When the report that Sacco was not insane was read to the court, Sacco smiled ironically. Thompson, his self-assurance unruffled, urbanely at home where Moore had appeared the bumptious stranger, nevertheless seemed to feel it necessary to explain his presence in the radical galley. “It is supposed that these defendants have radical opinions,” he announced, in opening the argument for the Ripley motion. “Mr. Hill and I do not hold such opinions,” he went on, refraining from glancing at Moore, “and we are not here supporting such opinions. I think I shall be believed also when I say that we are not here for pecuniary reasons. We think we are rendering humble service to the institutions of law and order by coming here to argue that an error has been committed. “I have no reason to believe that either one of these two defendants has ever endeavored by threats or in any other improper way to obtain undue influence in the court. Some of their enthusiastic friends may have done so, but this fact ought not to weigh against the defendants. “That’s why Mr. Hill and I are here,” he concluded. “It’s because some of our friends have talked in the way Daley says Ripley talked.” Thompson then spent the morning arguing the Ripley motion. In the afternoon Hill took over. “From the time I had been in the courtroom fifteen minutes,” he later told the Lowell Committee, “and had my first talk with the judge I did not have any doubt as to what the result of the case would be, independent of its actual merit, and that was not because I felt that there was anybody who was consciously trying to do wrong, but I thought everybody connected with the case had got themselves into a state of mind, a mental condition where reason had practically ceased to operate and prejudice and emotion had taken its place.” The session saw a prolonged altercation between Judge Thayer and the usually quiet-spoken Thomas McAnarney. “I understand Your Honor to say that after a night of discussion we decided not to open up the issue of radicalism,” Judge McAnarney challenged Judge Thayer, his voice hard. “That is not so.” “It is so,” Thayer announced bluntly, a tawnier shade creeping into his parchment cheeks. McAnarney struck back. “All I ever said to my client was to tell the truth and tell all the truth at all times. It didn’t take me five minutes to decide that.” He turned away from the bench and walked toward his chair, wiping his forehead with his handkerchief. Thayer’s voice pursued him. “Mr. McAnarney! Three times you opened up this subject, and three times it was stricken out.” McAnarney’s voice trembled a little. “Three times it had to be opened up. There was no safe course for the defendants to pursue excepting to tell the truth and all the truth.” “I know what took place here,” Thayer insisted.