Sacco and Vanzetti Executed After Controversial Trial
In 1920s America, fears of radicalism, immigration, and anarchism ran high following World War I and the Russian Revolution. Italian immigrants Nicola Sacco, a shoemaker, and Bartolomeo Vanzetti, a fish peddler, both anarchists, were arrested in connection with a 1920 payroll robbery and murder in Braintree, Massachusetts. Their 1921 trial featured disputed ballistics evidence, eyewitness identifications later questioned, and judicial bias from Judge Webster Thayer, who openly expressed prejudice against their politics and ethnicity. Despite worldwide protests, appeals, and a 1927 review committee upholding the verdict, they were electrocuted at Charlestown State Prison just after midnight on August 23, 1927. Governor Michael Dukakis later issued a 1977 proclamation declaring the trial unfair.
Why it matters: The case exposed flaws in the American justice system regarding political radicals and immigrants, galvanizing civil liberties organizations like the ACLU and prompting reforms in trial procedures and evidence standards. It became a symbol of injustice that influenced 20th-century debates on capital punishment, due process, and xenophobia, resonating in later movements for fair trials and against political persecution.