Finally, the prosecution brought a ballistics expert who said he was "inclined to believe" that Sacco's pistol fired the bullet that killed Berardelli, and another who said that the bullet was "consistent" with having been fired through the pistol. Two defense ballistics experts testified that the bullet could not, in their opinion, have been fired by Sacco's gun.

There was a little more ballistics evidence; the bullet that killed Berardelli was of a rare type, no longer being manufactured. A defense expert and two assistants were unable to find any such bullets in a search through Massachusetts. Sacco had six of the rare bullets in his pocket when he was arrested.

The Alibis

The defendants offered their alibis. A number of men testified that they had bought fish from Vanzetti at hours that made it impossible for him to have been in Braintree at the time of the murder; some became confused on cross-examination and made contradictory statements. The Italian consul in Boston and a number of others testified that Sacco had been in Boston getting his passport on the fifteenth, just as he had told his employer.

On the basis of the evidence presented, the jury convicted both Sacco and Vanzetti. After their trial, however, the case became even more complicated. Walter R. Ripley, foreman of the jury, was found to have brought some cartridges of his own into the jury room and to have compared them with Vanzetti's, a violation of the rules of evidence. More seriously, Ripley allegedly told a friend before the trial that the "guineas" should be hanged whether they were guilty or not. A policeman testified that the foreman was known to be strongly prejudiced against Italians.

Judge Webster Thayer, a garrulous and somewhat simple man, engaged in frequent indiscreet conversations outside the courtroom, according to the testimony of five witnesses. On one occasion he rehearsed a portion of his charge to a friend, asking every so often, "That will hold them, don't you think?" Another time he asked an acquaintance, "Did you see what I did with those anarchistic bastards the other day?"

Captain William Proctor, a Commonwealth witness who had said at the trial that the bullet which killed Berardelli was "consistent" with having gone through Sacco's pistol, admitted after the trial that he and the district attorney had framed his answer in order to sway the jury. All he meant by "consistent" was that the bullet was fired from a 32 caliber Colt--there were some 300,000 in existence at the time. Proctor died before he could testify on the matter in court, but the affidavit he had filed was made the basis of a motion for a new trial by the defense.

Finally, a Portuguese jailbird named Celestino Madeiros, who had just appealed his own conviction for murder, passed a note to a prison guard: "I hear by confess to being in the South Braintree shoe company crime and Sacco and Vanzetti was not in said crime."

The motions for new trials were heard by Judge Thayer, who summarily denied them all. The motions, after all, were in part concerned with charges against Thayer's own discretion.

The First Appeal

The case was appealed to Governor Alvan T. Fuller, who knew well that the decision of any one man would be unlikely to satisfy the extreme partisans of either side. He determined to appoint an advisory committee and immediately decided on A. Lawrence Lowell for one member. Lowell recommended the president of M.I.T., Samuel W. Stratton, for a second member, and retired Judge Robert Grant was eventually named to round out the group.

Although no chairman was appointed, Lowell was so obviously in command that the newspapers quickly came to call the group "the Lowell Committee." Grant interrupted the hearings only rarely; Stratton, so far as can be ascertained, never said a word during the entire time the committee met. It was Lowell for the most part who questioned the witnesses, and it was Lowell who acted as spokesman for the committee.

It also seems to have been Lowell who decided over the strenuous objections of the defense that the hearings were not to be held in public. Defense counsel was allowed to be present at the examination of most witnesses, but not at those of Judge Thayer and the jury. This was a great handicap to the defense; so much of the case depended on the question of Judge Thayer's prejudice, and so much of the committee's report was based on the jurors' simple statement that they were not prejudiced by the judge's attitude, that defense counsel, not knowing what the judge and jury had said, was at a severe disadvantage in making his case.

In another instance Lowell attempted to break Sacco's alibi by showing that a dinner which Sacco and his witnesses said they had discussed in Boston on April 15 had really not taken place until May 13. He was shown to be mistaken, but peevishly kept the correction of his error out of the official record of the case. More importantly, Lowell broke a rule of the committee by accepting evidence and investigating on his own without Stratton and Grant.

As the hearings wore on, the attorneys for Sacco and Vanzetti gradually became convinced that the committee was irrevocably prejudiced against them. "The doom of our clients seemed as inevitable as that of Socrates, and we were unwilling to continue in the face of unfair treatment, one defense attorney said.