Sacco and Vanzetti: The Men, the Murders, and the Judgment of Mankind (Penguin Us)
by Bruce Watson
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Book Summary Information
Author: Bruce WatsonEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2008-11-25
ISBN: 014311428X
Number of pages: 448
Publisher: Penguin (Non-Classics)
Book Reviews of Sacco and Vanzetti: The Men, the Murders, and the Judgment of Mankind (Penguin Us)
Book Review: "We practice law, not justice." Oliver Wendell Holmes
Summary: 5 Stars
"We practice law, not justice."
These words were spoken by then Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes one of the many times he denied leave to appeal in the matter of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts v. Sacco and Vanzetti. Yet, inadvertantly, they seem to capture the perverse sense one gets upon learning of the facts of this case.
What started as an armed robbery in 1920 in South Braintree Massachusetts would become one of the many claimants to being the trial of the century when Massachusetts police captured an charged Bartolomeo Vanzetti and Nicola Sacco with the robbery and related murder of two money couriers.
The prosecution was by Harvard educated Frederick Katzmann, the elected Norfolk and Plymouth County District Attorney. Katzmann -- as this book observes -- did not want to be known as the man who let Sacco and Vanzetti get away. For the defense was the firey Fred Moore, who was often at odds with presiding judge Webster Thayer.
In the 1921 six week trial nearly two hundred witnesses were heard but the case came to involve three issues which would go on to haunt it over the next seven years: 1) the unreliability of the eye witness testimony which put Sacco and Vanzetti at the crime scene, 2) the unreliability of then infant science of ballistics and finally 3) the Defendants' ethnicity and politics.
It was that last issue -- the Defendants' ethnicity and politics -- which would come to so heavily contribute to the passion evoked by the supporters of Sacco and Vanzett like John Dos Passos, Edna St. Vincent Millay, Albert Einstein, George Bernard Shaw and H.G. Wells. Sadly, and perhaps counter productively, the Defendants also numbered Communists and supporters of anarchy among their following. These later groups went a long way towards infuriating the traditional middle of the roaders who tend to dominate politics not to mention the ultra conservatives like presiding Judge Webster Thayer, whose viewpoints were centrally critical to the justice ultimately afforded Sacco and Vanzetti.
Wisely, this book steers clear of extremes at it follows this case through its trial and post trial coverage. Though quickly convicted the Defendants repeatedly appealed based on witnesses re-canting or changing their testimony, the firearms evidence coming under attack from peer review and ultimately even the defense identifying another group of potential Defendants (one of whom was the spitting image of Nicola Sacco) who it was able to connect with the robbery and murder.
However, the book does make clear that had wiser heads prevailed, the Defendants probably would have been granted their requested new trial. That's where the quote at the beginning of this review comes in. "We practice law, not justice" was a sly reference to the idea that Massachusetts law did not allow set aside of jury verdicts -- even where new evidence would result in acquittal -- unless the presiding judge abused his discretion. That meant that even if the judge erred on his reading of the law, his errors would not result in a new trial unless they were actually an abuse of discretion. It's high standard. In fact, it was so high the Massachusetts legislature later changed Massachusetts law to more closely resemble that of other states which allow new evidence as a basis for new trial.
As a trial attorney, my review was that both Katzmann and Thayer paradoxically were able to follow the letter of the law while constantly evading its spirit. In that way, I read their actions in much the same way that voters angry over the outcome of the 2000 election read the actions of the Supreme Court...technically justifiable yet somewhow still Wrong in the captial W sense. My opinion was especially boltsered given the fact that Sacco and Vanzetti were both ultimately given that most ultimate of punishments: the death sentence.
Summary of Sacco and Vanzetti: The Men, the Murders, and the Judgment of Mankind (Penguin Us)
In this groundbreaking narrative of one of America?s most divisive trials and executions, award-winning journalist Bruce Watson mines deep archives and newly available sources to paint the most complete portrait available of the ?good shoemaker? and the ?poor fish peddler.? Opening with an explosion that rocks a quiet Washington, D.C., neighborhood and concluding with worldwide outrage as two men are executed despite widespread doubts about their guilt, Sacco & Vanzetti is the definitive history of an infamous case that still haunts the American imagination.Historical Books
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