Sacco and Vanzetti

- Yg. 1927, No. 18 -

On the 9. In April 1927, the two Italian workers Sacco and Vanzetti were sentenced to death for the second time in Boston. This case of Sacco-Vanzetti is an example of political jurisprudence and unfair handling of justice, as was the case of Dreyfus in France, Fechenbach and Hölz ​​in Germany. The two Italians are at 5. May 1920 has been arrested under the charge, on 15. Two employees of a South Braintree (Mass.) Company were murdered in April of the same year. The two murdered had to transport pay money and were killed in front of a shoe store by a gang, which had then made in the New England States the stealing of treasurers to their specialty. The gang escaped in a car carrying the 15 750 dollars that had fallen into their hands.

Since 1920, the two innocents are in custody; after the last death sentence issued a few weeks ago they are supposed to be released by the 10 in the week. to 16. Executed this July. The reason they were arrested is political: they were anarchists and had organized a series of protests at that time, in which they campaigned against the American judiciary because the Italian worker Andrea Salsedo was arrested without explanation and had been detained for eight weeks; until he was finally released as a corpse again. (Even later, the arrest of Salsedo was not justified.) Sacco and Vanzetti were therefore very uncomfortable with the American judiciary; In order to destroy them, the badly brought charges of robbery were charged against them. The case against them is the illegal legal purpose to assassinate two opponents of corrupt justice. An example that also has parallels in European countries.

There is no evidence of any connection with the criminal world, nor is there any clue to finding the other members of the gang - somehow related to the two detainees - to Sacco and Vanzetti. Already in the first trial, 1921, ten witnesses have sworn that Sacco was at the time of the Boston murder; even more have sworn that Vanzetti was in Plymouth at the same time (in America, not in England). Nevertheless, even then, 1921, a death sentence has been made. And although thirteen witnesses summoned by the prosecution could not identify either of the two defendants, twenty-two other witnesses determined that none of them had participated in the robbery. Of the five that identified Sacco and Vanzetti as the killers, three were untrustworthy: two because of their character and one because of the contradictions that existed between his testimony and those of other witnesses.

The other two were two girls who had seen the car with the band of robbers zoom by for exactly one and a quarter seconds. This time was enough for them to recognize a whole host of details from Sacco (they couldn't say anything about Vanzetti), e.g. For example, that the man was a little taller than she, weighed about 140-145 pounds, was cleanly shaven, had thin cheeks, dark brows, dark hair, high forehead, greenish-white complexion, straightened, angular shoulders, and had hair combed back ; that this hair was "between two and two and a half inches long"; that he was wearing a green shirt and that his face was clear and fine. "He was a muscular, active-looking man and had a strong left hand, a mighty hand." Captured all of this in less than a second? How to take it: in the preliminary examination the two girls did not dare to identify Sacco; but a few weeks later one of them, Miss Splaine, said that by "thinking about it" she had gained certainty. And the other joined her.

For seven years, Sacco and Vanzetti have been innocently imprisoned. The socialists, communists, truly liberal, truly democratic people of many countries, including America, have demanded in numerous protests the release of the two victims of a rotten justice: in vain - the bourgeoisie wants to have her victim. You do not sting your conscience for a minute in this judicial murder.

1927, 18 - Max Barth

Sacco and Vanzetti are at the 23. August 1927 was executed in Boston on the electric chair after the Governor of Massachusetts, Fuller, had refused a pardon.