Webster Thayer
Webster Thayer (born July 7, 1857 in Blackstone (Massachusetts) , † April 18, 1933 ) was a judge at the Superior Court in the US state of Massachusetts. For his chairmanship in the Sacco and Vanzetti case he was known and criticized worldwide.
Life
Webster Thayer was born in Blackstone in July 1857 to the local butcher. He attended local public schools, including Worcester Academy, and eventually enrolled at Dartmouth College . There he attracted attention mainly because of his interest in sport: for three years he was captain of the college baseball team he set up . After a student prank, he was suspended from college for half a year, but was able to successfully take the high school diploma with his classmates in 1879.
He dropped the idea of becoming a professional baseball player and instead studied law in Worcester . He was admitted to the bar in 1882 and stayed in the city for the next 35 years. He married, was chairman of the Worcester Sports Association and a member of the Dartmouth Alumni Association. Erected by the Democrats , he was elected Worcester's youngest councilor. He later joined the Republicans .
In 1917, Governor Samuel W. McCall , a former fellow student of Dartmouth, made Thayer a Superior Court Justice in Massachusetts. In April 1920, he caused a stir when he reprimanded the jury after they acquitted the anarchist Sergie Zuboff on charges of inciting violence. The trial of the two Italian immigrants and anarchists Sacco and Vanzetti led to worldwide protests. Webster Thayer saw himself confronted as chairman with the criticism to have led the process with prejudice and to bear the responsibility for a judicial murder .
Thayer died in 1933 at the age of 75 of complications from a cerebral haemorrhage .
The Sacco and Vanzetti case
- See main articles Sacco and Vanzetti .
Under the chairmanship of Webster Thayer, the Italian immigrants Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti were found guilty of double robbery in a high-profile trial and were ultimately executed. The trial began on March 31, 1921 in Dedham, Massachusetts. At the time of the trial, Thayer was 63 years old. Although this is unusual, he wrote a letter to the President of the Massachusetts Supreme Court, John Aiken, asking for the chair. About a year earlier he had found Vanzetti guilty of attempted robbery and sentenced him to a long prison term, even though Vanzetti's alibi was confirmed by fourteen witnesses.
The execution of the two defendants took place on August 23, 1927 after eight appeals by the defense, all of which Thayer rejected. While the Supreme Court, which in the course of the appeals had to investigate some of Thayer's decisions according to formal legal aspects, could not find any formal deficiencies, critics accused him of having conducted the process laden with prejudice and in particular of having decided on the appeals against the facts. When Thayer's house was the target of a bomb attack on September 27, 1932, this was possibly related to his jurisprudence in the Sacco and Vanzetti case, which sparked in part violent protests around the world.
Sources and individual references
The main source for the biographical information was the book Tragedy in Deham - The Story of the Sacco-Vanzetti Case by Francis Russel, McGraw-Hill Book Company, New York 1962, pp. 97f.
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Thayer, Webster |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | American judge |
| DATE OF BIRTH | July 7, 1857 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Blackstone , Massachusetts |
| DATE OF DEATH | April 18, 1933 |