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Sacco and Vanzetti: Guilty as Charged

by Edward M. Joffe

243 pages; quality trade paperback (softcover); catalogue #07-0435; ISBN 1-4251-2031-8; US$19.95, C$22.94, EUR15.55, £10.31

The case of Sacco and Vanzetti was a rare causes célèbres. No other American trial invoked such an image of injustice. Yet, this was a myth. Both were guilty as charged.

About the Book

On August 23, 1927, in Boston's Charlestown Prison, Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti were electrocuted for the murders of Alessandro Berardelli and Frederick A. Parmenter. The following Sunday, August 28, over two hundred thousand people lined the streets to watch the funeral procession. Between seven and eight thousand marched wearing scarlet armbands that read: "Remember, Justice Crucified".

Sacco-Vanzetti defenders had included Bertrand Russell, H. G. Wells, Harold Laski, Marie Curie, Albert Einstein, Walter Lippmann, Robert M. Lovett, Arthur M. Schlesinger Sr., John Dewey, H. L. Mencken, Romain Rolland, Malcolm Cowley, Bennett Cerf, George Seldes, Dorothy Parker, John Haynes Holmes of New York's Community Church, and Rabbi Stephen Wise. George Bernard Shaw, Anatole France, and Einstein had written letters on behalf of the anarchists.

This aura of injustice has continued. We can now fast-forward to July 19, 1977, the fiftieth anniversary of the executions. Then Massachusetts Governor Michael S. Dukakis issued a proclamation of memorial.

Felix Frankfurter, described the case of Sacco and Vanzetti as "one of those rare causes célèbres which were of international concern." Perhaps no other American trial has invoked such an image of injustice, prejudice, and bigotry. And yet it is all myth.

Sacco and Vanzetti were not tried in an atmosphere of prejudice or hysteria. They received a fair trial and the post-conviction review of the proceedings was unprecedented in its thoroughness and fairness. Sacco and Vanzetti were not convicted because they were anarchists, which they were, but because they were violent murderers. Looking back, it is very difficult to understand the disconnect between truth and the myth that an objective and careful review of the evidence discloses. An objective person will conclude after a thorough review of the factual record discussed in this book that Sacco and Vanzetti were guilty as charged.

About the Author

Edward M. Joffe is a prominent trial attorney in Miami, Florida. He was graduated from the University of Michigan with a B.B.A. degree in 1970, and from New York University with a J.D. degree in 1974. Prior to moving to Miami in 1985, Mr. Joffe was in private practice in Atlanta, Georgia, and a litigator with the Tennessee Valley Authority in Knoxville, Tennessee, which is his birthplace.

Mr. Joffe is a lifelong student of history and a thorough researcher.

Excerpts