workers for the struggle of the right in the human feeling is the feel of an spontaneous attraction and brotherly love to one another.<ref>Kempton, pp. 42–44. For a brief biography of Jackson, see Brandeis University: [http://archon.brandeis.edu/index.php?p=core/search&creatorid=53 "Jackson, Gardner"] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110719152630/http://archon.brandeis.edu/index.php?p=core%2Fsearch&creatorid=53 |date=July 19, 2011}}, accessed February 15, 2011</ref></blockquote>

The noted American author [[John Dos Passos]] joined the committee and wrote its 127-page official review of the case: ''Facing the Chair: Story of Americanization of Two Foreignborn Workmen''.<ref>Virginia Spencer Carr, ''Dos Passos: A Life'' (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1984), p. 222; John Dos Passos, ''Facing the Chair: Story of Americanization of Two Foreignborn Workmen'' (Boston: Sacco-Vanzetti Defense Committee, 1927)</ref> Dos Passos concluded it "barely possible" that Sacco might have committed murder as part of a class war, but that the soft-hearted Vanzetti was clearly innocent. "Nobody in his right mind who was planning such a crime would take a man like that along", Dos Passos wrote of Vanzetti.<ref>Watson, p. 277.</ref> After the executions, the Committee continued its work, helping to gather material that eventually appeared as ''The Letters of Sacco and Vanzetti''.<ref>Sacco and Vanzetti, ''Letters'', p. [https://archive.org/details/lettersofsaccova0000unse/page/n11/mode/2up ix]</ref>

===Motions for a new trial===
Multiple separate motions for a new trial were denied by Judge Thayer.<ref name="JoughinMorgan2015">{{cite book|last1=Joughin|first1=Louis|last2=Morgan|first2=Edmund M.|title=The Legacy of Sacco and Vanzetti|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=-Gt9BgAAQBAJ&pg=PA114|year=2015|publisher=[[Princeton University Press]]|isbn=978-1-4008-6865-0|pages=114–115|access-date=February 16, 2021|archive-date=February 16, 2021|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210216075146/https://books.google.com/books?id=-Gt9BgAAQBAJ&pg=PA114|url-status=live}}</ref> One motion, the so-called Hamilton-Proctor motion, involved the forensic ballistic evidence presented by the expert witnesses for the prosecution and defense. The prosecution's firearms expert, Charles Van Amburgh, had re-examined the evidence in preparation for the motion. By 1923, bullet-comparison technology had improved somewhat, and Van Amburgh submitted photos of the bullets fired from Sacco's .32 Colt in support of the argument that they matched the bullet that killed Berardelli. In response, the controversial<ref name="EVA">Evans, Colin, ''Casebook of Forensic Detection: How Science Solved 100 of the World's Most Baffling Crimes'', New York: Penguin Publishers Ltd., {{ISBN|9780425215593}} (2007), pp. 12–23: "Doctor" Hamilton was not actually a doctor, but a former patent medicine salesman. He acquired a self-taught reputation as an expert firearms witness, though his testimony had been called into question as early as 1918, three years after Hamilton had testified in a New York murder case, ''People v. Stielow'', that scratches on the barrel rifling of a revolver claimed to be Stielow's exactly matched marks on the bullet that killed the murder victim. Stielow was convicted and sentenced to death, and was only saved from execution after another man confessed to the murder. Subsequent new forensic examinations of both pistol and bullet demonstrated conclusively that no 'scratches' existed and that Stielow's revolver could not have been the murder weapon, and Stielow received a full pardon from the governor of New York.</ref><ref>''People v. Stielow'', 160 N.Y.S. 555 (1916)</ref> self-proclaimed "firearms expert" for the defense, Albert H. Hamilton,<ref name="EVA" /> conducted an in-court demonstration involving two brand new Colt .32-caliber automatic pistols belonging to Hamilton, along with Sacco's .32 Colt of the same make and caliber. In front of Judge Thayer and the lawyers for both sides, Hamilton disassembled all three pistols and placed the major component parts—barrel, barrel bushing, recoil spring, frame, slide, and magazine—into three piles on the table before him.<ref name="JOU">Joughin, Louis and Morgan, Edmund M., ''An Unpublished Chapter in the Record: The Legacy of Sacco and Vanzetti'', New York: Harcourt, Brace and Co. (1948)</ref><ref name="FISH">Fisher, Jim, ''[http://jimfisher.edinboro.edu/forensics/sacco1_3.html Firearms Identification in the Sacco-Vanzetti Case] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200625062654/http://jimfisher.edinboro.edu/forensics/sacco1_3.html |date=June 25, 2020 }}'', retrieved October 11, 2011</ref><ref>Russell, Francis, ''Sacco & Vanzetti: The Case Resolved'', New York: Harper & Row Publishers Inc., {{ISBN|9780060155247}} (1986), p. 150</ref> He explained the functions of each part and began to demonstrate how each was interchangeable, in the process intermingling the parts of all three pistols.<ref name="FISH" /> Judge Thayer stopped Hamilton and demanded that he reassemble Sacco's pistol with its proper parts.<ref name="FISH" />

Other motions focused on the jury foreman and a prosecution ballistics expert. In 1923, the defense filed an affidavit from a friend of the jury foreman, who swore that prior to the trial, the jury foreman had allegedly said of Sacco and Vanzetti, "Damn them, they ought to hang them anyway!" That same year, the defense read to the court an affidavit by Captain William Proctor (who had died shortly after conclusion of the trial) in which Proctor stated that he could not say that ''Bullet III'' was fired by Sacco's .32 Colt pistol.<ref name="NEV" /> At the conclusion of the appeal hearings, Thayer denied all motions for a new trial on October 1, 1924.<ref name=ehrmannxvii>Ehrmann, p. xvii</ref>

Several months later, in February 1924, Judge Thayer asked one of the firearms experts for the prosecution, Capt. Charles Van Amburgh, to reinspect Sacco's Colt and determine its condition. With District Attorney Katzmann present, Van Amburgh took the gun from the clerk and started to take it apart.<ref name="FISH" /> Van Amburgh quickly noticed that the barrel to Sacco's gun was brand new, being still covered in the manufacturer's protective [[cosmoline|rust preventative]].<ref name="FISH" /> Judge Thayer began private hearings to determine who had tampered with the evidence by switching the barrel on Sacco's gun. During three weeks of hearings, Albert Hamilton and Captain Van Amburgh squared off, challenging each other's authority. Testimony suggested that Sacco's gun had been treated with little care, and frequently disassembled for inspection. New defense attorney William Thompson insisted that no one on his side could have switched the barrels "unless they wanted to run their necks into a noose."<ref>Watson, p. 238</ref> Albert Hamilton swore he had only taken the gun apart while being watched by Judge Thayer. Judge Thayer made no finding as to who had switched the .32 Colt barrels, but ordered the rusty barrel returned to Sacco's Colt.<ref name="FISH" /> After the hearing concluded, unannounced to Judge Thayer, Captain Van Amburgh took both Sacco's and Vanzetti's guns, along with the bullets and shells involved in the crime to his home where he kept them until a ''Boston Globe'' exposé revealed the misappropriation in 1960. Meanwhile, Van Amburgh bolstered his own credentials by writing an article on the case for [[True Detective (magazine)|''True Detective Mysteries'']]. The 1935 article charged that prior to the discovery of the gun barrel switch, Albert Hamilton had tried to walk out of the courtroom with Sacco's gun but was stopped by Judge Thayer. Although several historians of the case, including Francis Russell, have reported this story as factual, nowhere in transcripts of the private hearing on the gun barrel switch was this incident ever mentioned. The same year the ''True Detective'' article was published, a study of ballistics in the case concluded, "what might have been almost indubitable evidence was in fact rendered more than useless by the bungling of the experts."<ref>Watson, p. 235</ref>

===Appeal to the Supreme Judicial Court===
The defense appealed Thayer's denial of their motions to the [[Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court|Supreme Judicial Court]] (SJC), the highest level of the state's judicial system. Both sides presented arguments to its five judges on January 11–13, 1926.<ref name=ehrmannxvii /> The SJC returned a unanimous ruling on May 12, 1926, upholding Judge Thayer's decisions.<ref name=ehrmannxvii /><ref>Watson, pp. 260–261</ref> The Court did not have the authority to review the trial record as a whole or to judge the fairness of the case. Instead, the judges considered only whether Thayer had abused his discretion in the course of the trial. Thayer later claimed that the SJC had "approved" the verdicts, which advocates for the defendants protested as a misinterpretation of the Court's ruling, which only found "no error" in his individual rulings.<ref>Frankfurter, p. 165</ref>

In November 1925, Celestino Medeiros, an ex-convict awaiting trial for murder, confessed to committing the Braintree crimes. He absolved Sacco and Vanzetti of participation in them.<ref>Watson, pp. 257–260; Tropp reproduces the original note Medeiros passed to Sacco in prison, Tropp, p. 34; on Medeiros's early life, see Russell, ''Case Resolved'', pp. 127–128</ref> In May, once the SJC had denied their appeal and Medeiros was convicted, the defense investigated the details of Medeiros' story. Police interviews led them to the Morelli gang based in Providence, Rhode Island. They developed an alternative theory of the crime based on the gang's history of shoe-factory robberies, connections to a car like that used in Braintree, and other details. Gang leader Joe Morelli bore a striking resemblance to Sacco.<ref>Watson, pp. 265–273; Young and Kaiser, pp. 141ff.</ref><ref>Ehrmann develops the theory at length. He consistently spells the name Medeiros without explanation. Ehrmann, pp. 404–431, and passim</ref><ref>In 1925 Joe Morelli denied any involvement in the Braintree robbery-murders (Watson, pp. 270–271). A 1973 Mafia informant's autobiography quotes his brother Frank Morelli saying of Sacco and Vanzetti: "Those two suckers took it on the chin for us. That shows you how much justice there really is." Young and Kaiser, pp. 151–152 (their dating of the autobiography to 1975 is mistaken); Vincent Teresa, ''My Life in the Mafia'' (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1973)</ref>

The defense filed a motion for a new trial based on the Medeiros confession on May 26, 1926.<ref name=ehrmannxvii /> In support of their motion they included 64 [[affidavit]]s. The prosecution countered with 26 affidavits.<ref>Watson, pp. 266–273, 279</ref> When Thayer heard arguments from September 13 to 17, 1926,<ref name=ehrmannxvii /> the defense, along with their Medeiros-Morelli theory of the crime, charged that the U.S. Justice Department was aiding the prosecution by withholding information obtained in its own investigation of the case. Attorney William Thompson made an explicitly political attack: "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!"<ref>Watson, pp. 273–275, 280</ref> Judge Thayer denied this motion for a new trial on October 23, 1926. After arguing against the credibility of Medeiros, he addressed the defense claims, saying it was suffering from "new type of disease: a belief in something that truly and in fact has no such existence."<ref name=ehrmannxvii /><ref>Watson, pp. 280–281</ref>

Three days later, the ''[[Boston Herald]]'' responded to Thayer's decision by reversing its longstanding position and calling for a new trial. Its editorial, "[[s:We Submit|We Submit]]", earned its author a [[Pulitzer Prize]].<ref>Pulitzer Prizes: [http://www.pulitzer.org/faceted_search/results/boston-herald-taxonomy-44 "Winners and Finalists: 1927"] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210216075153/https://www.pulitzer.org/faceted_search/results/boston-herald-taxonomy-44 |date=February 16, 2021 }}, accessed July 7, 2010</ref><ref>William David Sloan and Laird B. Anderson, eds., ''Pulitzer Prize Editorials: America's Best Writing, 1917–2003'' (Wiley-Blackwell, 2007), 3rd edition, pp. 33–36. Reprinted in Topp, ''Sacco and Vanzetti Case'', pp. 158–160; Frankfurter, ''Case of Sacco and Vanzetti'', pp. 115–118. Available online: [https://books.google.com/books?id=Gr-qbwUz864C&pg=PA3 Google Books].</ref> No other newspapers followed suit.<ref>Watson, p. 282</ref>

===Second appeal to the Supreme Judicial Court===
The defense promptly appealed again to the Supreme Judicial Court and presented their arguments on January 27 and 28, 1927.<ref name=ehrmannxvii /> While the appeal was under consideration, Harvard law professor and future [[Supreme Court of the United States|Supreme Court]] Justice [[Felix Frankfurter]] published an article in the ''[[The Atlantic|Atlantic Monthly]]'' arguing for a retrial. He noted that the SJC had already taken a very narrow view of its authority when considering the first appeal and called upon the court to review the entire record of the case. He called their attention to Thayer's lengthy statement that accompanied his denial of the Medeiros appeal, describing it as "a farrago of misquotations, misrepresentations, suppressions, and mutilations" that were "honeycombed with demonstrable errors."<ref>Frankfurter, ''Case of Sacco and Vanzetti'', p. 103. The article later was published, slightly expanded, in book form. Chief Justice of the United States [[William Howard Taft]] and some others who believed the pair guilty considered Frankfurter's article to be the foundation of most intellectuals' criticism of the Sacco and Vanzetti case. Robert Grant, ''Fourscore: An Autobiography'' (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1934), pp. 366–374</ref>

At the same time, Major [[Calvin Goddard (ballistics)|Calvin Goddard]] was a ballistics expert who had helped pioneer the use of the comparison microscope in forensic ballistic research. He offered to conduct an independent examination of the gun and bullet forensic evidence by using techniques that he had developed for use with the comparison microscope.<ref name="GOD">Goddard, Calvin H., ''Who Did The Shooting?'', ''Popular Science,'' Vol. 111 No. 5, {{ISSN|0161-7370}} (November 1927), pp. 21–22, 171</ref> Goddard first offered to conduct a new forensic examination for the defense, which rejected it, and then to the prosecution, which accepted his offer.<ref name="GOD"/> Using the comparison microscope, Goddard compared ''Bullet III'' and a .32 Auto shell casing found at the Braintree shooting with that of several .32 Auto test cartridges fired from Sacco's .32 Colt automatic pistol.<ref name="GRA">Grant, Robert, and Katz, Joseph, ''The Great Trials of the Twenties: The Watershed Decade in America's Courtrooms'', New York: Da Capo Press, {{ISBN|9781885119520}} (1998), p. 43</ref><ref name="GOD"/> Goddard concluded that not only did ''Bullet III'' match the rifling marks found on the barrel of Sacco's .32 Colt pistol, but that scratches made by the firing pin of Sacco's .32 Colt on the primers of spent shell casings test-fired from Sacco's Colt matched those found on the primer of a spent shell casing recovered at the Braintree murder scene.<ref name="GRA"/><ref name="GOD"/> More sophisticated comparative examinations in 1935, 1961, and 1983 each reconfirmed the opinion that the bullet the prosecution said killed Berardelli and one of the cartridge cases introduced into evidence were fired in Sacco's .32 Colt automatic.<ref name="GRA"/> However, in his book on new evidence in the Sacco and Vanzetti case, historian [[David E. Kaiser]] wrote that Bullet III and its shell casing, as presented, had been substituted by the prosecution and were not genuinely from the scene.<ref>Young and Kaiser, p. 106.</ref>

The Supreme Judicial Court denied the Medeiros appeal on April 5, 1927.<ref name=ehrmannxvii /> Summarizing the decision, ''[[The New York Times]]'' said that the SJC had determined that "the judge had a right to rule as he did" but that the SJC "did not deny the validity of the new evidence".<ref name=nytseven>''The New York Times'': [https://www.nytimes.com/1927/04/17/archives/what-seven-years-of-legal-struggle-have-developed-the-background-of.html Louis Stark, "What Seven Years of Legal Struggle Have Developed", April 17, 1927] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210216075154/https://www.nytimes.com/1927/04/17/archives/what-seven-years-of-legal-struggle-have-developed-the-background-of.html |date=February 16, 2021 }}, accessed June 22, 2010</ref> The SJC also said: "It is not imperative that a new trial be granted even though evidence is newly discovered and, if presented to a jury, would justify a different verdict."<ref>Watson, p. 289</ref>

===Sentencing===
On April 9, 1927, Judge Thayer heard final statements from Sacco and Vanzetti. In a lengthy speech Vanzetti said:<ref name=ehrmann458>Ehrmann, p. 458</ref><ref>Ehrmann provides the full record on the court's one-hour sentencing session, pp. 450–458</ref>

<blockquote>I would not wish to a dog or to a snake, to the most low and misfortunate creature of the earth, I would not wish to any of them what I have had to suffer for things that I am not guilty of. But my conviction is that I have suffered for things that I am guilty of. I am suffering because I am a radical and indeed I am a radical; I have suffered because I am an Italian and indeed I am an Italian ... if you could execute me two times, and if I could be reborn two other times, I would live again to do what I have done already.<ref>For Vanzetti's complete statement to the court, from which this quotation is excerpted, see {{cite web|url=http://college.cengage.com/history/ayers_primary_sources/statement_bartolomeo_vanzetti_1929.htm|title=Last Statement of Bartolomeo Vanzetti, 1929|access-date=Aug 24, 2013|archive-date=March 14, 2014|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140314043101/http://college.cengage.com/history/ayers_primary_sources/statement_bartolomeo_vanzetti_1929.htm|url-status=live}}</ref></blockquote>

Thayer declared that the responsibility for the conviction rested solely with the jury's determination of guilt. "The Court has absolutely nothing to do with that question." He sentenced each of them to "suffer the punishment of death by the passage of a current of electricity through your body" during the week beginning July 10.<ref name=ehrmann458 /> He twice postponed the execution date while the governor considered requests for [[Executive clemency#State law|clemency]].<ref>Watson, pp. 308, 333</ref>

On May 10, a package bomb addressed to Governor Fuller was intercepted in the Boston post office.<ref>Watson, pp. 303–304</ref>

===Clemency appeal and the Governor's Advisory Committee===
[[File:Alvin T Fuller.png|thumb|upright|Massachusetts Governor [[Alvan T. Fuller]]]]
[[File:De drie juristen, te weten Grant, Startton en Dr, SFA022004131.jpg|thumb|Grant, Stratton, and Lowell in 1927]]
In response to public protests that greeted the sentencing, Massachusetts Governor [[Alvan T. Fuller]] faced last-minute appeals to grant clemency to Sacco and Vanzetti. On June 1, 1927, he appointed an Advisory Committee of three: President [[Abbott Lawrence Lowell]] of Harvard, President [[Samuel Wesley Stratton]] of [[Massachusetts Institute of Technology|MIT]], and Probate Judge [[Robert Grant (novelist)|Robert Grant]]. They were presented with the task of reviewing the trial to determine whether it had been fair. Lowell's appointment was generally well received, for though he had controversy in his past, he had also at times demonstrated an independent streak. The defense attorneys considered resigning when they determined that the Committee was biased against the defendants, but some of the defendants' most prominent supporters, including Harvard Law Professor [[Felix Frankfurter]] and Judge [[Julian Mack|Julian W. Mack]] of the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, persuaded them to stay because Lowell "was not entirely hopeless".<ref>Herbert B. Ehrmann, ''The Case That Will Not Die: Commonwealth vs. Sacco and Vanzetti'' (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1969), p. 485</ref>

One of the defense attorneys, though ultimately very critical of the Committee's work, thought the Committee members were not really capable of the task the Governor set for them:
<blockquote>No member of the Committee had the essential sophistication that comes with experience in the trial of criminal cases. ... The high positions in the community held by the members of the Committee obscured the fact that they were not really qualified to perform the difficult task assigned to them.<ref name="Ehrmann, 255–256, 375, 512, 525ff">Ehrmann, pp. 255–256, 375, 512, 525ff.</ref></blockquote> He also thought that the Committee, particularly Lowell, imagined it could use its fresh and more powerful analytical abilities to outperform the efforts of those who had worked on the case for years, even finding evidence of guilt that professional prosecutors had discarded.<ref name="Ehrmann, 255–256, 375, 512, 525ff"/>

Grant was another establishment figure, a probate court judge from 1893 to 1923 and an Overseer of [[Harvard University]] from 1896 to 1921, and the author of a dozen popular novels.<ref>''The New York Times'': [https://select.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=FB0A15F63A54107A93C2AB178ED85F448485F9& "Ex-Judge Grant, Boston Novelist", May 20, 1940] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210216075159/https://www.nytimes.com/1940/05/20/archives/exjudge-grant-boston-novelist-member-of-commission-that-approved.html |date=February 16, 2021 }}, accessed December 20, 2009</ref> Some criticized Grant's appointment to the Committee, with one defense lawyer saying he "had a black-tie class concept of life around him", but [[Harold Laski]] in a conversation at the time found him "moderate". Others cited evidence of [[xenophobia]] in some of his novels, references to "riff-raff" and a variety of racial slurs. His biographer allows that he was "not a good choice", not a legal scholar, and handicapped by age. Stratton, the one member who was not a "[[Boston Brahmin]]", maintained the lowest public profile of the three and hardly spoke during its hearings.<ref>Bruce Watson, ''Sacco and Vanzetti: The Men, the Murders, and the Judgment of Mankind'' (NY: Viking, 2007), pp. 311–313</ref>

In their earlier appeals, the defense was limited to the trial record. The Governor's Committee, however, was not a judicial proceeding, so Judge Thayer's comments outside the courtroom could be used to demonstrate his bias. Once Thayer told reporters that "No long-haired anarchist from California can run this court!"<ref>Watson, p. 115</ref> According to the affidavits of eyewitnesses, Thayer also lectured members of his clubs, calling Sacco and Vanzetti "Bolsheviki!" and saying he would "get them good and proper". During the Dedham trial's first week, Thayer said to reporters: "Did you ever see a case in which so many leaflets and circulars have been spread ... saying people couldn't get a fair trial in Massachusetts? You wait till I give my charge to the jury, I'll show them!"<ref>Watson, p. 116.</ref> In 1924, Thayer confronted a Massachusetts lawyer at Dartmouth, his ''alma mater'', and said: "Did you see what I did with those anarchistic bastards the other day. I guess that will hold them for a while. ... Let them go to the Supreme Court now and see what they can get out of them."<ref>Watson, p. 252</ref> The Committee knew that, following the verdict, ''Boston Globe'' reporter Frank Sibley, who had covered the trial, wrote a protest to the Massachusetts attorney general condemning Thayer's blatant bias. Thayer's behavior both inside the courtroom and outside of it had become a public issue, with the ''[[New York World]]'' attacking Thayer as "an agitated little man looking for publicity and utterly impervious to the ethical standards one has the right to expect of a man presiding in a capital case."<ref>''The New York Times'': [https://www.nytimes.com/1933/04/19/archives/judge-thayer-dies-in-boston-at-75-internationally-known-as-the.html "Judge Thayer Dies in Boston at 75", April 19, 1933] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20181119045159/https://www.nytimes.com/1933/04/19/archives/judge-thayer-dies-in-boston-at-75-internationally-known-as-the.html |date=November 19, 2018 }}, accessed December 20, 2009</ref>

On July 12–13, 1927, following testimony by the defense firearms expert Albert H. Hamilton before the Committee, the Assistant District Attorney for Massachusetts, Dudley P. Ranney, took the opportunity to cross-examine Hamilton. He submitted affidavits questioning Hamilton's credentials as well as his performance during the New York trial of Charles Stielow, in which Hamilton's testimony linking rifling marks to a bullet used to kill the victim nearly sent an innocent man to the electric chair.<ref name="EVA"/><ref>Newby, Richard, ''Kill Now, Talk Forever: Debating Sacco and Vanzetti'', AuthorHouse Publishers, {{ISBN|9781420843934}} (2006), p. 594</ref>  The Committee also heard from Braintree's police chief who told them he had found the cap on Pearl Street, allegedly dropped by Sacco during the crime, a full 24-hours after the getaway car had fled the scene.  The chief doubted the cap belonged to Sacco and called the whole trial a contest "to see who could tell the biggest lies."<ref>Watson, p. 317.</ref>

After two weeks of hearing witnesses and reviewing evidence, the Committee determined that the trial had been fair and a new trial was not warranted. They assessed the charges against Thayer as well. Their criticism, using words provided by Judge Grant,<ref>Robert Grant, ''Fourscore: An Autobiography'' (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1934), p. 372</ref> was direct: "He ought not to have talked about the case off the bench, and doing so was a grave breach of judicial decorum." But they also found some of the charges about his statements unbelievable or exaggerated, and they determined that anything he might have said had no impact on the trial. The panel's reading of the trial transcript convinced them that Thayer "tried to be scrupulously fair". The Committee also reported that the trial jurors were almost unanimous in praising Thayer's conduct of the trial.<ref>''The New York Times'': [https://www.nytimes.com/1927/08/07/archives/advisers-hold-guilt-shown-report-to-governor-finding-trial-fair-and.html "Advisers Hold Guilt Shown", Aug. 7, 1927] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210216075200/https://www.nytimes.com/1927/08/07/archives/advisers-hold-guilt-shown-report-to-governor-finding-trial-fair-and.html |date=February 16, 2021 }}, accessed December 20, 2009; Later Grant allowed that he was "amazed and incensed" at the biased comments Judge Thayer made outside the courtroom.</ref>

A defense attorney later noted ruefully that the release of the Committee's report "abruptly stilled the burgeoning doubts among the leaders of opinion in New England."<ref>Ehrmann, p. 539;</ref> Supporters of the convicted men denounced the Committee. Harold Laski told Holmes that the Committee's work showed that Lowell's "loyalty to his class ... transcended his ideas of logic and justice."<ref>{{cite book|last=Steel|first=Ronald|title=Walter Lippmann and the American Century |year=1980 |publisher=Little, Brown|location=Boston|page=[https://archive.org/details/walterlippmanna00rona/page/229 229]|url=https://archive.org/details/walterlippmanna00rona|url-access=registration|isbn=9781412841153}}</ref>

Defense attorneys William G. Thompson and Herbert B. Ehrmann stepped down from the case in August 1927 and were replaced by [[Arthur D. Hill]].<ref>{{cite news|title=Supreme Court May Get Sacco-Vanzetti Case|newspaper=[[The Boston Daily Globe]]|date=August 5, 1927}}</ref>

==Protests and advocacy==
[[File:Save Sacco and Vanzetti.jpg|thumb|Protest for Sacco and Vanzetti in [[London]], 1921]]
In 1924, referring to his denial of motions for a new trial, Judge Thayer confronted a Massachusetts lawyer: "Did you see what I did with those anarchistic bastards the other day?" the judge said. "I guess that will hold them for a while! Let them go and see now what they can get out of the Supreme Court!" The outburst remained a secret until 1927 when its release fueled the arguments of Sacco and Vanzetti's defenders. The ''[[New York World]]'' attacked Thayer as "an agitated little man looking for publicity and utterly impervious to the ethical standards one has the right to expect of a man presiding in a capital case."<ref name=nytobit>''The New York Times'': [https://www.nytimes.com/1933/04/19/archives/judge-thayer-dies-in-boston-at-75-internationally-known-as-the.html "Judge Thayer Dies in Boston at 75"] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20181119045159/https://www.nytimes.com/1933/04/19/archives/judge-thayer-dies-in-boston-at-75-internationally-known-as-the.html |date=November 19, 2018 }}, ''The New York Times'', April 19, 1933. Accessed December 20, 2009</ref>

Many [[Socialism|socialists]] and [[intellectual]]s campaigned for a retrial without success. [[John Dos Passos]] came to Boston to cover the case as a journalist, stayed to author a pamphlet called ''Facing the Chair'',<ref>Watson, pp. 277, 294</ref> and was arrested in a demonstration on August 10, 1927, along with writer [[Dorothy Parker]], trade union organizer and Socialist Party leader [[Powers Hapgood]] and activist [[Catharine Sargent Huntington]].<ref>Watson, p. 331</ref><ref>{{Cite web | url=https://www.pphmuseum.org/blogging-through-the-museum/2016/7/11/catharine-sargent-huntington | title=Catharine Sargent Huntington | date=July 11, 2016 | access-date=February 16, 2021 | archive-date=January 11, 2020 | archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200111212300/https://www.pphmuseum.org/blogging-through-the-museum/2016/7/11/catharine-sargent-huntington | url-status=live }}</ref> After being arrested while picketing the State House, the poet [[Edna St. Vincent Millay]] pleaded her case to the governor in person and then wrote an appeal: "I cry to you with a million voices: answer our doubt ... There is need in Massachusetts of a great man tonight."<ref>Watson, p. 345</ref>

Others who wrote to Fuller or signed petitions included [[Albert Einstein]], [[George Bernard Shaw]] and [[H. G. Wells]].<ref>Watson, p. 294</ref> The president of the [[American Federation of Labor]] cited "the long period of time intervening between the commission of the crime and the final decision of the Court" as well as "the mental and physical anguish which Sacco and Vanzetti must have undergone during the past seven years" in a telegram to the governor.<ref>''The New York Times'': [https://select.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=FB0E15FA3C54177A93CBA91783D85F438285F9& "Green Begs Fuller to Extend Clemency to Sacco", August 9, 1927] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210216075222/https://www.nytimes.com/1927/08/09/archives/green-begs-fuller-to-extend-clemency-to-sacco-he-appeals-in-behalf.html |date=February 16, 2021 }}, accessed July 24, 2010</ref>

[[Italian Fascism|Italian fascist]] dictator [[Benito Mussolini]], the target of [[Assassination attempts on Benito Mussolini|two anarchist assassination attempts]], quietly made inquiries through diplomatic channels and was prepared to ask Governor Fuller to commute the sentences if it appeared his request would be granted.<ref>Philip Cannistraro, "Mussolini, Sacco-Vanzetti, and the Anarchists: The Transatlantic Context", ''Journal of Modern History'', vol. 68, No. 1 (March 1996), pp. 31–62. Italy had deported one of his attackers, [[Violet Gibson]], to Great Britain.</ref><ref>Tropp, p. 171, Mussolini's telegram to the Italian consul in Boston, July 23, 1927.</ref>

In 1926, a bomb presumed to be the work of anarchists destroyed the house of Samuel Johnson, the brother of Simon Johnson and garage owner that called police the night of Sacco and Vanzetti's arrest.<ref>Watson, p. 271</ref>

In August 1927, the [[Industrial Workers of the World]] (IWW) called for a three-day nationwide walkout to protest the pending executions.<ref>Donald J. McClurg, "The Colorado Coal Strike of 1927 – Tactical Leadership of the IWW", ''Labor History'', vol. 4, no. 1, Winter 1963, p. 71</ref> The most notable response came in the [[Walsenburg, Colorado|Walsenburg]] coal district of Colorado, where 1,132 out of 1,167 miners participated in the walkout. It led to the [[Industrial Workers of the World philosophy and tactics#Colorado coal strike (a case study)|Colorado coal strike of 1927]].<ref>Donald J. McClurg, "The Colorado Coal Strike of 1927 – Tactical Leadership of the IWW", ''Labor History,'' Vol. 4, No. 1, Winter, 1963, p. 72. See also Charles J. Bayard, "The 1927–1928 Colorado Coal Strike", ''Pacific Historical Review'', vol. 32, no. 3, August 1963, pp. 237–238</ref>

===Defendants in prison===
[[File:State prison 1900.jpg|thumb|[[Charlestown State Prison]], 1900]]
For their part, Sacco and Vanzetti seemed to alternate between moods of defiance, vengeance, resignation, and despair. The June 1926 issue of ''Protesta Umana,'' published by their Defense Committee, carried an article signed by Sacco and Vanzetti that appealed for retaliation by their colleagues. In the article, Vanzetti wrote, "I will try to see Thayer death {{sic}} before his pronunciation of our sentence", and asked fellow anarchists for "revenge, revenge in our names and the names of our living and dead."<ref>Watson, Bruce. ''Sacco and Vanzetti: The Men, the Murders, and the Judgment of Mankind'' (NY: Viking Press), 2007, {{ISBN|9780670063536}}, p. 264</ref> The article made a reference to ''[[La Salute è in voi|La Salute è in voi!]]'', the title of Galleani's bomb-making manual.
[[File:Protesta Umana, June 1926.jpg|thumb|The Sacco-Vanzetti Defense Committee newspaper relays a message from Sacco and Vanzetti: "La Salute è in voi!"]]
Both wrote dozens of letters asserting their innocence, insisting they had been framed because they were anarchists. Their conduct in prison consistently impressed guards and wardens. In 1927, the Dedham jail chaplain wrote to the head of an investigatory commission that he had seen no evidence of guilt or remorse on Sacco's part. Vanzetti impressed fellow prisoners at [[Charlestown State Prison]] as a bookish intellectual, incapable of committing any violent crime. Novelist [[John Dos Passos]], who visited both men in jail, observed of Vanzetti, "nobody in his right mind who was planning such a crime would take a man like that along."<ref>Watson, p. 277</ref> Vanzetti developed his command of English to such a degree that journalist [[Murray Kempton]] later described him as "the greatest writer of English in our century to learn his craft, do his work, and die all in the space of seven years."<ref>Kempton, p. 46</ref>

During the trial, Supreme Court Justice [[Louis Brandeis]], who was then in Washington, invited Sacco's wife to stay at his home near the courthouse.{{sfn|Parr|2009|p=59}}<ref name="Brandeis">{{cite journal|author=Hana Janjigian Heald |title=Prominent Supreme Court Justice was a Dedham Resident |journal=Dedham Historical Society Newsletter |year=2005 |issue=November |url=http://www.dedhamhistorical.org/newsletters/2005/dhs_news_11-05.doc |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20061231055640/http://www.dedhamhistorical.org/newsletters/2005/dhs_news_11-05.doc |archive-date=December 31, 2006}}</ref> Sacco's seven-year-old son, Dante, would sometimes stand on the sidewalk [[Norfolk County Jail (1817)|outside the jail]] and play catch with his father by throwing a ball over the wall.{{sfn|Parr|2009|p=59}}

==Execution and funeral==
[[File:Het uitdragen van de lijkkisten van Sacco en Vanzetti uit de rouwkamer in Boston (Mass, SFA022004132.jpg|thumb|Carrying out the coffins of Sacco and Vanzetti from the funeral home in Boston.]]
[[File:Duizenden mensen volgen de lijkwagens met daarin de stoffelijke overschotten van Nicola Sacco, SFA022004134.jpg|thumb|Thousands of people follow the hearses containing the remains of Sacco and Vanzetti on their way to the crematorium in Boston.]]
The executions were scheduled for midnight between August 22 and 23, 1927. On August 15, a bomb exploded at the home of one of the Dedham jurors.<ref>Watson, p. 334</ref> On Sunday, August 21, more than 20,000 protesters assembled on [[Boston Common]].<ref>Watson, p. 339</ref>

Sacco and Vanzetti awaited execution in their cells at [[Charlestown State Prison]], and both men refused a priest several times on their last day, as they were declared atheists. <ref>Watson, pp. 341–342, 344</ref><ref>{{cite news|title=Sacco and Vanzetti: Murderers or martyrs?|url=http://www. washingtontimes.com/news/2007/aug/24/sacco-and-vanzetti-murderers-or-martyrs/?page=all|newspaper=[[The Washington Times]]|access-date=October 6, 2014|date=August 24, 2007|quote=As anarchists, both were militant atheists to the point of refusing to be consoled by a priest in their final hours.|archive-date=February 16, 2021|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210216075209/https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2007/aug/24/sacco-and-vanzetti-murderers-or-martyrs/|url-status=live}}</ref> Their attorney William Thompson asked Vanzetti to make a statement opposing violent retaliation for his death and they discussed forgiving one's enemies.<ref>Watson, p. 343</ref> Thompson also asked Vanzetti to swear to his and Sacco's innocence one last time, and Vanzetti did. Celestino Medeiros, whose execution had been delayed in case his testimony was required at another trial of Sacco and Vanzetti, was executed first. Sacco was next and walked quietly to the [[electric chair]], then shouted "Farewell, mother."<ref name="nytexecution">{{cite news | title = Sacco and Vanzetti Put to Death Early This Morning | url = https://www.nytimes.com/learning/general/onthisday/big/0823.html | date = August 23, 1927 | newspaper = The New York Times | access-date = July 9, 2010 | archive-date = January 23, 2018 | archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20180123044716/http://www.nytimes.com/learning/general/onthisday/big/0823.html | url-status = live }}</ref><ref>Watson, pp. 345–346</ref> Vanzetti, in his final moments, shook hands with guards and thanked them for their kind treatment, read a statement proclaiming his innocence, and finally said, "I wish to forgive some people for what they are now doing to me."<ref name="nytexecution" /><ref>Watson, p. 346</ref> Following the executions, [[death mask]]s were made of the men.<ref>Brandeis University: [http://archon.brandeis.edu/index.php?p=collections/controlcard&id=71 "Sacco and Vanzetti collections: Mrs. Walter Frank Collection, 1927–1963"] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110719152733/http://archon.brandeis.edu/index.php?p=collections%2Fcontrolcard&id=71 |date=July 19, 2011 }}, accessed February 15, 2011</ref>

Violent demonstrations swept through many cities the next day, including Geneva, London, Paris, Amsterdam, and Tokyo. In South America wildcat strikes closed factories. Three died in Germany, and protesters in Johannesburg burned an American flag outside the American embassy.<ref>Watson, p. 347</ref> It has been alleged that some of these activities were organized by the [[Communist Party of the Soviet Union|Communist Party]].<ref>Bortman, p. 60: "An East German scholar researching in the Soviet Union archives in 1958 discovered that the Communist Party had instigated these 'spontaneous demonstrations.'"</ref>

At [[Clementina Poto Langone|Langone Funeral Home]] in Boston's [[North End, Boston|North End]], more than 10,000 mourners viewed Sacco and Vanzetti in open caskets over two days. At the funeral parlor, a wreath over the caskets announced ''In attesa l'ora della vendetta'' (Awaiting the hour of vengeance). On Sunday, August 28, a two-hour funeral procession bearing huge floral tributes moved through the city. Thousands of marchers took part in the procession, and over 200,000 came out to watch.<ref>{{cite news|title=200,000 See Huge Parade: Forced Used to Drive Back Line of Sacco-Vanzetti Marchers at Forest Hills|url=https://www.proquest.com/docview/251034781|newspaper=The Boston Globe|date=August 29, 1927|url-access=subscription|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160306202952/https://pqasb.pqarchiver.com/boston/doc/251034781.html?FMT=ABS&FMTS=ABS:AI&type=historic&date=Aug+29%2C+1927&author=&pub=Boston+Daily+Globe+%281923-1927%29&desc=200%2C000+SEE+HUGE+PARADE |archive-date=2016-03-06|id={{ProQuest|251034781}} |url-status=live}}</ref> Police blocked the route, which passed the State House, and at one point mourners and the police clashed. The hearses reached [[Forest Hills Cemetery]] where, after a brief eulogy, the bodies were cremated.<ref>Watson, pp. 348–350</ref> The ''Boston Globe'' called it "one of the most tremendous funerals of modern times".<ref>Watson, p. 349</ref>
[[Will H. Hays]], head of the motion picture industry's umbrella organization, ordered all film of the funeral procession destroyed.<ref>Young and Kaiser, p. 6</ref>

After their cremation, Sacco and Vanzetti's ashes were taken onto the [[SS Conte Grande|SS ''Conte Grande'']] and repatriated to Italy. Sacco's ashes were sent to [[Torremaggiore]], the town of his birth, where they are interred at the base of a monument erected in 1998. Vanzetti's ashes were buried with his mother in [[Villafalletto]].<ref>Watson, pp. 350, 371–372</ref>

==Legacy==
===Continuing protests and analyses===
{{See also|1927–1928 Colorado Coal Strike}}
[[Anarchism in Italy|Italian anarchist]] [[Severino Di Giovanni]], one of the most vocal supporters of Sacco and Vanzetti in Argentina, bombed the American embassy in Buenos Aires a few hours after the two men were sentenced to death.<ref name=Pigna/> A few days after the executions, Sacco's widow thanked Di Giovanni by letter for his support and added that the director of the tobacco firm ''Combinados'' had offered to produce a cigarette brand named "Sacco & Vanzetti".<ref name=Pigna/> On November 26, 1927, Di Giovanni and others bombed a Combinados tobacco shop.<ref name=Pigna/> On December 24, 1927, Di Giovanni blew up the headquarters of [[Citibank|The National City Bank of New York]] and of the [[BankBoston|Bank of Boston]] in Buenos Aires in apparent protest of the execution.<ref name=Pigna>[[Felipe Pigna]], ''Los Mitos de la historia argentina'', ed. Planeta, 2006, chapter IV "''Expropriando al Capital''", esp. 105–114</ref> In December 1928, Di Giovanni and others failed in an attempt to bomb the train in which [[President-elect of the United States|President-elect]] [[Herbert Hoover]] was traveling during his visit to Argentina.<ref name=Pigna/>

Three months later, bombs exploded in the [[New York City Subway]], in a Philadelphia church, and at the home of the mayor of Baltimore. The house of one of the jurors in the Dedham trial was bombed, throwing him and his family from their beds. On May 18, 1928, a bomb destroyed the front porch of the home of executioner [[Robert G. Elliott|Robert Elliott]].<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://newspapers.library.in.gov/cgi-bin/indiana?a=d&d=GH19280518-01.1.1 |title=Greencastle Herald 18 May 1928 – Hoosier State Chronicles: Indiana's Digital Historic Newspaper Program|website=Newspapers.library.in.gov |access-date=February 16, 2021|archive-date=February 16, 2021|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210216075200/https://newspapers.library.in.gov/cgi-bin/indiana?a=d&d=GH19280518-01.1.1|url-status=live}}</ref> As late as 1932, Judge Thayer's home was wrecked and his wife and housekeeper were injured in a bomb blast.<ref name="ReferenceA">''The New York Times'': [https://www.nytimes.com/1932/09/28/archives/bomb-menaces-life-of-sacco-case-judge-thayer-escapes-injury-wife.html "Bomb Menaces Life of Sacco Case Judge", September 27, 1932] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180416134933/https://www.nytimes.com/1932/09/28/archives/bomb-menaces-life-of-sacco-case-judge-thayer-escapes-injury-wife.html |date=April 16, 2018 }}, accessed December 20, 2009</ref> Afterward, Thayer lived permanently at his club in Boston, guarded 24 hours a day until his death on April 18, 1933.

In October 1927, [[H. G. Wells]] wrote an essay that discussed the case at length. He called it "a case like the [[Dreyfus affair|Dreyfus case]], by which the soul of a people is tested and displayed." He felt that Americans failed to understand what about the case roused European opinion:<ref name="Wells">''The New York Times'': [https://www.nytimes.com/1927/10/16/archives/wells-speaks-some-plain-words-to-us-he-asks-are-americans-a-sacred.html "Wells Speaks Some Plain Words to us"] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210216075153/https://www.nytimes.com/1927/10/16/archives/ |date=February 16, 2021 }}, October 16, 1927, accessed February 2, 2011</ref> However, many major cities in the United States held protests throughout the trial, proving otherwise.<ref name="Manhã 1927"/> <blockquote>The guilt or innocence of these two Italians is not the issue that has excited the opinion of the world. Possibly they were actual murderers, and still more possibly they knew more than they would admit about the crime. ... Europe is not "retrying" Sacco and Vanzetti or anything of the sort. It is saying what it thinks of Judge Thayer. Executing political opponents as political opponents after the fashion of [[Benito Mussolini|Mussolini]] and [[Joseph Stalin|Moscow]] we can understand, or bandits as bandits; but this business of trying and executing murderers as Reds, or Reds as murderers, seems to be a new and very frightening line for the courts of a State in the most powerful and civilized Union on earth to pursue.</blockquote>

In 1928, [[Upton Sinclair]] published his novel ''[[Boston (novel)|Boston]]'', in which he inserted fictional characters into the trial and execution. He explored Vanzetti's life and writings, as its focus, and mixed fictional characters with historical participants in the trials. Though his portrait of Vanzetti was entirely sympathetic, Sinclair disappointed advocates for the defense by failing to absolve Sacco and Vanzetti of the crimes, however much he argued that their trial had been unjust.<ref>For some continuing controversy over Sinclair's politics in this work, see the charges made in ''Los Angeles Times'': [https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2005-dec-24-me-sinclair24-story.html Jean O. Pasco, "Sinclair Letter Turns Out to Be Another Expose", December 24, 2005] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190722180334/https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2005-dec-24-me-sinclair24-story.html |date=July 22, 2019 }}, accessed July 6, 2010; for the rebuttal see Greg Mitchell "Sliming a Famous Muckraker: The Untold Story", ''Editor & Publisher'', January 30, 2006, available online as History News Network: [http://www.editorandpublisher.com/news/sliming-a-famous-muckraker-the-untold-story/ "Roundup: Talking About History"] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170615044722/http://www.editorandpublisher.com/news/sliming-a-famous-muckraker-the-untold-story/ |date=June 15, 2017 }}, accessed July 6, 2010</ref> Years later, he explained: "Some of the things I told displeased the fanatical believers; but having portrayed the aristocrats as they were, I had to do the same thing for the anarchists."<ref>Upton Sinclair, ''The Autobiography of Upton Sinclair'' (NY: Harcourt, Brace & World, Inc., 1962), p. 242</ref><ref>Leon Harris, ''Upton Sinclair, American Rebel'' (NY: Thomas Y. Crowell Company, 1975), pp. 243–251</ref> While doing research for the book, Sinclair was told confidentially by Sacco and Vanzetti's former lawyer Fred H. Moore that the two were guilty and that he (Moore) had supplied them with fake alibis; Sinclair was inclined to believe that that was, indeed, the case, and later referred to this as an "ethical problem", but he did not include the information about the conversation with Moore in his book.<ref>{{Cite news|url=https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5245754|title=Sacco and Vanzetti: Guilty After All?|website=Npr.org|access-date=February 16, 2021|archive-date=April 7, 2020|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200407074925/https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5245754|url-status=live}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web|url=http://archive.org/details/UptonSinclairLetterBeardsley|title=Upton Sinclair's 1929 letter to John Beardsley|date=August 29, 1929|via=Internet Archive}}</ref>

When the letters Sacco and Vanzetti wrote appeared in print in 1928, journalist [[Walter Lippmann]] commented: "If Sacco and Vanzetti were professional bandits, then historians and biographers who attempt to deduce character from personal documents might as well shut up shop. By every test that I know of for judging character, these are the letters of innocent men."<ref>Marion Denman Frankfurter and Gardner Jackson, eds., ''The Letters of Sacco and Vanzetti'' (NY: [[Vanguard Press]], 1929), p. xi</ref>  On January 3, 1929, as Gov. Fuller left the inauguration of his successor, he found a copy of the ''Letters'' thrust at him by someone in the crowd. He knocked it to the ground "with an exclamation of contempt."<ref>'' The New York Times'': [https://select.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=FB0D13FC3D5A167A93C6A9178AD85F4D8285F9& "Fuller Spurns Book of Sacco Letters", January 4, 1929] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210216075204/https://www.nytimes.com/1929/01/04/archives/fuller-spurns-book-of-sacco-letters-retiring-governor-knocks-from.html |date=February 16, 2021 }}, accessed July 28, 2010; Watson, p. 352. Garner Jackson, a longtime supporter of the defense, presented the volume, which carried an inscription warning the Governor that he would always be watched and paying tribute to its authors as "victims not of the laws but of men."</ref>  Having sentenced the two men to death, the judge boasted to a journalist friend '''"Did you see what I did to those anarchist bastards the other day?"'''.

Intellectual and literary supporters of Sacco and Vanzetti continued to speak out. In 1936, on the day when [[Harvard University|Harvard]] celebrated its 300th anniversary, 28 Harvard alumni issued a statement attacking the University's retired President Lowell for his role on the Governor's Advisory Committee in 1927. They included [[Heywood Broun]], [[Malcolm Cowley]], [[Granville Hicks]], and [[John Dos Passos]].<ref>Bruce Watson, ''Sacco and Vanzetti: The Men, the Murders, and the Judgment of Mankind'' (NY: Viking, 2007), pp. 311–315, 325–327, 356; ''The New York Times'': [https://www.nytimes.com/1978/02/01/archives/lowells-papers-on-sacco-and-vanzetti-are-released-a-letter-from.html "Lowell's Papers on Sacco and Vanzetti Are Released", Feb. 1, 1978] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210216075226/https://www.nytimes.com/1978/02/01/archives/lowells-papers-on-sacco-and-vanzetti-are-released-a-letter-from.html |date=February 16, 2021 }}, accessed December 28, 2009; ''New York Times'': [https://select.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=FA0A10F73F58107A93CBA81782D85F428385F9& "Assail Dr. Lowell on Sacco Decision", Sept. 19, 1936] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210216075207/https://www.nytimes.com/1936/09/19/archives/assail-dr-lowell-on-sacco-decision-pamphlet-signed-by-28-harvard.html |date=February 16, 2021 }}, accessed December 28, 2009</ref>

===Massachusetts judicial reform===
Following the SJC's assertion that it could not order a new trial even if there was new evidence that "would justify a different verdict", a movement for "drastic reform" quickly took shape in Boston's legal community.<ref name=nytseven /> In December 1927, four months after the executions, the Massachusetts Judicial Council cited the Sacco and Vanzetti case as evidence of "serious defects in our methods of administering justice." It proposed a series of changes designed to appeal to both sides of the political divide, including restrictions on the number and timing of appeals. Its principal proposal addressed the SJC's right to review. It argued that a judge would benefit from a full review of a trial, and that no one man should bear the burden in a capital case. A review could defend a judge whose decisions were challenged and make it less likely that a governor would be drawn into a case. It asked for the SJC to have right to order a new trial "upon any ground if the interests of justice appear to inquire it."<ref>''The New York Times'': [https://www.nytimes.com/1927/12/11/archives/proposed-reforms-echo-of-sacco-case-judicial-council-of-bay-state.html F. Lauriston Bullard, "Proposed Reforms Echo of Sacco Case", December 11, 1927] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210216075152/https://www.nytimes.com/1927/12/11/archives/proposed-reforms-echo-of-sacco-case-judicial-council-of-bay-state.html |date=February 16, 2021 }}, accessed June 22, 2010. Note: Bullard had written the ''Boston Herald's'' Pulitzer Prize-winning editorial earlier in the year. The ''Times'' explained that the Judicial Council was a body established by law in 1924 to recommend legal changes. It included lawyers and judges named by governor, including a judge or former judge of the SJC.</ref> Governor Fuller endorsed the proposal in his January 1928 annual message.<ref>''The New York Times'': [https://select.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=FB0D1FFC3A5B127A93C7A9178AD85F4C8285F9& "Fuller Urges Change in Criminal Appeals", January 5, 1928] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210216075204/https://www.nytimes.com/1928/01/05/archives/fuller-urges-change-in-criminal-appeals-seeks-legislation-enabling.html |date=February 16, 2021 }}, accessed June 22, 2010</ref>

The Judicial Council repeated its recommendations in 1937 and 1938. Finally, in 1939, the language it had proposed was adopted. Since that time, the SJC has been required to review all death penalty cases, to consider the entire case record, and to affirm or overturn the verdict on the law and on the evidence or "for any other reason that justice may require" (Mass. General Laws, 1939 ch. 341)<ref>Joughin, p. 537</ref><ref>[[Caspar Weinberger|Caspar Willard Weinberger]], "Review of Joughin and Morgan, ''Legacy of Sacco and Vanzetti''", in ''Stanford Law Review'', v. 1 (1949), pp. 573–578</ref><ref>''USA Today'': [https://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2007-09-23-1822387430_x.htm Denise Lavoie, "Sacco, Vanzetti case exhibited in Boston", September 23, 2007] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210216075223/https://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/nation/2007-09-23-1822387430_x.htm |date=February 16, 2021 }}, accessed August 5, 2006</ref>

===Historical viewpoints===
Many historians, especially legal historians, have concluded the Sacco and Vanzetti prosecution, trial, and aftermath constituted a blatant disregard for political [[civil liberties]], and especially criticize Thayer's decision to deny a retrial.

John W. Johnson has said that the authorities and jurors were influenced by strong [[Anti-Italianism|anti-Italian prejudice]] and the prejudice against immigrants widely held at the time, especially in New England.<ref name="JOH">Johnson, John W., ''Historic U.S. Court Cases'', Routledge Press, {{ISBN|0415930197}} (2001), pp. 62–65</ref> Against charges of racism and racial prejudice, [[Paul Avrich]] and Brenda and James Lutz point out that both men were known anarchist members of a militant organization, members of which had been conducting a violent campaign of bombing and attempted assassinations, acts condemned by most Americans of all backgrounds.<ref>Avrich (1996), ''Sacco and Vanzetti'', pp. 57, 150–152</ref><ref name="LUT">Lutz, Brenda J., and Lutz, James M., ''Terrorism in America'', New York: [[Palgrave Macmillan]], {{ISBN|9781403974600}} (2007), pp. 78–83</ref> Though in general anarchist groups did not finance their militant activities through bank robberies, a fact noted by the investigators of the Bureau of Investigation, this was not true of the [[Galleanisti|Galleanist]] group. [[Mario Buda]] readily told an interviewer: "''Andavamo a prenderli dove c'erano''" ("We used to go and get it [money] where it was")—meaning factories and banks.<ref name="AVR1"/> 

Johnson and Avrich suggest that the government prosecuted Sacco and Vanzetti for the robbery-murders as a convenient means to put a stop to their militant activities as Galleanists, whose bombing campaign at the time posed a lethal threat, both to the government and to many Americans.<ref name="JOH"/><ref>Avrich (1996), ''Sacco and Vanzetti'', p. 211</ref>  Faced with a secretive underground group whose members resisted interrogation and believed in their cause, Federal and local officials using conventional law enforcement tactics had been repeatedly stymied in their efforts to identify all members of the group or to collect enough evidence for a prosecution.<ref name="LUT"/>

Most historians believe that Sacco and Vanzetti were involved at some level in the Galleanist bombing campaign, although their precise roles have not been determined.<ref name="AVR1"/><ref>Avrich (1996), ''Sacco and Vanzetti'', pp. 197–205</ref> In 1955, [[Charles Poggi]], a longtime anarchist and American citizen, traveled to [[Savignano sul Rubicone|Savignano]] in the [[Emilia-Romagna]] region of Italy to visit old comrades, including the Galleanists' principal bombmaker, Mario "Mike" Buda.<ref name="AVR1"/> While discussing the Braintree robbery, Buda told Poggi, "''Sacco c'era''" (Sacco was there).<ref name="AVR1"/> Poggi added that he "had a strong feeling that Buda himself was one of the robbers, though I didn't ask him and he didn't say."<ref>Avrich, Paul, ''Anarchist Voices'', pp. 132–133. Quote: "Buda also told me that Sacco took part in the Braintree hold-up. 'Sacco was there' (''Sacco c'era''), he said. I remember it distinctly. I felt sure he was telling the truth. I didn't ask him who else was involved, but he didn't mention Vanzetti, and I assumed that he was not."</ref> Whether Buda and Ferruccio Coacci, whose shared rental house contained the manufacturer's diagram of a .32 Savage automatic pistol (matching the .32 Savage pistol believed to have been used to shoot both Berardelli and Parmenter), had also participated in the Braintree robbery and murders would remain a matter of speculation.<ref>Pernicone, Nunzio, ''Carlo Tresca: Portrait of a Rebel'', Oakland, CA: AK Press, {{ISBN|9781849350037}} (2010), p. 118</ref>

===Later evidence and investigations===
In 1941, anarchist leader [[Carlo Tresca]], a member of the Sacco and Vanzetti Defense Committee, told [[Max Eastman]], "Sacco was guilty but Vanzetti was innocent",<ref name="NEW">Newby, Richard, ''Kill Now, Talk Forever: Debating Sacco and Vanzetti'' (Bloomington: AuthorHouse, 2010), p. 572</ref> although it is clear from his statement that Tresca equated guilt only with the act of pulling the trigger, i.e., Vanzetti was not the principal triggerman in Tresca's view, but could have been an accomplice to Sacco. This conception of innocence is in sharp contrast to [[Pinkerton liability|the legal one]].<ref name="Singer 1987">Singer & LaFond, ''Criminal Law''. Aspen, 1987.</ref> Both ''[[The Nation]]'' and ''[[The New Republic]]'' refused to publish Tresca's revelation, which Eastman said occurred after he pressed Tresca for the truth about the two men's involvement in the shooting.<ref name="NEW"/> The story finally appeared in ''[[National Review]]'' in October 1961.<ref name="RUS">Russell, Francis, ''Sacco and Vanzetti: The Case Resolved'', New York: HarperCollins, {{ISBN|9780060155247}} (1986), pp. 25–27</ref> Others who had known Tresca confirmed that he had made similar statements to them,<ref name="RUS"/> but Tresca's daughter insisted her father never hinted at Sacco's guilt. Others attributed Tresca's revelations to his disagreements with the Galleanists.<ref>Watson, p. 362</ref>

Labor organizer Anthony Ramuglia, an anarchist in the 1920s, said in 1952 that a Boston anarchist group had asked him to be a false alibi witness for Sacco. After agreeing, he had remembered that he had been in jail on the day in question, so he could not testify.<ref>Russell, ''Resolved'', pp. 109–110, 225–226. Russell publicized Ramuglia's story in 1986.</ref>

Both Sacco and Vanzetti had previously fled to Mexico, changing their names in order to evade draft registration, a fact the prosecutor in their murder trial used to demonstrate their lack of patriotism and which they were not allowed to rebut. Sacco and Vanzetti's supporters would later argue that the men fled the country to avoid persecution and conscription; their critics said they left to escape detection and arrest for militant and seditious activities in the United States. However, a 1953 Italian history of anarchism written by anonymous colleagues revealed a different motivation:

<blockquote>Several dozen Italian anarchists left the United States for Mexico. Some have suggested they did so because of cowardice. Nothing could be more false. The idea to go to Mexico arose in the minds of several comrades who were alarmed by the idea that, remaining in the United States, they would be forcibly restrained from leaving for Europe, where the revolution that had burst out in Russia that February intended to spread all over the continent.<ref>{{Cite book |author=Anonymous |url={{GBurl|iUkFAAAAMAAJ}} |title=Un Trentennio di Attivita Anarchica (1914–1945) |trans-title=Thirty Years of Anarchist Activities |publisher=L'Antistato |year=1953 |language=it}}</ref></blockquote>

In October 1961, firearm and bullet comparisons were conducted with improved technology on Sacco's [[Colt's Manufacturing Company|Colt]] [[Semi-automatic firearm|semi-automatic]] pistol. The results confirmed that the bullet that killed Berardelli in 1920 was fired from Sacco's pistol.<ref name="Russell 110"/> The Thayer court's habit of mistakenly referring to Sacco's .32 Colt pistol as well as any other automatic pistol as a "revolver" (a common custom of the day) has sometimes mystified later-generation researchers attempting to follow the forensic evidence trail.<ref name="COM"/>

In 1987, Charlie Whipple, a former ''[[The Boston Globe|Boston Globe]]'' editorial page editor, revealed a conversation that he had with Sergeant Edward J. Seibolt in 1937. According to Whipple, Seibolt said that "we switched the murder weapon in that case", but indicated that he would deny this if Whipple ever printed it.<ref name="WHI">Whipple, Charles L., "A Reporter Illuminates Shady Evidence in Sacco-Vanzetti Testimony", ''Nieman Reports,'' Northwestern University, Vol. 43 (Winter 1987)</ref><ref>Thomas, Jack, "A Story of Trickery Told Much Too Late", ''Boston Globe'', January 7, 1988</ref> However, at the time of the Sacco and Vanzetti trial, Seibolt was only a patrolman, and did not work in the Boston Police ballistics department; Seibolt died in 1961 without corroborating Whipple's story.<ref name="WHI"/> In 1935, Captain Charles Van Amburgh, a key ballistics witness for the prosecution, wrote a six-part article on the case for a [[Pulp magazine|pulp detective magazine]]. Van Amburgh described a scene in which Thayer caught defense ballistics expert Hamilton trying to leave the courtroom with Sacco's gun. However, Thayer said nothing about such a move during the hearing on the gun barrel switch and refused to blame either side.  Following the private hearing on the gun barrel switch, Van Amburgh kept Sacco's gun in his house, where it remained until the ''Boston Globe'' did an exposé in 1960.<ref>Watson, p. 247</ref>

In 1973, a former mobster published a confession by Frank "Butsy" Morelli, Joe's brother. "We whacked them out, we killed those guys in the robbery", Butsy Morelli told [[Vincent Teresa]]. "These two greaseballs Sacco and Vanzetti took it on the chin."<ref>Vincent Teresa, ''My Life in the Mafia'' (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1973), pp. 44–46</ref>

Before his death in June 1982, Giovanni Gambera, a member of the four-person team of anarchist leaders who met shortly after the arrest of Sacco and Vanzetti to plan their defense, told his son that "everyone [in the anarchist inner circle] knew that Sacco was guilty and that Vanzetti was innocent as far as the actual participation in killing."<ref>The son reported this to [[Francis Russell (author)|Francis Russell]] in November 1982, who made it public in 1986. Francis Russell, "Clinching the Case", in ''New York Review of Books'', March 13, 1986.</ref>

Months before he died, the distinguished jurist [[Charles Edward Wyzanski, Jr.|Charles E. Wyzanski, Jr.]], who had presided for 45 years on the U.S. District Court in Massachusetts, wrote to Russell stating, "I myself am persuaded by your writings that Sacco was guilty." The judge's assessment was significant, because he was one of [[Felix Frankfurter]]'s "Hot Dogs", and Justice Frankfurter had advocated his appointment to the federal bench.<ref>{{Cite web |last=Newby |first=Richard |url=http://writing.upenn.edu/~afilreis/50s/newby-sacvan.html |title=Judge Wyzanski Makes History: Sacco and Vanzetti Reconvicted |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210216075208/http://writing.upenn.edu/~afilreis/50s/newby-sacvan.html |archive-date=February 16, 2021 |website=Writing |publisher=University of Pennsylvania |date=August 29, 1999 |access-date=July 31, 2008 |url-status=dead}}</ref>

The ''[[Los Angeles Times]]'' published an article on December 24, 2005, "Sinclair Letter Turns Out to Be Another Exposé", which refers to a newly discovered letter from [[Upton Sinclair]] to attorney John Beardsley in which Sinclair, a socialist writer famous for his muckraking novels, revealed a conversation with Fred Moore, attorney for Sacco and Vanzetti. In that conversation, in response to Sinclair's request for the truth, Moore stated that both Sacco and Vanzetti were in fact guilty, and that Moore had fabricated their alibis in an attempt to avoid a guilty verdict. The ''Los Angeles Times'' interprets subsequent letters as indicating that, to avoid loss of sales to his radical readership, particularly abroad, and due to fears for his own safety, Sinclair didn't change the premise of his novel in that respect.<ref>[https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2005-dec-24-me-sinclair24-story.html "Sinclair Letter Turns Out to Be Another Expose"] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190722180334/https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2005-dec-24-me-sinclair24-story.html |date=July 22, 2019 }}, ''[[Los Angeles Times]]''; accessed January 20, 2015.</ref> However, Sinclair also expressed in those letters doubts as to whether Moore deserved to be trusted in the first place, and he did not actually assert the innocence of the two in the novel, focusing instead on the argument that the trial they got was not fair.<ref>{{cite web |last=Mitchell |first=Greg |title=Sliming a Famous Muckraker: The Untold Story |website=editorandpublisher.com |url=http://www.editorandpublisher.com/news/sliming-a-famous-muckraker-the-untold-story/ |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170615044722/http://www.editorandpublisher.com/news/sliming-a-famous-muckraker-the-untold-story/ |archive-date=15 June 2017 |url-status=dead |access-date=4 September 2025}}</ref>

===Dukakis proclamation===
In 1977, as the 50th anniversary of the executions approached, Massachusetts Governor [[Michael Dukakis]] asked the Office of the Governor's Legal Counsel to report on "whether there are substantial grounds for believing—at least in the light of the legal standards of today—that Sacco and Vanzetti were unfairly convicted and executed" and recommend an appropriate action.<ref>"Report to the Governor in the Matter of Sacco and Vanzetti", July 13, 1977, in Upton Sinclair, ''Boston: A Documentary Novel'' (Cambridge, MA: Robert Bentley, Inc., 1978), pp. 757–790, quote p. 757</ref>  The resulting "Report to the Governor in the Matter of Sacco and Vanzetti" detailed grounds for doubting that the trial was conducted fairly in the first instance, and argued as well that such doubts were only reinforced by "later-discovered or later-disclosed evidence".<ref>"Report to the Governor" (1977), p. 761</ref> The report questioned prejudicial cross-examination that the trial judge allowed, the judge's hostility, the fragmentary nature of the evidence, and eyewitness testimony that came to light after the trial.  It found the judge's charge to the jury troubling for the way it emphasized the defendants' behavior at the time of their arrest and highlighted certain physical evidence that was later called into question.<ref>"Report to the Governor" (1977), pp. 761–769</ref>  The report also dismissed the argument that the trial had been subject to judicial review, noting that "the system for reviewing murder cases at the time ... failed to provide the safeguards now present."<ref>"Report to the Governor" (1977), pp. 768–773</ref>

Based on recommendations which were made by the Office of Legal Counsel, Dukakis declared that August 23, 1977, the 50th anniversary of their execution, was Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti Memorial Day.<ref>"Proclamation by the Governor" (1977), pp. 797–799; also included in Young and Kaiser, pp. 3–4, and Tropp, pp. 182–184.</ref> His proclamation, issued in English and Italian, stated that Sacco and Vanzetti had been unfairly tried and convicted and that "any disgrace should be forever removed from their names." He did not pardon them, because that would imply they were guilty. Neither did he assert their innocence.<ref>{{cite news |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1977/07/19/archives/around-the-nation-2d-group-of-city-workers-goes-on-strike-in.html |title=Massachusetts Admits Sacco-Vanzetti Injustice |newspaper=The New York Times |date=July 19, 1977 |access-date=June 2, 2010 |archive-date=November 6, 2012 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20121106055423/http://select.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=F30C13FC3A5E16738DDDA00994DF405B878BF1D3& |url-status=live }}</ref><ref name=icue>{{cite web |url=http://icue.nbcunifiles.com/icue/files/icue/site/pdf/1514.pdf |title=Governor Dukakis Discusses Impending Exoneration of Sacco and Vanzetti |series=iCue interview transcript |date=August 23, 1977 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120316173316/http://icue.nbcunifiles.com/icue/files/icue/site/pdf/1514.pdf |archive-date=March 16, 2012 |access-date=June 2, 2010}}</ref><ref>{{cite news |newspaper=The New York Times |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1977/05/22/archives/the-case-that-will-not-die.html |series=Editorial |title=The Case That Will Not Die |date=May 22, 1977 |access-date=June 2, 2010 |quote=An editorial on the occasion of the publication of Katherine Anne Porter's ''The Never-Ending Wrong'', urging Dukakis "''to concede that Massachusetts justice did not acquit itself well in this case and to acknowledge the enduring doubts about it''." |archive-date=November 6, 2012 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20121106055431/http://select.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=F60B1EFF3D5F127A93C0AB178ED85F438785F9& |url-status=live }}</ref> A resolution to censure Dukakis failed in the Massachusetts Senate by a vote of 23 to 12.<ref>''The New York Times'': [https://select.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=FB0D17F8345F167493C4A81783D85F438785F9& "Sacco-Vanzetti Vote Reversed", August 16, 1977] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140209191428/http://select.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=FB0D17F8345F167493C4A81783D85F438785F9& |date=February 9, 2014 }}, accessed June 2, 2010</ref> Dukakis later expressed regret only for not reaching out to the families of the victims of the crime.<ref>[http://www.southofboston.net/specialreports/saccovanzetti/pages/072705.shtml Rick Collins, "Forgotten victims: Descendants say both were hard-working family men"] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150924104045/http://www.southofboston.net/specialreports/saccovanzetti/pages/072705.shtml |date=September 24, 2015 }}, ''[[Patriot Ledger]]'', June 2, 2010, accessed July 31, 2008</ref>

==Later tributes==
[[File:Sacco and Vanzetti Poster.JPG|thumb|Memorial poster, French Ave and Pearl St, Braintree, Massachusetts]]
[[File:Memorial to victims.JPG|thumb|Memorial to the victims, French Ave and Pearl St, Braintree, Massachusetts]]
[[File:Sacco and Vanzetti trial memorial 1.jpg|thumb|A monument to the trial of Sacco and Vanzetti outside the Norfolk Superior Court in Dedham, Massachusetts.]]
[[File:Commemorazione Sacco e Vanzetti Carrara.jpg|thumb|The Sacco e Vanzetti monument in [[Carrara]].]]
A memorial committee tried to present a plaster cast that was constructed in 1937 by [[Gutzon Borglum]], the sculptor of [[Mount Rushmore]], to Massachusetts governors and Boston mayors in 1937, 1947, and 1957 without success. On August 23, 1997, on the 70th anniversary of the Sacco and Vanzetti executions, Boston's first [[Italian Americans|Italian-American]] Mayor, [[Thomas Menino]], and the Italian-American Governor of Massachusetts, [[Paul Cellucci]], unveiled the work at the [[Boston Public Library]], where it remains on display:

<blockquote>"The city's acceptance of this piece of artwork is not intended to reopen debate about the guilt or innocence of Sacco and Vanzetti," Menino said. "It is intended to remind us of the dangers of [[Miscarriage of justice|miscarried justice]], and the right we all have to a fair trial."<ref>Evie Gelastopoulos, "Sacco, Vanzetti memorial unveiled", in ''Boston Herald'', August 24, 1997.</ref></blockquote>The event occasioned a renewed debate about the fairness of the trial in the editorial pages of the ''Boston Herald''.<ref>"Editorial: Sacco, Vanzetti skepticism", ''Boston Herald'', August 21, 1997; Peter B. Agnes Jr., presiding judge of the Charlestown District Court, "Op Ed:Sacco and Vanzetti: Another view", ''Boston Herald'', August 27, 1992; Stephanie Schorow, "70 years later, jury remains out on Sacco and Vanzetti", ''Boston Herald'', August 22, 1997</ref>
A mosaic mural portraying the trial of Sacco and Vanzetti is installed on the main campus of Syracuse University.
In Braintree, Massachusetts, on the corner of French Avenue and Pearl Street, a memorial marks the site of the murders. The memorial has two exhibits.  The first is a weatherproof poster that discusses the crime and the subsequent trial.  The second exhibit is a metal plaque that memorializes the victims of the crime.

The "Sacco and Vanzetti [[Centuria (Spanish Civil War)|Centuria]]" was an American anarchist military unit in the [[Durruti Column]] that fought in the [[Spanish Civil War]].<ref>Beevor, Antony, ''The Battle for Spain'' (Penguin Books, 2006), p. 127</ref>

Many sites in the [[Post-Soviet states|former USSR]] are named after "Sacco and Vanzetti": for example, a beer-production facility in [[Moscow]],<ref>International Steam: [http://www.internationalsteam.co.uk/trains/russia20.htm "A Moscow Railway Miscellany, Russia, 2010"] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210216075158/https://www.internationalsteam.co.uk/trains/russia20.htm |date=February 16, 2021 }}, accessed July 9, 2010</ref> a [[Sakko i Vantsetti|kolkhoz]] in [[Donetsk]] region, Ukraine; and a street and an apartment complex in [[Yekaterinburg]].<ref>Google Maps: [https://maps.google.com/maps/place?cid=4856256975891039183&q=Sacco+and+Vanzetti+Apartment&gl=us&cd=1&cad=src:pplink&ei=yWA3TJjYI4z8yAW0zInKCw "Sacco and Vanzetti Apartment"] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210216075158/https://www.google.com/maps?cid=4856256975891039183&q=Sacco+and+Vanzetti+Apartment&gl=us&cd=1&cad=src:pplink&ei=yWA3TJjYI4z8yAW0zInKCw |date=February 16, 2021 }}, accessed July 9, 2010</ref> 'Sacco and Vanzetti' was also a popular brand of Russian pencil from 1930 to 2007. Numerous towns in Italy have streets named after Sacco and Vanzetti, including Via Sacco-Vanzetti in [[Torremaggiore]], Sacco's home town; and [[Villafalletto]], Vanzetti's.<ref>Watson, pp. 360, 371</ref>

In [[Bakhmut Raion]] in Eastern [[Ukraine]], there is [[Sakko i Vantsetti]], a small village that is named after them, and it was occupied by Russian forces from February to mid-May 2023 during the [[Battle of Bakhmut]].

In 2017, as part of an Eagle Scout project, a plaque was placed outside of Norfolk Superior Court commemorating the trial.<ref>{{cite web | url=https://jewishjournal.org/2019/10/10/malamut-earns-eagle-scout-ranking// | archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20191116144607/https://jewishjournal.org/2019/10/10/malamut-earns-eagle-scout-ranking// | archive-date=November 16, 2019 | title=Malamut earns Eagle Scout ranking – Jewish Journal | date=October 10, 2019 }}</ref> The Justinian Law Society
of Massachusetts owns the bound transcripts of the trial, with a verbatim transcription of testimony, objections, and statements by the attorneys and judge in the case.{{r|just}} In 2024, they loaned the books to the [[Dedham Museum and Archive]] for curation.<ref name=just>{{cite news | title = Dedham Museum & Archive obtains Sacco and Vanzetti trial transcripts | newspaper = The Dedham Times | pages = 1, 18 | volume = 38 | issue = 8 | date = February 23, 2024 }}</ref>

==References in popular culture==
[[File:КарандашШкольный45.jpg|thumb|1940s Russian pencil showing the 'Sacco & Vanzetti' name in [[Cyrillic script|Cyrillic lettering]]]]

===Plays===
* [[James Thurber]] and Elliot Nugent's 1940 play ''[[The Male Animal]]'' turns on a college professor's insistence on reading Vanzetti's statement at sentencing to his English composition class.<ref>James Thurber and Elliott Nugent, ''The Male Animal'' (NY: Samuel French, 1939), pp. 1, 15–17, 41, 128ff.</ref> It was adapted as a film the next year, starring [[Henry Fonda]] and [[Olivia de Havilland]].
* In 1992, Argentinian playwright {{ill|Mauricio Kartun|es}} premiered ''Sacco y Vanzetti: dramaturgia sumario de documentos sobre el caso'', under the direction of Jaime Kogan
* In 2000, the play ''Voices on the Wind'' by [[Eric Paul Erickson]] centers around the final hours of the lives of Sacco and Vanzetti. Former Massachusetts Governor [[Michael Dukakis]] recorded an audio clip of his public statement on the 50th anniversary of their execution for the production.<ref>Jay Reiner, "Theater Review: ''Voices On The Wind'' American Renegade Theatre", ''The Hollywood Reporter'', April 5, 2000.</ref>
* In 2001, [[Anton Coppola]] premiered his opera ''Sacco and Vanzetti''.<ref>Leonard J. Lehrman, ''Marc Blitzstein: A Bio-Bibliography'' (Westport, CT: Praeger Publishers, 2005), p. 527; [https://archive.today/20120721152351/http://oq.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/pdf_extract/19/4/754 Eugene H. Cropsey, "''Sacco and Vanzetti'': An American Opera Premiere"], ''Opera Quarterly'', 2003, vol. 19(4):754–780, accessed July 10, 2010</ref>
* In 2014, Joseph Silovsky wrote and performed in an Off-Broadway play about Sacco and Vanzetti, ''Send for the Million Men''.<ref>{{cite news|title=The Wheels of Justice, Circa 1927, via a Robot and Herky-Jerky Puppets|url=https://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/09/theater/send-for-the-million-men-revisits-sacco-and-vanzetti.html?_r=0|newspaper=[[The New York Times]]|date=December 8, 2014|access-date=April 23, 2014|archive-date=February 16, 2021|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210216075254/https://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/09/theater/send-for-the-million-men-revisits-sacco-and-vanzetti.html?_r=0|url-status=live}}</ref>

===Films and television===
* ''[[Sacco-Vanzetti Story]]'' was presented on television in 1960. The two-part drama starred [[Martin Balsam]] as Sacco and [[Steven Hill]] as Vanzetti.<ref>{{cite news|title=Friday|url=https://www.newspapers.com/clip/5565991/the_times_record/|newspaper=[[The Record (Troy)|The Times-Record]]|date=May 28, 1960|location=Troy, NY|page=46|via=[[Newspapers.com]]|access-date=June 12, 2016|archive-date=February 16, 2021|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210216075203/https://www.newspapers.com/clip/5565991/the-times-record/|url-status=live}} {{Open access}}</ref>
* In 1965, the [[British Broadcasting Corporation|BBC]] produced ''The Good Shoemaker and the Poor Fish Peddler'', a TV movie about the case.<ref>{{cite web |title=The Good Shoemaker and the Poor Fish Peddler |url=https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0492458/ |website=IMDb |access-date=2020-02-06 |archive-date=February 16, 2021 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210216075227/https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0492458/ |url-status=live }}</ref>
* ''[[Sacco & Vanzetti (1971 film)|Sacco & Vanzetti]]'', a 1971 film by Italian [[Film director|director]] [[Giuliano Montaldo]] covers the case, and it stars [[Riccardo Cucciolla]] and [[Gian Maria Volonté]] as Sacco and Vanzetti.<ref>Internet Movie Database: [https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0067698/ "''Sacco & Vanzetti'' (1971)"] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210216075213/https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0067698/ |date=February 16, 2021 }}, accessed August 10, 2010</ref> [[Joan Baez]] performed the song [[Here's to You (song)|"Here's To You"]] (music by [[Ennio Morricone]], lyrics by Baez) for the film. This same song was later used in the 2008 video game ''[[Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots]]'' as well as in its 2015 successor ''[[Metal Gear Solid V: Ground Zeroes]]''.
* In the 1971 TV show, Room 222, Episode "The Sins of the Fathers", aired Dec 10, 1971, the students use this case to retry in class. 
* In the 1972 comedy film ''[[Avanti!]]'', an American in Italy played by [[Jack Lemmon]] frustratedly asks, "Is this Italian justice?" and gets the response, "What about Sacco and Vanzetti?"
* The 2006 documentary ''[[Sacco and Vanzetti (2006 film)|Sacco and Vanzetti]]'' was directed by Peter Miller.<ref name=variety>{{cite news|url=https://www.variety.com/review/VE1117933239.html |title=Sacco and Vanzetti |website=Variety.com |first=Ronnie |last=Schieb |date=March 29, 2007 |publisher=Reed Business Information  |access-date=August 6, 2010}}</ref> Produced by Peter Miller and Editor Amy Linton, the film presents interviews with researchers and historians of the lives of Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti, and it also presents interviews with historians and researchers of their trial. It also presents forensic evidence that refutes the forensic evidence which was used by the prosecution during the trial. Prison letters which were written by the defendants are read by voice actors with [[Tony Shalhoub]] as Sacco and [[John Turturro]] as Vanzetti.<ref name=wtimes>{{cite news |url=http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2007/aug/24/sacco-and-vanzetti-murderers-or-martyrs/ |title=Sacco and Vanzetti: Murderers or martyrs? |date=August 24, 2007 |newspaper=[[The Washington Times]] |access-date=August 6, 2010 |archive-date=February 16, 2021 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210216075217/https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2007/aug/24/sacco-and-vanzetti-murderers-or-martyrs/ |url-status=live }}</ref> Interviewees include [[Howard Zinn]], [[Studs Terkel]], and [[Arlo Guthrie]].
* Sacco and Vanzetti are briefly mentioned in season 1 episode 8 of ''[[The Sopranos]]'', with Tony Soprano's son, Anthony Jr., mistaking them for the [[Antichrist]] until being corrected that the word he was thinking of was "anarchist".
*Sacco and Vanzetti were briefly mentioned in season 4 episode 4 of ''[[The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel]]'', when Asher mentions to Abe "they had great lawyers too and must've been a great comfort to them as they sat in their electric chairs listening to their brains melt".
* Sacco and Vanzetti are mentioned in season 8, episode 15 of the TV series, ''[[The Practice]]''.

===Music===
* In 1927, six Italian- and Neapolitan-language 78 rpm recordings on the topic of Sacco and Vanzetti were recorded by Italian immigrant artists on U.S. record labels: “A morte e Sacco e Vanzetti” (The death of Sacco and Vanzetti) sung by Giuseppe Milano; “I martiri d’un ideale” (Martyrs for an ideal), a spoken-word piece performed by F. De Renzis; “Lacreme ‘e cundannate (ovvero Sacco e Vanzetti)” (Tears for the condemned [or Sacco and Vanzetti]) and “Lettera a Sacco (P’o figlio suoio) (Letter to Sacco [For his son])” sung by Alfredo Bascetta; “Protesta per Sacco e Vanzetti (Protest on behalf of Sacco and Vanzetti), performed by the Compagnia Columbia; and “Sacco e Vanzetti” sung by Raoul Romito. The latter two recordings were listed on the Library of Congress's 2019 National Recording Registry.<ref>{{Cite web |last=Sciorra |first=Joseph |date=2019 |title="Protesta per Sacco e Vanzetti"--Compagnia Columbia; "Sacco e Vanzetti"--Raoul Romito (1927). Added to the National Registry: 2019 |url=https://www.loc.gov/static/programs/national-recording-preservation-board/documents/ProtestaperSaccoeVanzetti.pdf |access-date=August 8, 2024 |website=National Recording Registry Listing |archive-date=September 25, 2024 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240925201758/https://www.loc.gov/static/programs/national-recording-preservation-board/documents/ProtestaperSaccoeVanzetti.pdf |url-status=live }}</ref>
* In 1932, composer [[Ruth Crawford Seeger]] wrote the song "Sacco, Vanzetti" on commission from the Society of Contemporary Music in Philadelphia.<ref>Judith Tick, ''Ruth Crawford Seeger: A Composer's Search for American Music'' (NY: Oxford University Press, 1997), pp. 191–193</ref>
* American folk singer [[Woody Guthrie]] recorded a series of songs in 1946–1947 known as the ''[[Ballads of Sacco & Vanzetti]]'', eventually released in 1960.
* In 1963, [[Pulitzer Prize]]-winning American [[composer]] [[Roger Reynolds]] set selections of Vanzetti's letters to music in the chamber work ''Portrait of Vanzetti'' for narrator, mixed ensemble, and electronics.<ref>Elizabeth A. Brennan, Elizabeth C. Clarage, ''Who's Who of Pulitzer Prize Winners'' (Phoenix, AZ: Oryx Press, 1999), p. 446; Library of Congress: [http://memory.loc.gov/diglib/ihas/html/rreynolds/rreynolds-workslist.html The Roger Reynolds Collection: List of Works] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210216075206/http://memory.loc.gov/diglib/ihas/html/rreynolds/rreynolds-workslist.html |date=February 16, 2021 }}, accessed April 15, 2011</ref>
* American composer [[Marc Blitzstein]] started an [[opera]] about Sacco and Vanzetti, which was unfinished at the time of his death in 1964; [[Leonard Lehrman]] completed the work, ''[[Sacco and Vanzetti (Blitzstein opera)|Sacco and Vanzetti]]'', which premiered in 2001.<ref>Leonard J. Lehrman, ''Marc Blitzstein: A Bio-Bibliography'' (Westport, CT: Praeger Publishers, 2005), pp. 487–530; ''Time'': [https://web.archive.org/web/20101008091838/http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,894742,00.html "Music: A Hell of a Noble Story", March 7, 1960], accessed July 10, 2010</ref>
* The 1971 song "[[Here's to You (song)|Here's to You]]" by [[Joan Baez]] and [[Ennio Morricone]] is a tribute to them and became a symbol for the [[human rights]] movement of the 1970s. The two also wrote "The Ballad of Sacco and Vanzetti". [[Georges Moustaki]] adapted the song under the new title of "Marche de Sacco et Vanzetti" for his 1971 album ''[[:fr:Il y avait un jardin|Il y avait un jardin]]'' (''There was a garden'').<ref>Polydor 2473013</ref><ref>{{Cite journal |last=McGirr |first=Lisa |date=2007 |title=The passion of Sacco and Vanzetti: a global history |journal=The Journal of American History |volume=93 |issue=4 |pages=1085–1115 |doi=10.2307/25094597 |jstor=25094597 }}</ref><ref>{{Cite web | title=Le site officiel de Georges Moustaki | url=http://www.creatweb.com/moustaki/ | archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130531092938/http://www.creatweb.com/moustaki/ | archive-date=May 31, 2013 }}</ref>
* In 1976, the German folk group Manderley included the song "Sacco's Brief" (Sacco's Letter) on their album ''Fliegt, Gedanken, fliegt''.<ref>Record Heaven: [http://recordheaven.net/index.cfm?&iID=81966& Manderley: Fliegt Gedanken, fliegt (CD)] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210216075214/https://www.recordheaven.net/index.cfm?iID=81966 |date=February 16, 2021 }}, accessed May 8, 2011</ref>
* American folk singer [[Charlie King (folk singer)|Charles King]] wrote the song "Two Good Arms" about Sacco and Vanzetti in 1977 on the 50th anniversary of their death. The song has been performed by [[Holly Near]] and [[Ronnie Gilbert]].
* The song "Facing the Chair" about Sacco & Vanzetti, composed by [[Andy Irvine (musician)|Andy Irvine]], was recorded by [[Patrick Street]] for their 1988 album, ''[[No. 2 Patrick Street]]''. [[Bruce Molsky]] recorded the song on his 2022 CD, ''Everywhere You Go''.

===Written works, paintings===
{{clear}}
{{Panorama
|image = File:Sacco and Vanzetti mural at Syracuse University (Ben Shahn).jpg
|height = 200
|caption = Mosaic ''[[The Passion of Sacco and Vanzetti]]'' by [[Ben Shahn]] at [[Syracuse University]] (1967)}}{{clear}}
[[File:Sacco&Vanzetti3.jpg|thumb|right|Mosaic detail of Sacco and Vanzetti lying dead in their coffins, by Ben Shahn]]
* Upton Sinclair's 1928 book ''[[Boston (novel)|Boston]]'' is a fictional interpretation of the affair.<ref>Upton Sinclair, ''Boston: A Novel'' (NY: Albert & Charles Boni, 1928). Reissued as ''Boston: A Documentary Novel of the Sacco-Vanzetti Case'' (Cambridge, MA: R. Bentley, 1978)</ref>
* [[H. G. Wells]]'s 1928 book ''[[Mr. Blettsworthy on Rampole Island]]'' refers to the case and the main character's reaction to it.<ref>H. G. Wells, ''Mr. Blettsworthy on Rampole Island'' (London: 1928).</ref>
* In the early 1930s, [[Ben Shahn]] produced a series of works related to the case, notably ''[[The Passion of Sacco and Vanzetti]]'', owned by the [[Whitney Museum of American Art]] in New York City.<ref>Whitney Museum of American Art: [http://whitney.org/Collection/BenShahn "Ben Shahn, 1898–1969: The Passion of Sacco and Vanzetti, 1931–32"] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110728175023/http://whitney.org/Collection/BenShahn |date=July 28, 2011 }}, accessed July 3, 2010</ref> A similar 60-by-12-foot mural by Shahn, executed in marble and [[Vitreous enamel|enamel]], is installed on the east wall of Huntington Beard Crouse Hall at [[Syracuse University]].<ref>Ali Shehad Zaidi, "Powerful Compassion: The Strike At Syracuse", in ''[[Monthly Review]]'', September 1999</ref>
* In [[F. Scott Fitzgerald]]'s short story "[[The Price Was High|Six of One—]]" (1932), one of the characters is said to have been "arrested in the Sacco-Vanzetti demonstrations".<ref>{{Cite web|title=Six of One–|url=https://gutenberg.net.au/fsf/SIX-OF-ONE.html|access-date=2022-01-24|website=gutenberg.net.au|archive-date=January 24, 2022|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220124170818/https://gutenberg.net.au/fsf/SIX-OF-ONE.html|url-status=live}}</ref>
* The chapter 'Holding the Fort: The Night Sacco and Vanzetti Died' of [[Frank Moorhouse]]'s 1993 novel ''Grand Days'' depicts the violent demonstrations in Geneva following the execution.<ref>Frank Moorhouse, ''Grand Days'' (Sydney: Pan Macmillan Publishers, 1993)</ref>
* In 1935, [[Maxwell Anderson]]'s drama ''[[Winterset (play)|Winterset]]'' presented the story of a man who attempts to clear the name of his Italian immigrant father who has been executed for robbery and murder.<ref>''The New York Times'': [https://select.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=FB0D1FF63A5A107A93C4A9178BD95F418385F9& Brooks Atkinson, "'Winterset' and Mr. Anderson", October 6, 1935] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210216075221/https://www.nytimes.com/1935/10/06/archives/winterset-and-mr-anderson-a-new-plays-poetry-although-not-always-it.html |date=February 16, 2021 }}, accessed July 2, 2010</ref> It was adapted as a [[Winterset (film)|feature film]] a year later.<ref>Internet Movie Database: [https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0028511/ "Winterset (1936)"] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210216075223/https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0028511/ |date=February 16, 2021 }}, accessed July 2, 2010</ref>
* In 1936, the third novel in [[John Dos Passos]]' [[U.S.A. (trilogy)|''U.S.A.'' trilogy]], ''The Big Money'', Mary French works on the Sacco and Vanzetti Defense Committee and is arrested protesting their imminent executions.<ref>Michael Denning, ''The Cultural Front: The Laboring of American Culture in the Twentieth Century'' (NY: Verso, 1997), p. 193; [https://books.google.com/books?id=QY8pUkLRM1YC&pg=PA193 available online]</ref>
* [[James T. Farrell]]'s 1946 novel ''Bernard Clare'' uses the anti-Italian sentiment provoked by coverage of the case and the crowd scene in New York City's Union Square awaiting news of the executions as critical plot elements.<ref>''The New York Times'': [https://select.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=FA0B14F8345D107A93C0A8178ED85F428485F9&] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210216075229/https://www.nytimes.com/1946/05/12/archives/james-t-farrells-human-comedy-bernard-clare-adds-a-new-chapter-to-a.html|date=February 16, 2021}}[[F. O. Matthiessen]], "James T. Farrell's Human Comedy", May 12, 1946, accessed July 2, 2010</ref>
* Mark Binelli presented the two as a [[Laurel and Hardy|Laurel-and-Hardy]]-like comedy team in the 2006 novel ''[[Sacco and Vanzetti Must Die!]]''<ref>Mark Binelli, ''Sacco and Vanzetti Must Die!'' (Chicago: [[Dalkey Archive Press]], 2006)</ref>
* The trial is discussed in detail in [[Kurt Vonnegut]]'s 1979 novel ''[[Jailbird (novel)|Jailbird]]'', where Vonnegut suggests that the case, especially Medeiros' confession, is a modern-day parallel to the [[crucifixion of Jesus]].<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.wnyc.org/story/kurt-vonnegut-jailbird/|title=Kurt Vonnegut on Jailbird, His Watergate Novel|website=Wnyc.org|date=December 26, 2013|access-date=August 23, 2017|archive-date=November 28, 2017|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20171128170015/http://www.wnyc.org/story/kurt-vonnegut-jailbird/|url-status=live}}</ref>
* [[Rick Geary]] wrote a 2011 graphic novel titled ''The Lives of Sacco & Vanzetti'' as part of his Treasury of XXth Century Murder series.<ref>{{cite web |last1=Manning |first1=Shaun |title=Geary Recounts 'The Lives of Sacco & Vanzetti' |url=https://www.cbr.com/geary-recounts-the-lives-of-sacco-vanzetti/ |website=Cbr.com |date=June 23, 2011 |access-date=January 4, 2019 |archive-date=February 16, 2021 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210216075224/https://www.cbr.com/geary-recounts-the-lives-of-sacco-vanzetti/ |url-status=live }}</ref>
* In the novel ''[[Vita Nostra]]'' by [[Marina and Sergey Dyachenko]], ([[Maryna and Serhiy Dyachenko]]) the Institute for Special Technologies is on Sacco and Vanzetti street.
* In the novel ''Paradies Amerika'' by [[Egon Kisch]], Sacco and Vanzetti are mentioned as victims of a "barbaric judicial murder".<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.projekt-gutenberg.org/kisch/amerika/chap001.html|title=Paradies Amerika|website=www.projekt-gutenberg.org|access-date=January 9, 2020|archive-date=February 16, 2021|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210216075225/https://www.projekt-gutenberg.org/kisch/amerika/chap001.html|url-status=live}}</ref>
* Margo Laurie's 2022 novella ''The Anarchist's Wife'' is a fictionalized depiction of the Sacco and Vanzetti case.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Laurie |first=Margo |title=The Anarchist's Wife: A novella of the 1920s Sacco & Vanzetti case |publisher=Calleia Press |year=2022 |isbn=9781739898144}}</ref>
* Italian-American author Miriam Polli's 2025 novel ''Rosina'' is a fictionalized account of Rosina's experience and relationship with Nicco.<ref>{{Cite web |last=Serving House Books |date=2025-03-01 |title=Rosina |url=https://servinghousebooks.com/rosina/ |access-date=2025-03-06 |website=Serving House Books |language=en-US}}</ref>

===Poetry===
* [[John Dos Passos]] wrote the poem "They Are Dead Now", about the executions of Sacco and Vanzetti.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://historymatters.gmu.edu/d/4984/|title='They Are Dead Now': Eulogy for Sacco and Vanzetti|website=Gmu.edu|access-date=February 16, 2021|archive-date=February 16, 2021|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210216075221/http://historymatters.gmu.edu/d/4984/|url-status=live}}</ref>
* In his poem "[[America (poem)|America]]", [[Allen Ginsberg]] presents a catalog of slogans that includes the line: "Sacco and Vanzetti must not die".<ref>Allen Ginsberg, ''[[Howl and Other Poems]]'' (San Francisco: City Lights Books, 1956), p. 42</ref>
* [[Carl Sandburg]] described the execution of Sacco and Vanzetti in his poem "Legal Midnight Hour".<ref>Carl Sandburg, ''Selected Poems'', edited by
George Hendrick and Willene Hendrick (San Diego: Harcourt Brace, 1996), p. 63. [https://books.google.com/books?id=NmUWLxwhsWMC&pg=PA63 View]</ref>
* [[Edna St. Vincent Millay]] wrote a poem after the executions titled "Justice Denied In Massachusetts".<ref>PoemHunter: [http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/justice-denied-in-massachusetts/ "Justice Denied In Massachusetts"] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210216075221/https://www.poemhunter.com/poem/justice-denied-in-massachusetts/ |date=February 16, 2021 }}, accessed June 2, 2010</ref>
* [[William Carlos Williams]] wrote a poem entitled "Impromptu: The Suckers" in response to the trial.<ref>William Carlos William, ''Collected Poems 1921–1931'' (NY: The Objectivist Press, 1934)</ref>
* The Welsh poet [[Alun Lewis (poet)|Alun Lewis]], who died in World War II, wrote a poem in the form of a dramatic monologue titled "Sacco Writes to his Son".<ref>{{Cite book|title=Ha! Ha! Among the Trumpets|last=Lewis|first=Alun|publisher=George Allen & Unwin|year=1945|location=London}}</ref>

==See also==
* {{Portal inline|Biography}}
* [[Edward Holton James]]

== Citations ==
{{Reflist}}

==Works cited==
* {{cite book|first=Paul |last=Avrich|title=Sacco and Vanzetti: The Anarchist Background|location=Princeton, New Jersey|publisher=Princeton University Press|date=1991}}{{ISBN|9780691026046|}}
* {{cite book|last=Parr|first=James L. |title=Dedham: Historic and Heroic Tales from Shiretown|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=asV2CQAAQBAJ|access-date=August 15, 2019|date=2009|publisher=Arcadia Publishing Incorporated|isbn=9781625842770}}

==Further reading==
* [[Paul Avrich]], ''Anarchist Voices: An Oral History of Anarchism in America''. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1996. {{ISBN|9780691044941|}}.
* Eli Bortman, ''Sacco & Vanzetti''. Boston: Commonwealth Editions, 2005. {{ISBN|9781889833767}}.
* Robert D'Attilio, "La Salute è in Voi: the Anarchist Dimension" in ''Sacco-Vanzetti: Developments and Reconsiderations – 1979, Conference Proceedings'' (Boston: Trustees of the Public Library of the City of Boston, 1982). {{ISBN|9780890730676}}.
* Luigi Botta, "[https://www.academia.edu/22232911/Sacco_e_Vanzetti_giustiziata_la_verit%C3%A0 Sacco e Vanzetti: giustiziata la verità] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160301001720/https://www.academia.edu/22232911/Sacco_e_Vanzetti_giustiziata_la_verit%C3%A0 |date=March 1, 2016 }}" (prefazione di Pietro Nenni), Edizioni Gribaudo, Cavallermaggiore, Robert D'Attilio, "La Salute è in Voi: the Anarchist Dimension" in ''Sacco-Vanzetti: Developments and Reconsiderations'', 1978
* Luigi Botta, "[https://www.academia.edu/36526106/La_marcia_del_dolore_-_I_funerali_di_Sacco_e_Vanzetti_-_Una_storia_del_Novecento La marcia del dolore – I funerali di Sacco e Vanzetti – Una storia del Novecento] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200213151008/https://www.academia.edu/36526106/La_marcia_del_dolore_-_I_funerali_di_Sacco_e_Vanzetti_-_Una_storia_del_Novecento |date=February 13, 2020 }}", introduzione di Giovanni Vanzetti, contributi di Robert D'Attilio e Jerry Kaplan, contiene DVD del funerale, Nova Delphi Libri, Roma, 2017, {{ISBN|9788897376569}}.
* Luigi Botta, "[https://www.academia.edu/34234734/Sacco_and_Vanzetti_Cronologia_Strumenti_di_ricerca Sacco & Vanzetti (Cronologia – Strumenti di ricerca)] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220123190801/https://www.academia.edu/34234734/Sacco_and_Vanzetti_Cronologia_Strumenti_di_ricerca |date=January 23, 2022 }}", Edizioni Cristoforo Beggiami, Savigliano, 2017
* Luigi Botta, "[https://www.academia.edu/34325407/1927_2017_Sacco_e_Vanzetti 1927–2017 Sacco e Vanzetti]", Istituto Storico della Resistenza, Cuneo, 2017
* Luigi Botta, "[http://Le%20carte%20di%20Vanzettihttps://www.academia.edu/40713531/Le_carte_di_Vanzetti Le carte di Vanzetti]", Nino Aragno Editore, Torino, 2019, {{ISBN|9788884199966}}.
* Luigi Botta, "[https://www.academia.edu/126591148/Senza_pace_le_ceneri_di_Nick_e_Bart Senza pace le ceneri di Nick e Bart] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20250805200338/https://www.academia.edu/126591148/Senza_pace_le_ceneri_di_Nick_e_Bart |date=August 5, 2025 }}”, Zero in Condotta Edizioni, Milano, 2024, {{ISBN|9788895950846}}
* Martin H. Bush (1968). ''[[Ben Shahn]]: The Passion of Sacco and Vanzetti, with an Essay and Commentary by Ben Shahn''. Syracuse, New York: Syracuse University. 
* Herbert B. Ehrmann, ''The Case That Will Not Die: Commonwealth vs. Sacco and Vanzetti'', Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1969. {{ISBN|9780491000246}}.
* [[Howard Fast]], ''The Passion of Sacco and Vanzetti: A New England Legend''. New York: Blue Heron Press, 1953. {{ISBN|9780837155845}}.
* David Felix, ''Protest: Sacco-Vanzetti and the Intellectuals'', Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1965.
* Roberta Strauss Feuerlicht, ''Justice Crucified, The Story of Sacco and Vanzetti'', McGraw-Hill Book Company, 1977
* [[Felix Frankfurter]], [https://www.theatlantic.com/unbound/flashbks/oj/frankff.htm "The Case of Sacco and Vanzetti"], ''Atlantic Monthly'', March 1927. <small> – Reprinted in book form as ''The Case of Sacco and Vanzetti: A Critical Analysis for Lawyers and Laymen''. Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1927.</small>
* James Grossman, "The Sacco-Vanzetti Case Reconsidered", in ''Commentary'', January 1962
* Brian Harris, ''Injustice''. Sutton Publishing. 2006.
* Brian Jackson, ''The Black Flag: A Look Back at the Strange Case of Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti'', Boston: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1981
* G. Louis Joughin and Edmund M. Morgan, ''The Legacy of Sacco and Vanzetti''. New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1948.
* Joseph B. Kadane and David A. Schum, ''A Probabilistic Analysis of the Sacco and Vanzetti Evidence'', Wiley Series in Probability & Mathematical Statistics, 1996
* [[Murray Kempton]], ''Part of our Time: Some Monuments and Ruins of the Thirties''. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1955.
* [[Eugene Lyons]] ''[https://archive.org/details/lifedeathsaccovanzetti The Life and Death of Sacco and Vanzetti]''. New York: International Publishers, 1927.
* Eugene Lyons, ''Assignment in Utopia''. New York: Harcourt Brace, 1937.
* Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court ruling denying new trial at [[Case citation]] 255 Mass. 369, decided May 12, 1926.
* Robert Montgomery, ''Sacco-Vanzetti: The Murder and the Myth''. New York: Devin-Adair, 1960.
* [[Michael Musmanno]], ''After Twelve Years''. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1939.
* John Neville, ''Twentieth-Century Cause Cèlébre {{sic}}: Sacco, Vanzetti, and the Press, 1920–1927''. Westport, CT: Praeger, 2004.
* Richard Newby, ''Kill Now, Talk Forever: Debating Sacco and Vanzetti''. Bloomington, IN: AuthorHouse, 2002.
* [[Katherine Anne Porter]], ''The Never-Ending Wrong'', Boston: Little, Brown, 1977.
* ''Report to the Governor in the Matter of Sacco and Vanzetti'', Boston: Commonwealth of Massachusetts, 1977.
* [[Francis Russell (author)|Francis Russell]], ''Sacco and Vanzetti: The Case Resolved''. New York: Harper & Row, 1986.
* Francis Russell, ''Tragedy in Dedham: The Story of the Sacco-Vanzetti Case''. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1962.
* Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti, ''The Letters of Sacco and Vanzetti''. New York: Octagon Books, 1928.
* Nicola Sacco, ''The Sacco-Vanzetti Case''. New York: Russell & Russell, 1931.
* ''Sacco-Vanzetti: Developments and Reconsiderations – 1979, Conference Proceedings'', Boston: Trustees of the Public Library of the City of Boston, 1979.
* ''The Sacco-Vanzetti Case: Transcript of the Record of the Trial of Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti in the Courts of Massachusetts'', 6 vols., New York: Henry Holt & Co., 1928–29
* [[Upton Sinclair]], ''[[Boston (novel)|Boston: A Documentary Novel of the Sacco-Vanzetti Case]]'', Cambridge: R. Bentley, 1978
* James E. Starrs, "Once More Unto the Breech: The Firearms Evidence in the Sacco and Vanzetti Case Revisited", ''Journal of Forensic Sciences'' (1986), pp.&nbsp;630–654, 1050–1078.
* Susan Tejada, ''In Search of Sacco & Vanzetti: Double Lives, Troubled Times, & the Massachusetts Murder Case that Shook the World''. Boston: Northeastern University Press, 2012.
* [[Moshik Temkin]], ''[[The Sacco-Vanzetti Affair: America on Trial]]''. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2009.
* Lorenzo Tibaldo, ''Sotto un cielo stellato. Vita e morte di Nicola Sacco e Bartolomeo Vanzetti'', Turin: Claudiana, 2008.
* Michael M. Topp, ''The Sacco and Vanzetti Case: A Brief History with Documents''. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin's, 2005.
* Bruce Watson, ''Sacco and Vanzetti: The Men, the Murders, and the Judgment of Mankind''. New York: Viking Press, 2007.
* Robert P. Weeks, ''Commonwealth vs. Sacco and Vanzetti''. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1958.
* William Young and David E. Kaiser, ''Postmortem: New Evidence in the Case of Sacco and Vanzetti'', Amherst, MA: University of Massachusetts Press, 1985.

==External links==
{{Commons category|Sacco and Vanzetti}}
{{Wikiquote|Bartolomeo Vanzetti}}
* [http://www.katesharpleylibrary.net/6m90j4 The Sacco-Vanzetti case] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110514003927/http://www.katesharpleylibrary.net/6m90j4 |date=May 14, 2011 }} at the Kate Sharpley Library
* [http://www.saccoandvanzetti.org/ The Sacco and Vanzetti Commemoration Society] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080819235125/http://saccoandvanzetti.org/ |date=August 19, 2008 }}
* [https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/workers/sacco-vanzetti/index.htm Sacco and Vanzetti Archive] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230213074727/https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/workers/sacco-vanzetti/index.htm |date=February 13, 2023 }} at [[marxists.org]]
* [https://libcom.org/article/american-writers-and-sacco-vanzetti-case-carol-vanderveer-hamilton Carol Vanderveer, "American Writers and the Sacco-Vanzetti Case", 2001] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230213074727/https://libcom.org/article/american-writers-and-sacco-vanzetti-case-carol-vanderveer-hamilton |date=February 13, 2023 }}
* [https://web.archive.org/web/20060629113452/http://www.willowpondfilms.com/sacco_and_vanzetti.html ''Sacco and Vanzetti'' Documentary]
* [https://web.archive.org/web/20070220165108/http://www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/SaccoV/s%26vaccount.html The Sacco-Vanzetti Case: An Account], "Famous American Trials". – Overview of case by Professor Douglas O. Linder, [[UMKC]] School of Law
* {{LCAuth|n50015221|Nicola Sacco|16|}}
* {{LCAuth|n50044953|Bartolomeo Vanzetti|24|}}
* [http://id.lib.harvard.edu/aleph/000601707/catalog Sacco-Vanzetti Case Records, 1920–1928] at [http://hls.harvard.edu/library/ the Harvard Law School Library] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180222002311/http://hls.harvard.edu/library/ |date=February 22, 2018 }}, [http://hls.harvard.edu/library/historical-special-collections/ Historical & Special Collections] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180221232737/http://hls.harvard.edu/library/historical-special-collections/ |date=February 21, 2018 }}
* [http://id.lib.harvard.edu/aleph/004395371/catalog Sacco-Vanzetti Trial newspaper clippings, April–November 1927] at [http://hls.harvard.edu/library/ the Harvard Law School Library], [http://hls.harvard.edu/library/historical-special-collections/ Historical & Special Collections]
* [http://findingaids.brandeis.edu/search?filter_term%5B%5D=%7B%22subjects%22%3A%22Sacco-Vanzetti+Trial%2C+Dedham%2C+Mass.%2C+1921%22%7D&page=1 Sacco and Vanzetti collections] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20201019221409/http://findingaids.brandeis.edu/search?filter_term%5B%5D=%7B%22subjects%22%3A%22Sacco-Vanzetti+Trial%2C+Dedham%2C+Mass.%2C+1921%22%7D&page=1 |date=October 19, 2020 }}, Robert D. Farber University Archives & Special Collections Department, Brandeis University, Boston, Massachusetts – 4 separate archives: (1) Francis Russell collection 1921–1965, (2) Gardner Jackson Collection 1896–1965, (3) Mrs. Walter Frank Collection, 1927–1963, (4) Tom O'Connor Collection 1920–1965
* [http://findingaids.brandeis.edu/repositories/2/archival_objects/32618 Citizens National Committee for Sacco-Vanzetti/Sacco-Vanzetti National League] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210612055446/http://findingaids.brandeis.edu/repositories/2/archival_objects/32618 |date=June 12, 2021 }}, Robert D. Farber University Archives & Special Collections Department, Brandeis University, Boston, Massachusetts
* Frankfurter, Felix. {{Google books|yHQGAQAAIAAJ|The Case of Sacco and Vanzetti: A Critical Analysis for Lawyers and Laymen}}
*[https://digitalarchives.sec.state.ma.us/index.php?name=SO_30f0cae6-65cf-4ed7-bf28-32e16a6c8611 Digital Archives Sacco and Vanzetti case]
{{Sacco and Vanzetti}}
{{Anarchism}}
{{Dedham}}

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[[Category:Sacco and Vanzetti| ]]
[[Category:1927 deaths]]
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