Background
Michael A. Musmanno was born on April 7, 1897, in Stowe Township, Pennsylvania, into an ethnic Italian family, to Antonio Musmanno, a coal miner, and Maddelena Castellucci.
(Hardback, signed by author, first edition. text as new, c...)
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(The story of Sacco and Vanzetti told by a Pennsyvania jud...)
The story of Sacco and Vanzetti told by a Pennsyvania judge who was also a voluntary attorney for the defense.
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Michael A. Musmanno was born on April 7, 1897, in Stowe Township, Pennsylvania, into an ethnic Italian family, to Antonio Musmanno, a coal miner, and Maddelena Castellucci.
Musmanno wanted to become a lawyer from the time he was twelve. While working in the day, he took evening high school courses and eventually enrolled at Georgetown University, where he earned a Bachelor's degree and a Master's degree and began work toward his law degree. In all, Musmanno earned seven degrees, including doctorates from American University and the University of Rome.
Musmanno found it difficult to join an established law firm but finally found a job after responding to an anonymous advertisement for a legal assistant. He proceeded to win his first forty-two cases. Although he won sixty of his first sixty-five cases, he took the losses with such anguish that he decided he was not cut out to be a lawyer.
He went to Europe but could not stay away from the law and therefore enrolled at the University of Rome to study Roman law. While there, he worked as an English tutor, as a newspaper stringer, and even as an extra in the silent film version of Ben-Hur.
Musmanno returned to Pittsburgh in 1925 and again had trouble developing a private practice. Then he defended a man who had drunkenly assaulted him and slowly his reputation began to spread. Musmanno took on numerous indigent clients and acquired a reputation as a defender of the underprivileged. As such, he became interested in the most notorious case of the 1920's, that of the anarchists Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti. Believing they had been tried not for murder but for their political views, Musmanno joined the battery of lawyers trying to reverse their conviction. Following their execution, Musmanno continued to believe in Sacco and Vanzetti's innocence and wrote a vindication of the two men, After Twelve Years (1939).
In 1926 Musmanno lost an election bid for the Pennsylvania General Assembly, but two years later won by a narrow margin to become the youngest member of the Pennsylvania House of Representatives.
He was reelected in 1930 and began a campaign to repeal the Coal and Iron Police Laws, which allowed private companies to maintain their own police forces to break strikes and forcibly discourage other "undesirable" activity. Although he got the bill through the legislature, the governor vetoed it. Musmanno continued his attack, however, by publishing "Jan Volkanik, " the story of a miner beaten to death by private police. He then convinced Paul Muni to star in Black Fury, a movie based on the story. Musmanno toured with the film in 1935, urging audiences to demand repeal of the police laws, and he credited the film with doing much to accomplish that goal. Among his other achievements as a legislator were laws permitting Sunday baseball and movies, election reform, and lower taxes for small wage earners.
In 1932 Musmanno successfully ran for judge of the Allegheny County court, and two years later was elected, with 94 percent of the vote, to the Court of Common Pleas, a position he held for the next sixteen years. His terms on that bench were marked by colorful and often controversial behavior. He led a crusade against drunken drivers, imposing sentences of up to six months in jail for serious offenders. At the same time, he took a paternalistic attitude toward women defendants, sentencing them to only two-thirds of the penalties he imposed upon men, because he believed they were "finer and more delicate. "
He attracted national attention in 1936 when he sentenced himself to a three-day prison sentence "to find out what it really feels like" to be incarcerated. He mingled freely with the inmates, some of whom he had sentenced, and did not conceal his identity. Afterward he told a reporter that just as a doctor should study inside a hospital, lawyers and judges should also study inside the institutions of the law.
When the United States entered World War II, Musmanno joined the navy as a lieutenant commander. His ship was sunk in the Adriatic, and he was then assigned to General Mark Clark's staff for the invasion of Italy. His knowledge of Italian language and customs led to his appointment as governor of the Sorrento Peninsula for six months. At the end of the war he held a number of decorations as well as the rank of rear admiral.
President Truman then named him to head the Board of Forcible Repatriation in Austria, where he prevented thousands of refugees from being sent back to Russia to face either firing squads or exile in Siberia. Musmanno was also a member of the team sent to determine whether Adolf Hitler had actually died, and in his investigations Musmanno interviewed dozens of the dictator's staff members, from generals to cooks and butlers.
In 1950 he published a book based on his findings, Ten Days to Die, which was made into a movie, The Last Ten Days (1956).
Musmanno's most important task, however, was as a judge in the Nuremberg trials of Nazi war criminals. He sat on three of the tribunals, including the Einsatzgruppen (death squads) case, in which twenty-one defendants were charged with the responsibility for nearly 2 million deaths. At the time, Musmanno called for a world court to be established to try such criminals, and a number of years later he defended the Israeli trial of Adolf Eichmann on the ground that no other forum existed. In 1961, because of his extensive knowledge, Musmanno became a key witness for the prosecution against Eichmann.
Upon returning to the United States after Nuremberg, Musmanno again sat on the Court of Common Pleas until 1951, when, without Democratic-party support, he won a twenty-one-year term on the Pennsylvania Supreme Court. He had lost a bid the previous year for lieutenant governor and in 1964 made his last attempt to enter national politics, losing a bitter primary fight for the United States Senate. Michael Musmanno died on October 12, 1968, in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
(The story of Sacco and Vanzetti told by a Pennsyvania jud...)
(This book was digitized and reprinted from the collection...)
(Hardback, signed by author, first edition. text as new, c...)
(Favorite Recipes of Hardy County)
(Politics, Anti-Communism. Edition not noted. Blue cloth c...)
(Book)
Michael Musmanno was intensely religious. He was a lifelong Catholic and attended the Mount St. Peter Church in New Kensington.
Michael Musmanno was an avid anti-Communist, and once declared that all Communists should be sentenced to twenty years in prison.
Quotations: "Being a lawyer was not only my occupation - it was my avocation, diversion, and entertainment. It was my wife, children, and grandchildren!"
Michael Angelo Musmanno never married.