Free The Passion of Sacco and Vanzetti: A New England Legend by Howard Fast Page A

been in prison, worked in a prison, or done time in a prison, might be at a loss to understand just how this is, or even unwilling to believe that plain, ordinary criminals could feel such sympathy with men who are condemned to death. Nevertheless, the Warden knew this unity of pain to be a fact. He did not like to prod such feelings on the part of hundreds of men needlessly, and he was also capable of picturing the specific kind of mental pain the little dress rehearsal with electric current would bring to Sacco and Vanzetti and Madeiros. While they had to die many times before this day was finished, do what anyone might, it seemed needlessly cruel to inject this added bit of horror.
    The Warden said some of this to the electrician, who agreed, but pointed out that there was nothing he could do about it.
    â€œThe way it is,” the electrician said, “you can never be sure that your wiring or your fuses are going to stand up under the load that you have to feed into that chair. Just between you and me, sir, that’s the God-damnedest way to kill a human being that anybody ever thought of, and why they ever thought of it beats the hell out of me. It just doesn’t make no sense at all to put a man into an electric chair and send current into his body. If they think it is painless, then they are crazy. You just have to see it happen once to know how painless it is! I tell you this—if I had the choice myself between this kind of thing and being hanged, I’d want to be hanged. I’d want to be shot, or anything rather than to have to sit down in that chair.”
    â€œI’m not asking about your feelings on the subject, mister,” the Warden said testily. “All I ask is why you have to test that damn chair all day long?”
    â€œJust for this reason,” the electrician explained. “Suppose you put one of them into it and throw the current and it shorts. Let’s say a wire burns out or a fuse goes. Well, that’s a pretty situation, isn’t it? That would make a fine situation, to have one of them poor devils sitting there with the electrodes on and with his eyes bandaged, and then to have to wait two hours before the break could be rewired, or the short found, and then the execution could go on again.”
    â€œWell, we don’t want that to happen,” the Warden said. “You can be sure that’s the last thing in the world I want to happen. But why can’t you test it once this evening?”
    â€œIt just doesn’t work that way,” the electrician explained. “You have to keep testing it and finding the weak spots. You build up the weak spots so that when the night time comes, there are no weak spots left, and you know that when you throw juice in, it’s going to hold up under it, and so is the regular prison lighting system going to hold up.”
    â€œAll right, then. The hell with it,” the Warden said. “Go on and do whatever you have to do.”
    The electrician nodded and left the Warden’s office, and a little while later, sitting in their cells, Sacco and Vanzetti saw the lights dim, remain dim for a moment or two, and then grow strong again. Each of them became rigid when this happened. In more than a manner of speaking, they died while they lived.
    There were only three cells in the Death Row in the State Prison. The builders of this particular wing of the prison—which was known as Cherry Hill, for some strange reason—had not pictured a contingency where there would ever be more than three men awaiting execution at one time. Therefore, Death Row consisted of three cheerless, airless, and lightless cells. They were all in one row, side by side, and instead of the customary barred door that most prison cells have, these three cells had heavy wooden doors with only a small grill in each door. Therefore, it was necessary to light these cells artificially; and to people inside, the cells seemed to shrink, to