Webster Thayer
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Webster Thayer (Born 1857, died 1933) was an 1879 graduate of Worcester Academy and 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.
Contents |
[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. At their Dedham trial, Sacco and Vanzetti were both convicted of murder for the killing of two employees during a payroll robbery.
Thayer made clear his opinion in and outside of the courthouse. Referring to Sacco in his jury instructions, he said, "Although this man may not have committed the crime attributed to him, he is nonetheless culpable because he is the enemy of our existing institutions." The judge also told a friend during the trial, "Did you see what I did with those anarchist bastards the other day?"
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 "[He] 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 fellow anarchists 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 explicit bomb-making manual covertly titled La Salute è in voi! (Health is in You!) in response to those who had arrested, prosecuted, or convicted them.
[edit] Aftermath
Fellow Galleanists did not wait for retaliation, instituting a campaign of bombing and attempted assassinations 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 even Thayer himself were all targeted for assassination by bombs planted at their residences. After a Galleanist bomb destroyed Thayer's home in Worcester, 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, aged 75.
