Respite

Two cells in the "death house" at the Charlestown (Mass.) State Prison last week failed to receive two occupants who were scheduled to move into them. For Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti, sentenced to be electrocuted during the week of July 10, were given a one-month respite by Governor Alvan Tufts Fuller of Massachusetts to permit further investigation of their seven-year case. A similar respite was also given to one Celestino F. Madeiros, condemned killer, whose testimony is an important factor in the Sacco-Vanzetti investigation.

In granting the 31-day respite, the Governor did not give any indication of what may be his final action. His Advisory Committee (President Abbott Lawrence Lowell of Harvard, President Samuel W. Stratton of Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Judge Robert Grant) has not as yet held any meetings, presumably owing to Commencement duties of two of its members. Friends of Mr. Sacco & Mr. Vanzetti were disappointed because the respite was only for one month, but of course there is no reason why Governor Fuller cannot grant as many additional respites as seem necessary.

Mr. Madeiros, respited along with Messrs. Sacco & Vanzetti, is to be electrocuted for the murder, in November, 1924, of a bank cashier. He was a member of a bandit group known as the Morelli gang, has claimed that this gang murdered the South Braintree (Mass.) paymaster and guard for whose deaths Messrs. Sacco & Vanzetti are sentenced to die. He has sworn that neither Mr. Sacco nor Mr. Vanzetti belonged to the Morelli gang, nor were they in any way involved in the South Braintree crime. Mr. Madeiros was first sentenced to be executed in September, 1926, but his connection with the Sacco-Vanzetti case has procured him a series of respites, though there is no question ultimately as to his death.