Thinking of the great trial, I found myself wondering how I should have voted, had I been on that jury. As soon as I had the time I read the transcript of the record. Much it could not offer—the atmosphere of the court, with its tensions, the appearance of the witnesses and the defendants, the subtleties that could be gathered from a tone of voice but could not be preserved in black and white. Yet the substance, the prime matter of the trial, endured, each word spoken during that six weeks pressed and dried between the now-yellowing pages. As the inchoate mass gradually took shape for me, I tried to disavow any preconceptions, to imagine myself in the jury box at Dedham occupied solely with the question of whether two men murdered two other men, and knowing no more about it in advance than the evidence offered. How should I have judged? I knew one thing—that I should have disregarded the testimony of the experts. My month had taught me that. Experts canceled each other out as the paid bias of either side, and a jury then decided on other grounds. The real grounds in this case were the half-dozen or so witnesses who identified Sacco—and to a lesser extent Vanzetti—as being at or near the scene of the murder on that April day. In opposition to them were an equal number of witnesses who testified that these two were not the men. It was a question finally of which group to believe. The weakest part of the Commonwealth’s case was that it never established an adequate motive for the crime. On the other hand Sacco and Vanzetti were armed the night the police picked them up, Sacco with an automatic of the type that fired the murder bullet, Vanzetti with a revolver that might have been taken from the murdered guard. This was the most damaging evidence against them. Sacco maintained that he had tucked his gun inside his belt that afternoon and forgotten about it. Vanzetti said that he carried his for protection. Both statements may have been true. Often the lame excuse is the truthful one. Yet here were two philosophical anarchists who maintained that the use of force was never justified, not even for the advancement of their beliefs, who boasted that they had never shed blood, but when they were picked up, they had on them weapons of force. If they had not been armed the chances are they would never have been tried.