Appeal To The Supreme Judicial Court
The defense appealed Thayer's denial of their motions to the Supreme Judicial Court (SJC), the highest level of the state's judicial system. Both sides presented arguments to its five judges on January 11–13, 1926. The SJC returned a unanimous verdict upholding Judge Thayer's decisions on May 12, 1926. The Court did not have the authority to review the trial record as a whole or to judge the fairness of the case. Instead, the judges only considered whether Thayer had abused his discretion in the course of the trial. Thayer later claimed that the SJC had "approved" the verdicts, which advocates for the defendants protested as a misinterpretation of the Court's ruling, which only found "no error" in his individual rulings. Whatever distinction exists is purely academic, however.
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