Violent Demonstrations Feared

Sun (Auckland), Volume 1, Issue 115, 5 August 1927, Page 9

Violent Demonstrations Feared

AMERICAN PUBLIC STIRRED Two Italians Sentenced to Death demonstrations are feared by the United States Government in regard to the decision that two Italians must die for a murder allegedly committed by them in 1920. Public feeling has been stirred, and there are threatened strikes of protest. Many people consider that new evidence brought forward since the original trial should be weighed, but this the justice authorities have not agreed to. By Cable. —Press Association. — Copyright.

NEW YORK, Thursday. The two Italians, Nicolai Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti, who are in prison at Boston under sentence of death for the murder of a pay-clerk and his guard in 1920, have been refused a pardon by the Governor of Massachusetts, Mr. Alvan Fuller. Both men will be electrocuted on August 11. Mr. Fuller says he considers the trial was fair and the men were guilty. Their only chance now lies in an appeal to the United States Supreme Court. Public opinion in America and throughout the world is said to be against this decision. Sympathetic strikes in protest against the executions have been threatened in this country and abroad. The decision of the State Governor came as a complete surprise. It was broadcast over the entire world immediately, owing to the enormous interest which has been evidenced in the fate of the two men.—A. and N.Z. PUBLIC BUILDINGS GUARDED Simultaneously with the police precautions taken in many parts of Europe and South America, to protect American embassies and consulates from possible violence by sympathisers with Sacco and anzetti. Extra guards are also posted round the Government buildings here, including the Treasury, post office and State Department. POLICE ESCORTS Governor Fuller and others connected with the case have been givm special police protection; but Judge Thayer, who tried the pair, is at present on vacation at his summer home and has refused escorts. —A. and N.Z. AN AMAZING STORY JUSTICE IN AMERICA Sacco and Vanzetti were condemned for a double murder, an incident of a £3,000 pay-roll robbery which occurred in South Braintree, Massachusetts, on April 15, 1920. These murders were a climax to a series of motor hold-ups which had filled the newspapers. That was also the year of a violent anti-alien crusade engineered by A. Mitchell Palmer, Attorney-General of the United States. Two Italian printers named Salsedo and Elia were arrested. A Boston sympathiser, Bartolomeo Vanzetti, was sent to New York to attempt legal steps in their behalf Vanzetti and Sacco read in a paper that Salsedo had been found crushed on the pavement below the 11-storey-high oflices of the Department of Justice where they had been held prisoner. FOUND GUILTY That same evening, while trying to borrow, a small automobile, the pro-

pertv of a comrade, they were taken j from a trolley car by a policeman and delivered at a neighbouring police ! station. Soon witnesses of the South Braintree murders were callpd in, and also witnesses of an earlier attempted pay-roll hold-up which had occurred in the neighbouring town of Bridgewater. Some of these “identified” Sacco as the man who had played a spectacular part in the South Braintree murders, and others “identified” Vanzetti as the man who had shot at the pay-roll truck in Bridgewater. Certain witnesses called by the defence who had said that neither Sacco nor Vanzetti were the men they had seen were told by the police officers that their testimony would not be needed. The upshot of these “identifica tions” was that Vanzetti was promptly tried, found guilty of the water crime and sentenced to 15 years in the State prison. Later he was joined with Sacco for the South Braintree crime, and the two of them were found guilty of murder in the first degree. NEW EVIDENCE Then new evidence, striking in character and tending to vitiate such evidence as had presumably weighed with the jury, began to come in, and no fewer than seven motions for a new trial were filed. All were argued before the judge in the previous trials, and all were rejected. This decision was upheld by a higher court. Meanwhile a youth named Celestlno P. Madeiros said that he himself had participated in the crime for which Sacco and Vanzetti had been condemned, and that neither of them had a part therein. His confession was supported by strong corrobora tion from other sources. William G. Thompson, a distinguished lawyer, urged the prosecuting officers to ex amine Madeiros jointly with him; and he urged Judge Thayer, before whom the new evidence was again to be heard, himself to examine Madeiros and other witnesses. Both of these requests were refused. APPEALS REJECTED The Madeiros motion was heard on affidavits in September, 1926. Judge Thayer, in an amazing opinion filed on October 23, 1926, refused to submit this new evidence to a jury. Judge Thayer’s second opinion was dealt with on appeal by the Supreme Judicial Court on January 21, 22 and 23, 1927, and the appeal was rejected in an opinion published May 5, 1927. it was the claim that two men should be executed practically on the word of a single judge, no jury having had an opportunity to consider a large amount of newly discovered evidence, which aroused public protest and led to the appeal for the Governor, Mr. Fuller, to exercise his constitutional right and review the whole evidence in the case.