The Legacy of Sacco & Vanzetti
The Appeals
Roughly speaking, the period from the jury's verdict (July 14, 1921) to the executions of Sacco and Vanzetti (August 23, 1927) was a long and tortuous battle of appeals, first for a new trial, and, at the end, for clemency.
There is no question that Fred Moore botched the defense of Sacco and Vanzetti. His abrasive style irritated both Judge Thayer and the jury, and his lack of preparation of his witnesses resulted in devastating cross-examination by Katzmann. Had it not been for the courageous intervention of McAnarney, the defense would have been in ever greater disarray.
Shortly after their conviction, Sacco and Vanzetti were represented in their appeals by the highly respected William G. Thompson and his young associate, Herbert B. Ehrmann.
There were a number of appeals, the earliest ones on legal grounds, such as the verdict being contrary to the weight of the evidence, and the discovery of defense witnesses that strongly contradicted prosecution witnesses.
The striking features of this appeal process at the time are that the trial judge, Webster Thayer, was permitted by Massachusetts law to act upon the appeals, and that the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts would overturn a trial judge's rulings on the appeal on "points of law and/or procedure" only. With Thayer completely in command of the legal processes, the appeals went nowhere. Two of the later appeals appear to be of great importance.
The Medeiros Confession and the Morelli Gang:
On November 18, 1925, Celestino F. Medeiros, also in the jail in Dedham, sent the following note through a messenger to Sacco:
"I hear by confess to being in the South Braintree shoe company crime and Sacco and Vanzetti was not in said crime."
Medeiros was awaiting his appeal for a new trial, being held for murder of a bank cashier. While some of his accounts given to Thompson and Ehrmann were false, it was clear that he had, for a time, been a member of the Morelli gang, a professional group of criminals who had been involved with the stealing of shoes from freight cars, including shoes of the Slater and Morrill Company of South Braintree. When Madeieros had been arrested, he had a sum of money on him about equal to one-fifth of the South Braintree payroll. (It is worth noting that none of the $16,000 was ever connected to Sacco and Vanzetti.) All but two of the gang were not in jail on April 15, 1920, and all were first-generation Italian-Americans, without accents a fact noted by prosecution witnesses, that the killers spoke without accents. Further, the leader of the gang, Joe Morelli, bore a striking resemblance to Sacco.
All in all, given the importance of eye-witness testimony and the professional nature of the crime, a case as strong or stronger could be made against the Morelli gang for the South Braintree crimes. Thompson and Ehrmann presented a point-by-point comparison of the evidence that could be presented between the two groups of suspects, Sacco and Vanzetti, and the Morelli gang.
Judge Thayer rejected the appeal based on the new evidence of Madeieros and the Morellis, citing the unreliability of the primary witness, Madeieros.
A striking resemblance between Morelli and Sacco
