Webster Thayer
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Webster Thayer (Born 1857, died 1933) was an 1879 graduate of Dartmouth College and a former newspaper man. He was appointed a judge of the Superior Court of Massachusetts in 1917. He is best known as the trial judge for the Sacco and Vanzetti trial.
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[edit] Sacco and Vanzetti
In 1920, Sacco and Vanzetti, followers of Luigi Galleani and avowed anarchists, were arrested and charged with payroll robberies and murder. Known as Galleanists, at the time, they were involved in the group's campaign of violence against government institutions and officials. Galleanists planned and executed a series of bombings including the attempted assassination of judges, police officials, and even the Attorney General of the United States, A. Mitchell Palmer.
At their Dedham trial, Sacco and Vanzetti were both convicted of murder for the killing of two employees during a payroll robbery. Thayer denied a post-trial motion for a new trial, an act for which he was condemned by various left-wing and civil liberties groups, along with some legal critics, such as Felix Frankfurter. Others alleged that Thayer was biased against the two men because of their radical political beliefs. In 1920 he rebuked a jury for acquitting anarchist Sergie Zuboff, of violating a criminal anarchy statute.
[edit] Personal Accounts
Boston Globe reporter said of Judge Thayer’s behavior at the trial that "[H]e was conducting himself in an undignified way, in a way I had never seen in thirty-six years." The reporter continued by saying that, "I have seen the judge sit in his gown and spit on the floor."
Jurors in the Sacco-Vanzetti trial, however, were almost unanimous in praising Thayer for the way he conducted the trial. Reading the transcript, one sees few signs of obvious bias. What is most striking, perhaps, is Thayer's oratory, as in his charge to the jury: "Let your eyes be blinded to every ray of sympathy or prejudice, but let them ever be willing to receive the bountiful sunshine of truth...."
For their part, both Sacco and Vanzetti expressed their feelings towards Judge Thayer in unmistakable terms. Vanzetti stated I will try to see Thayer death [sic] and asked for revenge, revenge in our names and the names of our living and dead. In a signed article for their defense committee, both men made a pointed reference to Luigi Galleani's bomb-making manual covertly titled La Salute è in voi! (Health is in You!) in a veiled plea for vengeance against those who had arrested, prosecuted, or convicted them.
[edit] Aftermath
Galleanist colleagues of Sacco and Vanzetti responded to their calls for retaliation by instituting a bombing campaign that lasted a full five years after Sacco and Vanzetti's execution. Court officials, a juror who had served in the Dedham trial, a police witness, and Thayer himself were all targeted for assassination by bombs planted at their residences. After a Galleanist bomb destroyed Thayer's home in Worchester, Massachusetts, he lived for the remainder of his life at his club in Boston, guarded 24 hours a day by his personal bodyguard as well as police sentries. He died in 1933 of a cerebral embolism, at age 75.
