Sacco and Vanzetti — Italian American anarchist duo executed by Massachusetts
The 1927 execution of Sacco and Vanzetti sparked global protest and became a landmark case exposing anti-immigrant and anti-radical bias in the U.S. justice system.
Key Facts
- Date of execution
- August 23, 1927
- Method of execution
- Electric chair, Charlestown State Prison
- Original crime date
- April 15, 1920, Braintree, Massachusetts
- Conviction date
- July 14, 1921 (first-degree murder)
- Massachusetts exoneration
- Governor Dukakis proclamation, August 23, 1977
- Years between arrest and execution
- 7 years
By the Numbers
Location
Cause → Event → Consequence
Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti, Italian immigrant anarchists, were arrested in 1920 and charged with the murder of two men during a payroll robbery in Braintree, Massachusetts. Their trial was widely seen as tainted by anti-Italian, anti-immigrant, and anti-anarchist prejudice, and all subsequent appeals—based on recanted testimony and conflicting ballistics evidence—were denied by both the trial judge and the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court.
After seven years of failed appeals and worldwide protest, Sacco and Vanzetti were executed in the electric chair at Charlestown State Prison just after midnight on August 23, 1927. Massachusetts Governor Alvan T. Fuller, despite receiving a massive influx of telegrams urging clemency, accepted the findings of a three-man commission that upheld the original verdict and declined to grant a pardon.
The executions intensified international outrage and became one of the most debated miscarriages of justice in American history. Fifty years later, Governor Michael Dukakis issued a proclamation declaring the two men had been unfairly tried and convicted, removing any associated disgrace from their names, though stopping short of a formal pardon. The case remains a touchstone in discussions of civil liberties, immigrant rights, and judicial fairness.