Word: pardons
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Dates: during 1920-1929
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...should be pointed out that Governor Fuller need not choose between pardoning Messrs. Sacco & Vanzetti and permitting their electrocution. He has also the authority to commute their sentences to life imprisonment or to a term of years. In this last case the seven years they have already served would, of course, be counted in their favor. The Governor may also make any discrimination that he desires between the two men?for instance it would be legally possible, though highly unlikely, for him to pardon one of the prisoners and make no intervention on behalf of the other. The only limit...
...publication of sensational affidavits alleging unfairness by Trial-Judge Webster Thayer (TIME, May 16) and the investigation of the Sacco-Vanzetti case by Governor Alvan T. Fuller of Massachusetts and his Advisory Committee (TIME, June 13), those sympathetic with the convicted men have been encouraged to hope for pardon or commutation. But last week's events, though not necessarily conclusive, led many observers to believe that the death sentence imposed on Messrs. Sacco & Vanzetti would be carried out or would be only partially commuted by being changed to life imprisonment. Hunger Strike. Both Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti spent...
After her conviction, Miss Whitney refused to petition for a pardon maintaining that such an act would be an admission of a guilt which she did not feel. Friends, however, carried her case to the U. S. Supreme Court which last May (TIME, May 23) upheld the constitutionality of the Syndicalism Act. Miss Whitney, now 60 years old, prepared to serve her sentence, said that in comparison with Sacco & Vanzetti, she had little cause for complaint...
Last week, however, Governor Young issued her an unconditional pardon, said that to put her in a cell was "unthinkable." Governor Young carefully added that the law under which she was convicted was undoubtedly constitutional, but that "abnormal conditions attending the trial" greatly influenced the jury and that "under ordinary circumstances" the case never would have been prosecuted. These latter remarks presumably referred to the fact that in 1919-20 the U. S. nation engaged in a widespread Radical-hunt, and "Bolsheviki" became a common epithet for one small boy to hurl at another...
Meanwhile the Whitney pardon encouraged the friends of many another person convicted under the California syndicalism law. In 1925, there were 72 such serving sentences in California jails...