The Legacy of Sacco & Vanzetti

Alvan Fuller

Even Judge Webster Thayer was clearly prejudiced against the defendants. Besides his strong support of inappropriate cross-examination by Katzmann, his comments and instructions to the jury were appeals to their patriotism and loyalty, couched in false high purpose. Further, he was heard on several occasions, both during the trial and during the long appeal process, to make prejudicial comments about Sacco and Vanzetti. Robert Benchley, the noted humorist, was told by a friend of his that Thayer had told him (the friend) that, "A bunch of parlor radicals are trying to get those Italian bastards off. I'll see them hanged and I'd like to hang a few dozen of the radicals, too." Benchley's friend later denied that he had reported Thayer's remarks. Also, during the trial, Thayer commented to an associate University Club member that "we have to protect ourselves against anarchists and Reds," as well as describing the evidence against Sacco and Vanzetti while the trial was still in progress. After the trial, in November, 1924, after denying the second of the appeal motions, he told Professor James P. Richardson of Dartmouth College, "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."

Even Governor Fuller's Advisory Committee (discussed below) commented that Thayer's remarks had been "inappropriate."

After Thayer pronounced the sentence of death on April 9, 1927, Governor Alvan T. Fuller of Massachusetts was petitioned by Thompson and Ehrmann for executive clemency. Fuller, a highly successful automobile dealer, was not known for being particularly charitable in either business or politics.

However, bowing to public pressure, Fuller undertook a personal review of the case, interviewing Vanzetti in his cell, Mrs. Sacco, and others. On June 1, Fuller appointed an Advisory Committee later called by the columnist Heywood Broun as "executioners in frock coats" consisting of the president of MIT, Samuel Stratton, an elderly retired legal scholar, Robert A. Grant, and the president of Harvard, A. Lawrence Lowell. Lowell, on the strength of his unimpeachable integrity and exceptional intellect, assumed chairmanship of the committee.

Lowell was, however, a snob of the highest order, a member of the Boston Brahmins descended from extremely wealthy mill owners, and a man who harbored intense hatred of Jews, such as Felix Frankfurter, a professor at his own law school and an advocate of Sacco and Vanzetti who had written an impassioned defense of Sacco and Vanzetti in the Atlantic Monthly a few months before the Advisory Committee was appointed.

In effect, the Lowell Committee retried the case in the matter of a few weeks, examining previously excluded evidence favorable to Sacco and Vanzetti. Lowell dominated the proceedings, wrote the final report, and excluded or deliberately misinterpreted evidence supporting Sacco and Vanzetti's innocence. They submitted their report to Fuller, and on August 3, 1927, Fuller announced that he was denying the petition for clemency.