Sacco and Vanzetti

The 1920s were a revolutionary time period for the United States. Many people fought for what they believed and many wanted our government to be reformed to fit what they thought was a better lifestyle for the American people. Many groups turned to violent tactics to convey their message to the rest of the nation. One such group was led by Luigi Galleani. This group used bombs and other mortal tactics to attempt to over throwing the American government in hopes of implementing communism. Sacco and Vanzetti were two self-proclaimed first generation Italian anarchists who were framed of murdering a shoe factory pay master and his guard due to their ties to Galleani and his followers. Many of the evidence and testimonies used by the prosecutor in the trial seemed to have been tampered with in order to coax the jury to convict these men guilty of a crime they did not commit.

Much of the physical evidence seemed to be warped or tapered with in order to help force the jury to view in favor of the prosecution. In the 1920s gun forensics was just beginning to become better developed. A way to test and match bullets to the gun they were fired from had just been discovered. This was done by firing similar bullets from the gun and matching markings created by the barrel to bullet shells found at the crime scene. When the bullets where tested only one of four bullets matched the gun’s barrel. If the weapon was used to kill the paymaster then why does only one of the four bullets match the gun’s barrel? The answer is the one matching bullet was planted with the bullets either during the investigation or at the crime scene. Also, the gun was under the custody of the cops and other federal investigators and was taken apart several times for “examination”. It has been suggested that the barrel or whole gun was replaced in order to match the weapon to the bullets and therefore tagging it as the murder weapon. Along with the gun being tampered with another piece of physical evidence was a hat found at the scene of the crime. The hat was said not to fit Sacco by two newspaper sketch artists. Though this is true the prosecution still tried to convince the jury that the hat did in fact belong to Sacco.

Not only did the prosecution tamper with the physical evidence they also seemed to tamper with testimonies. A specific case is that of the eyewitness testimony of a bookkeeper named Mary Splaine. She told the jury that she was sure that she saw Sacco fleeing the scene in the getaway car. Yet, when she was cross-examined she did not want to identify Sacco and said she said had only seen the getaway car from about a half-block away.1 This seemed to be a reoccurring theme many people would identify Vanzetti or Sacco after saying they had witnessed or seen them around the crime scene. This tampering was due to the fact that the judge and prosecuting attorney did not like neither Italian based on their anarchist background. Both the judge and attorney were caught on a number