[2] In the same year, two Italian immigrants, Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti, were arrested and charged with robbery and murder for the killing of a factory paymaster and his guard in South Braintree, Massachusetts.
Thayer presided at the jury trial of Sacco and Vanzetti, at the end of which both men were found guilty and sentenced to death.
Thayer denied all post-trial motions for a new trial, an act for which he was condemned by various left-wing and civil liberties groups and prominent legal scholars, including Felix Frankfurter.
A Boston Globe reporter, Frank Sibley, who had covered the trial, wrote a letter of protest to the Massachusetts attorney general condemning Thayer's bias.
"[1] In 1927, as the scheduled executions approached, Massachusetts governor Alvan T. Fuller appointed a three-man panel to advise him as he considered clemency.
Still the panel criticized him, using words provided by Judge Grant:[5] "He ought not to have talked about the case off the bench, and doing so was a grave breach of judicial decorum."
[7] Thayer lived for the remainder of his life at his club in Boston, guarded around the clock by his personal bodyguard and police sentries.
[1] The Italian anarchist Valerio Isca commented that Sacco and Vanzetti had received some measure of revenge because Thayer died while sitting on the toilet seat "and his soul went down the drain.