A LETTER FROM MR. SCHLESINGER

To the Editors of the CRIMSON:

It has been brought to my attention that the CRIMSON in its issue of May 22, 1959, treats as a fact the allegation emanating from the Veritas group that the pistol carried by Sacco contained "the rare and obsolete type of cartridge that killed the guard." The CRIMSON should know better than to take any statement sponsored by the Veritas Foundation as fact. The notion that the bullets in Sacco's pistol uniquely and infallibly matched the bullets in Berardelli's body is sheer myth.

In the trial, Captain Proctor, a police ballistics expert, would go no farther than to say of the death bullet: "My opinion is that it is consistent with being fired by that (Sacco's) pistol." In a subsequent affidavit, Proctor stated: "At no time was I able to find any evidence whatever which tended to convince me that the particular model bullet found in Berardelli's body, which came from a Colt Automatic pistol, which I think was numbered 3 and had some other exhibit number, came from Sacco's pistol, and I so informed the District Attorney and his assistant before the trial." Having been so warned, the District Attorney did not ask Proctor whether he had found any evidence that the fatal bullet was fired from Sacco's pisol. "I had repeatedly told him that if he did I should be obliged to answer in the negative."

Edmund M. Morgan, Professor of Evidence at the Harvard Law School, summed up the testimony given by the two police ballistics experts concerning Sacco's pistol as follows: "Had Captain Proctor and Van Amburgh constituted the jury with the data then in their possession and with the state of mind disclosed in the record, they must have returned a verdict for the defendants upon this issue."

For an analysis of the matter, I commend you to The Legacy of Sacco and Vanzetti (Harcourt Brace, 1948) by G. Louis Joughin and Edmund M. Morgan. Morgan wrote the chapters dealing with this problem. I refer you particularly to pages 15-16, 67-68, 83-90, 98-106, 126-131, 135-137, chapters 5 and page 190. ARTHUR SCHLESINGER, JR.