[4] On August 23, 1927, Italian immigrants Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti were executed by electric chair at Charlestown State Prison for their conviction in the murder of a Correctional Officer and a paymaster during an armed robbery at the Slater and Morrill Shoe Company in Braintree on April 15, 1920.
[4] The last executions in Massachusetts were gangsters Philip Bellino and Edward Gertson for the murder of Robert Williams, a former U.S. Marine.
[1] In 1980, in a freewheeling opinion quoting from various figures of the Western literary, historical, and philosophical canon (including Bacon, Aristotle, Dostoevsky, Kant, Shakespeare, Milton, Sartre, and Camus) the Supreme Judicial Court ruled 6-1 in Suffolk County District Attorney v. Watson that the death penalty statute violated Article 26 of the Massachusetts Constitution [5] [6] In 1982, Massachusetts voters effectively overturned Suffolk County District Attorney v. Watson by approving a legislatively referred constitutional amendment providing that no constitutional provision shall be construed as prohibiting the death penalty, with 60% of voters in favor.
[1] The General Court passed a statute to reinstate capital punishment in 1986 but it was vetoed by then-governor Michael Dukakis.
[8] Most recently, the Boston Marathon bombing reignited the debate about capital punishment in the state, as the perpetrator Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was sentenced to death (but thus far not executed) by the U.S. Federal government.
[9] In 1997, an attempt by Republican Governor Paul Celluci to reinstate the death penalty was defeated by one vote in the General Court.