Organized Crime The 1920s were a time of drastic and massive changes in American culture, politics, and the economy. It is commonly characterized by jazz, the fashion revolution, new inventions, dancing, prohibition, gambling, and gangs. However, organized crime played an important role in the “Roaring Twenties”. The loudest crimes of that period were due to corruption in the government, lack of law enforcement and constant social and economic instability. The famous cases were Sacco and Vanzetti of Massachusetts and Wall Street Bombing of New York. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an original essay Nicola Sacco was a shoemaker born in Italy and emigrated to the United States in 1908 at the age of seventeen. Bartolomeo Vanzetti was a fishmonger (someone who sells raw fish and seafood) who was also born in Italy and emigrated to the United States in 1908 at the age of twenty. The two men were known as anarchists and radicals. They were believed to be followers of Luigi Galleani, an Italian anarchist who advocated revolutionary violence, including bombings and assassinations. On 15 April 1920 Pormenter (a paymaster) and Berardelli (his guard) were shot by two men with pistols at the Slater and Morrill shoe factory. After the murder, the criminals stole 2 boxes containing pay stubs worth $15,776, quickly left the crime scene and escaped in a car containing several other men, which was found abandoned two days later . On May 5, Sacco and Vanzetti were charged with the murder and factory robbery and sentenced in a trial that ended up being one of the most controversial and conflicting trials in history to date. , a time when Americans were paranoid and scared of communism, since the Russian government had just gone through a second revolution, turning democracy into communism. Everyone was suspicious of each other, starting with shoemakers, passing through movie stars and ending with politicians. Any kind of unusual political views were viewed very critically. Since Sacco and Vanzetti were anarchists, they were automatically suspected by the police, the jury, the judge and the common people. The cops assumed that the Italians had stolen the money to finance violent anarchist activities, and the judge easily agreed, as only a few weeks before the trial he gave a speech about Bolshevism and anarchism's threat to American institutions. He advocated the suppression of functionally violent radical speech and incitement to commit violent acts. Therefore, entering the court Sacco and Vanzetti already had a great disadvantage closely linked to their political opinions. There were fifty-nine witnesses who testified for the Commonwealth and ninety-nine who testified for the defendants at trial. All the testimonies differed from each other, as some claimed to have seen the two men at the crime scene, others had seen them in Boston that same morning, while the third had seen them elsewhere at the time of the crime. Most of the evidence was denied in court, considering that the only concrete evidence of guilt was Sacco's possession of a Colt pistol found at the time of his arrest and the two's retaking of the car associated with the crime. men. However, ignoring the lack of accurate data, Sacco and Vanzetti were convicted and sentenced to death by Judge Webster Thayer, whose decision was later upheld by the Massachusetts State Supreme Court..