1927 Sacco and Vanzetti: in the middle of the Red Scare, a pair of anarchists were executed on charges of robbery and murder in Massachusetts. Was justice served, or were they convicted because of their radical views?

• Author: Liptak, Adam
• Position: TIMES PAST - Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti

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Eighty years ago, two Italian immigrants were put to death in Massachusetts for a robbery and double murder. Though capital punishment was commonplace at the time and usually attracted little attention, The New York Times published five front page articles on the case on the day of the execution, Aug. 23, 1927, under a giant headline.

By then, Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti had already become world famous--or infamous, depending on your point of view. To their supporters, they were innocent men, condemned to die because of their radical views; to their opponents, they were dangerous anarchists who wanted to bring down the U.S. government just a decade after the Russian Revolution, when Communists and other radicals were stirring up trouble all over Europe.

In the years since, for many people the names of Sacco and Vanzetti have become a sort of shorthand for a justice system that has become infected by politics and prejudice. Though their guilt or innocence in the crimes for which they were executed has never been conclusively established, few observers today doubt that their political views and immigrant backgrounds prejudiced the judge and jury against them.

The trial of Sacco and Vanzetti in 1921 came at a moment in American history in some ways similar to our own, when the country feared a lethal threat from abroad. In 1917, the Russian Revolution had led to the abdication of the Czar and the seizure of power by the Communists, who were making inroads in other European countries. Americans began to fear that a Communist revolution was possible, even imminent, in the U.S.

On June 2, 1919, a bomb exploded in front of the Washington home of Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer. A man plotting to kill Palmer and his family had accidentally blown himself up. That same evening, anarchists--radicals who opposed all forms of government--detonated seven more bombs around the nation in a coordinated attack against politicians, judges, and law enforcement officials that left one bystander dead and set the nation further on edge.

In a period that became known as the "Red Scare," authorities cracked down, with the Attorney General himself in charge: In "Palmer raids," law enforcement officials harassed, prosecuted, and deported thousands of anarchists, Communists, and others seen as a threat to the government.

Immigrants were a particular target as fear of radicals had become bound up with a fear of foreigners. About 5.7...