Summary
Many Italian newspapers, including the most important ones, published memorial articles Aug. 23 noting the 80th anniversary of the execution in Massachusetts of Ferdinando (Nicola) Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti and retelling the story of the notoriously unfair trial that sent them to their deaths. In fact, such articles have appeared every single year since 1927.
A new American book about the trial, "Sacco and Vanzetti - The Men, the Murders and the Judgment of Mankind," by Bruce Watson, makes a strong case for the proposition that the prosecution manufactured evidence, the defense was incompetent, and the judge did his best to prejudice the jury. And all this took place in the midst of public hysteria stirred up by politicians using fear and ethnic prejudice to gin up political support and by journalists, acting as handmaidens for those in power rather than as watchdogs for their readers and for the nation at large.See the full content of this document
Extract
Popular Justice Fallacy?
It is a tale not without relevance in our own times.
Not so long ago, in 1969, Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas wrote, that anybody reading the story of Sacco and Vanzetti "will have difficulty bel...See the full content of this document
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