THE DIGNITY OF THE COURTS

With the sentencing of Sacco and Vanzetti on Saturday, another chapter has been written in the criminal trial that, together with the Dreyfus case, deserves to rank as the most portentious trial of the century. In both cases, the issues involved render the decisions of the court more than ordinarily significant.

The Dreyfus case purported to be the trial of an army officer indicted for high treason; but a wave of anti-Semitism was then sweeping France, and the charge of treason served as but a thin screen behind which was fought another race and religious battle. Sacco and Vanzetti, seven years ago, were nominally tried for the murder of a paymaster and his guard; but a wave of reaction against radical notions of all kinds was at the time sweeping this country, and economic doctrines played an important part in the evidence submitted to a jury impanelled to try two men for murder.

The fate of Sacco and Vanzetti, like that of Dreyfus, early in the trial ceased to be the important aspect of the case. Whether or not they go to the electric chair, even in their own minds, long ago, has ceased to be as important as whether or not criminal trials are to be decided on the evidence or on race and class prejudice. Dreyfus was convicted of high treason, not because he committed high treason, but because he was a Jew; and there are many people in the present case who believe that Sacco and Vanzetti have been convicted and sentenced for murder, not because they committed murder, but because they are radicals.

In neither of these two cases has the evidence of guilt beeen absolutely incontestable; in neither case have the tactics of the government prosecution been without their critics. In both cases the defense has refused to accept the verdict, and legal battles extending over many years have been waged. In both cases, also, the verdicts have attracted world-wide interest, and the cause of the defendants has been espoused by many of the most eminent legal minds.

There are also less obvious analogies between these two great cases, analogies that do not appear in the trial records, but which are no less certain. In the Dreyfus case, the "honor" of the French army was involved, and before the trial was over, the prosecution had found it necessary to commit forgery and withhold evidence in order to save that "honor". In the present case, the dignity of Massachusetts courts is involved, and this dignity has made it necessary for the court to refuse motions for a new trial when there exists more than a reasonable doubt in the minds of many as to the guilt of the two defendants.

If Sacco and Vanzetti are executed, innocent of anything more than being radicals, the injustice done them will be of comparitively slight moment. Of far greater importance is the establishment of a precedent allowing political, religious, and social beliefs to enter into the decisions of criminal courts. And at such a price the dignity of the courts of Massachusetts is not worth saving.