After the fact: legal and temporal implications

¶ … Art of Historical Detection by James West Davidson and Mark Hamilton Lytle. Specifically it will discuss and compare chapters eleven and twelve of the book. These chapters illustrate another example of historical evidence, how different evidence helps recreate history in unique cases, and how the same evidence cannot be utilized in each case, because evidence tells specific stories about specific events.

The Sacco and Vanzetti and Dust Bowl chapters illustrate how different pieces of history are examined with different pieces of evidence. In the Sacco and Vanzetti case, which concerns two Italian immigrants charged with robbery and murder, the primary evidence is largely from the trial itself, along with the police reports of the investigation. Thus, these types of evidence tell the facts of the case, but tell nothing about the emotions and public reaction to the case. For that, evidence including newspaper reports and accounts must be used to get a wider picture of the entire historic case. In addition, as the authors note, historians have hindsight and often new knowledge to use to examine historic cases, such as the evidence that now exists that Judge Thayer was prejudiced against the two men, and allowed that prejudice to color his remarks to the jury and his own ruling on the case.

Photographs and other evidence certainly exist in the Sacco and Vanzetti case, but they are not as useful in examining the case. The photos simply freeze a moment in time, and they are useful for understanding the participants in the case, but they are not as useful and print evidence and analysis of what happened in the case. They also have to look at every aspect of the case, from those involved to those who protested, because they are the real evidence and information on this case, and they are the most relevant to its study. The public reaction to the case, the immigrants' backgrounds, and the overall political climate all form a backdrop to this case, and that indicates how important it is to seek out all kinds of evidence to make informed historical decisions.

On the other hand, in the Dust Bowl evidence, photos and statistics play a very important role, because they paint a graphic picture of what was going on in the country and how people were suffering. This type of evidence plays a much more important role than in the Sacco and Vanzetti case, which was not so much about photographs and statistics, but about print documents and even the political climate. This indicates how different cases require different perspectives and the use of differing evidence.