BOHLEN EXPLAINS WISH FOR SACCO COMMITTEE

On Tuesday a group of Law School professors headed by Dean Roscoe Pond Hon, '20 dispatched to Governor Fuller a petition requesting the appointment of a committee to investigate further the case of Sacco and Vanzetti. The following article was written especially for the Crimson by F. H. Bohlen, Langdell Professor of Law, who explains the true function of a committee such as the one whose creation is advocated.

My signature to the petition headed by Dean Pound does not imply any criticism of Massachusetts' justice. I myself am a Pennsylvanian. I feel sure that had the Sacco Vanzetti case been tried in 1921 before a court and jury in any place in Pennsylvania, similar to Dedham, the unfortunate but necessary interjection of proof that the defendants were communists would have created such a prejudice against them that the would have been convicted upon even the flimsiest of evidence.

I have no sympathy with Communism. Its principles and aims are opposed to all my traditions and interests I am not asking a reconsideration of the case because the accused are communists, but because, after having read those parts of the record which are relevant to the salient points raised by the appeal and the motion for a new trial, I am convinced that there is at the very least grave doubt as to the guilt of these two men now awaiting execution.

Commission Not Critical of Court

I cannot imagine how anyone can suppose that a request to the Governor to appoint an impartial commission to review the facts can imply any criticism or disrespect for the Supreme Judicial Court or even for the Trial Judge. The Supreme Judicial Court has declared itself precluded by its own decisions from considering the credibility or weight of the testimony offered at the trial or of the affidavits presented as grounds for a new trial. This being so, an appeal to the Governor to appoint a commission a review matters, with which under our system of law the regular judicial machinery is incapable of dealing, differs in no essential respect from the appeal to the King's conscience out of which our present system of Equity has grown. Even if such a commission should rec commend a pardon it would not over-whelm or discredit the finding of the Court. The commission would, like the Chancellor's Court, fill in a gap which the common law has left open. The creation of a Court of Chancery has not exhausted the power of the Sovereign to do justice in any case in which it is obvious that the existing legal and equitable procedure is inadequate. Nor would the appointment of such a commission express any lack of respect for the Trial Judge