Sacco and Vanzetti

From Conservapedia

Sacco and Vanzetti were two anarchists who immigrated to Boston from Italy. They had dodged the draft for World War I and were tried in 1921 for an afternoon robbery and murder of a shoe factory paymaster and a security guard as they carried a $16,000 payroll. Liberals in America decried trying individuals for their beliefs rather than their actions, and questions about the fairness of such a trial in Boston were raised from the beginning. They had skilled defense counsel in a famous labor attorney, but no Italians were included in the jury (none may have been in the jury pool). The defense counsel eliminated every businessman from the jury. Witnesses for the prosecution were weak, with one testifying that the murderer spoke good English (the defendants did not). The prosecution identified only one bullet as being from Sacco's gun, with no explanation as to the source of the other three bullets found at the scene. The stolen money was never found.

The defendants took the witness stand in their defense, but were subjected to relentless questioning about their political beliefs. Defense counsel repeatedly objected to such questions, but the judge overruled the objections and allowed them. There is widespread agreement that the judge never should have permitted so much questioning about political beliefs at the trial.^{[Citation Needed]}

The jury returned a guilty verdict after more than a day deliberations. (At an earlier trial, a different jury had convicted them of a similar crime.) Faced with international protests against the prosecution, the Massachusetts governor appointed a commission to examine the trial and evidence. Throughout the 1920s the case was a flashpoint for protests. Finally, after the commission announced it agreed with the verdict, Sacco and Vanzetti were executed in 1927.

Vanzetti, who sported a distinctive handlebar mustache, maintained his innocence to the end. His final words to the judge before execution were these: "I would not wish to [a dog or snake] 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 was an Italian, and indeed I am an Italian; I have suffered more for my family and for my beloved than for myself; but I am so convinced to be right that 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."

Among liberals, sympathy has continued for Sacco and Vanzetti ever since. Much is made of a confession by another death row inmate to having perpetrated the crime. But the judge found that unreliable. However, the judge had earlier criticized a jury for acquitting an anarchist, and seemed determined to do what he could to end anarchy in America. Fifty years after the executions of Sacco and Vanzetti, in 1977, Massachusetts Democratic governor Michael Dukakis signed a resolution pardoning them, apologizing to them and establishing a day in honor of them. However, many remain convinced of their guilt.^{[Citation Needed]}