BOYNTON, GOODWIN CENSURE GOVERNOR

The appointment of a commission to review the Sacco-Vanzetti case, composed of President Lowell, President S. W. Stratton of M. I. T. and former Judge Robert Grant has already brought forth a storm of protest from such prominent men as T. J. Boynton, former attorney general of the Commonwealth and F. A. Goodwin, Registrar of Motor Vehicles. The former declared in an address to the alumni association of the Suffolk Law School that "there is absolutely no need for any fact finding commission in this case" and the latter declared that such action would be "a direct attack on the judiciary of this great Commonwealth."

These protests come as the result of the appointment of the committee of three by Governor Fuller, which he has asked to act as a sort of advisory board in his investigation of the Sacco-Vanzetti case. The commission, however, is to sit independent of the Governor, who will continue his own study of the case as before. The members of the newly appointed committee will conduct their investigation in whatever way they see fit and probably will not hold any public hearings.

In denouncing the plan Mr. Boynton went on to say that the appointment is uncalled for because the jury, in the case was a fact-finding body and that at that time the attorneys for the defense were able and fully competent to avail themselves of any opportunity to find errors if they existed. "We are coming to the time", Mr. Boynton went on to say, "when the decisions of our courts and their findings are the subject for mass meetings, as if a case could be handled more intelligently in mass meetings than in a courtroom." The popular petitions to alter or set aside decisions usually come from people who know nothing of the case, he believes, and it is evidence that our institutions are endangered.

In his attack on the action of Governor Fuller Mr. Goodwin said in part.

"The jurors heard the witnesses, and saw them under cross-examination, and no matter what the presiding judge said, he had no right to charge the jury on a question of fact, and the only issue in this case is on the facts. To follow the suggestion of these sob sisters and sob brothers would be a direct attack on the judiciary of this great old Commonwealth."