Other than Vanzetti’s Italian neighbors and a couple of cub reporters from the Boston papers, there were scarcely any spectators at the trial. The routine was the same each morning. Vanzetti was brought in handcuffed and taken to the prisoner’s box in the center of the room, where his handcuffs were unfastened. Then Vahey and Graham conferred with him, and the set melancholy face with the drooping mustache would take on a momentary animation. Katzmann and Kane always nodded affably to the defense lawyers as they came in. Then there was a wait of several minutes until Judge Thayer appeared, consciously delaying the daily drama of his entry, sweeping over the threshold in his black robe, inwardly satisfied that the room was standing for his presence and would remain standing until he took his seat. The crier intoned: “Hear ye, hear ye. All persons having anything to do before the Honorable Justices of the Superior Court now sitting at Plymouth within and for the County of Plymouth, draw near, give your attendance and you shall be heard. God save the Commonwealth of Massachusetts!” With his intoning, the ritual of the court took over. The actuality of the outside world, the muted summer noises of the town entering with the sea air through the open oval-topped windows, became less real than this legal world where all action had been reduced to verbalizations. Symbolic in more than one sense was the statue of Justice in a niche of the courthouse, holding up her gilded scales and covered by a protective layer of chicken-wire. During none of the trial sessions was there discussion of Vanzetti’s political beliefs. The prosecution’s case was merely an elaboration of the preliminary hearing. The district attorney relied chiefly on the primary identification witnesses—Bowles, Cox, Harding, and Mrs. Brooks—reinforcing them with corroborative evidence that would in itself have been insufficient even to indict. Bowles still maintained that Vanzetti was the man with the shotgun, but the mustache he had earlier described as close-cropped now became merely trimmed. Cox denied that he had said, on seeing Vanzetti in Brockton, “I think there is doubt.” Even now, though he had become much more certain, he was not wholly sure of his identification, and the best that Katzmann could get out of him was “I am not positive but I feel certain he is the man.”