had been placed on probation. The Judge did not allow the defense to show that Goodridge's testimony on behalf of the Commonwealth was influenced by leniency previously shown to him by the District Attorney in connection with the confessed charge of larceny, and by fear of losing his immunity. In the light of settled principles of the law of evidence this ruling, though later sustained by the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts,[1] is indefensible.[2]
II. As to Vanzetti:—
The Commonwealth offered two witnesses who claimed to identify Vanzetti as an occupant of the murder car. Of these one, Dolbeare, claimed to have seen him hours before the murder, leaving only a single individual, LeVangie, who claimed to have seen him on the spot. Before dealing with Dolbeare and LeVangie, a few words will dispose of two other witnesses who claimed to have seen Vanzetti during the day of the murder elsewhere than at Plymouth, but not at South Braintree. One witness, Faulkner, testified to recollecting a fellow passenger on a train going from Cochesett to Boston who got out at East Braintree at 9.54, and identified Vanzetti as that passenger. The basis of Faulkner's recollection was so frail and was so fully destroyed by three other witnesses (McNaught, Pratt, and Brooks), all railroad men, that
- ↑ 151 N. E. 839, 851; 255 Mass. 369.
- ↑ This opinion is ventured on the authority of three members of the Harvard Law School faculty especially versed in the law of evidence. Of course, it is not urged that, had this been the only error of Judge Thayer, it would have justified the granting of a new trial. For a technical criticism of this ruling see 36 Yale Law Journal 384, 388.
