Roaring Twenties: Nicola Sacco And Bartolomeo Vanzetti

The Roaring Twenties was a decade greatly influenced by aspects of the Great War that came before it. Anti-German opinions were still in place, and the Red Scare which followed the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia caused people to irrationally accuse others unfairly. Two men sentenced to death as a result of this were Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti, both Italian anarchists who ended up in the electric chair because of unfair trials for the Braintree robbery.
On December 24th, 1919, a failed attempt to rob the payroll of L.Q. White Shoe Company in Bridgewater, New Jersey occurred. The four men were thought to be Italian, and escaped in a getaway car. Upon investigating the situation, Chief Stewart of Bridgewater was able to trace the car

They had been frightened by the recent Red raids, and wished to take action, thus requiring the vehicle. The car was not ready at the time, and so the group left, but the police were notified and the men captured. Sacco and Vanzetti were detained in a streetcar, Orciani was arrested the next day, and Boda was able to flee. The three men were questioned, and Orciani was set free as he had been working during both days of the robberies. Sacco was working during the Bridgewater robberies, but had taken off the day of the Braintree attack. Vanzetti could not prove he was working on either day. Thus, Sacco and Vanzetti were charged with murder and later indicted on September 14, 1920. Vanzetti was indicted for the Bridgewater hold-up as well on June 11, 1920. A quick Bridgewater trial is held, in which Vanzetti is convicted of being the “shotgun” bandit at Bridgewater and sentenced to twelve to fifteen years in prison by Judge

Webster Thayer, Fred Moor, and Frederick Katzmann were the appointed judge, Chief Defense Counsel, and District Attorney, respectively. Right from the beginning, each side’s evidence clashed with the other, and even the witnesses testimony disagreed with their supposed actions. As the prosecution’s main witness, Mary Spline identified Sacco in the getaway car. She was able to give full detail to the length of the man’s hair to his hand size. Yet the woman was spectating the individual in a car traveling seventeen miles per hour across the railroad, while she was high up in a building seventy feet away and could only have seen him for three seconds. Furthermore, at a previous hearing forty days after the crime, Splaine had said that she was unable to identify the man. Another witness named Carlos E. Goodridge had been sentenced to jail time for stealing for which he had pleaded guilty. Yet the Thayer refused to allow the defense to show that Goodridge had been influenced by the District Attorney to give such evidence in order to stay out of jail. In addition, the prosecution has Sacco’s employer identify a cap found on the crime scene to be one Sacco usually wore. A weapons expert is also brought in, and he states that the shells in the crime scene and in the bodies of the victims were similar to those in Sacco’s