For my co-worker and fellow Spartan, Bethany W., who found and suggested this interesting case to me.

It’s no secret that immigrants to the United States provide one of the easiest targets for criminals. Most often the criminals who prey on new arrivals are members of the same community, many of whom arrived shortly before their victims.
In the late 19th century, in the years before the Mafia evolved into the American organized crime empire we’re all familiar with, a fictitious secret society known as “The Black Hand” preyed on Italian immigrants. I call the Black Hand fictitious because while “it” did exist, of course, there was no organizational structure and most Black Handers operated on their own or in very loose groups of friends or families.
The Black Hand of Turn-of-the-Century America has nothing to do with the Black Hand, a Slav terrorist group active around World War I. That group was much more organized, but was political, not criminal, in nature.
Black Handers were extortionists, who using the threat of retaliation by the “group,” demanded payoffs from unsuspecting victims who believed that there was some sort of insidious secret faction that would violently react against those who refused to pay. By pretending to be part of a more wide-spread conspiracy whose members were anonymous and sworn to the loyalty of the cabal, Black Handers could prevent their victims from speaking out or going to the authorities whom most Italian immigrants mistrusted anyway.
A Black Hand scheme was easy; the extortionist simply sent a note (hence the term “blackmail”) to the intended victim, signed with a black palm print, demanding money. Failure to pay could result in death.
Apparently the scheme was successful enough, because it was quite popular.
Of course, Black Handers had to be concerned about potential backlash, as Francesco Manzella found out in October, 1911.
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The body of Francesco Manzella was found near Rochester, N.Y. in a barrel at the bottom of a ravine on a main road leading into town. Aside from the fact that his killer(s) decapitated him and dismembered his corpse, it was clear that Manzella, a known Black Hander who had already spent time in prison for extortion, had been involved in a violent struggle.
The medical examiner counted no fewer than 22 wounds and bruises on his body. His body was butchered after he was dead by someone who “demonstrated a surgeon’s skill.”
The New York Court of Appeals, that state’s highest court, in overturning the conviction of Domenico Galbo, who was suspected of killing the Black Hander, pointed out the incongruity of the physical appearances of Manzella and the man accused of the murder.
“Manzella was a strong, athletic man; and the wounds and bruises bear witness to a vigorous resistance,” the court wrote. “The defendant is a cripple; he has lost both his legs. He was under arrest within thirty-six hours of the murder; he did not show a scratch or a blood stain.”
His brother, Guiseppi Galbo, also suspected in the crime, likewise did not show a scratch or blood stain.
The Court of Appeals was asked to determine whether the evidence presented at the trial was sufficient to sustain a verdict that Domenico, who imported and sold bananas with his brother, was a principal in the crime.
There was certainly circumstantial evidence that Domenico was involved somehow.
On the day before Manzella’s body was found, he approached Giuseppi, asking for “a loan.” He was rebuffed and said that he would then ask Guiseppi’s father-in-law, Ollis.
Ollis also declined, but told Manzella to return that evening (October 29, 1911). Manzella was never seen alive again.
The police could pin down the time of death to sometime between 3 p.m. October 29 and 8 a.m. October 30. Apparently, a young man of Rochester had set a trap for a skunk in the ravine around 3 p.m. and neither the barrel nor the body was there at that time. He returned to check the trap at 8 a.m. October 30, discovered the body and reported it to police.
After a very short investigation (as we will see there were plenty of signs pointing to the Galbos as the killers), Domenico and Guiseppi were in the Rochester jail by the afternoon of October 30.
Both men were indicted, but only Domenico was put on trial.
The following circumstantial evidence linked Domenico to the murder.

• Before dawn on October 30, Domenico was seen driving the Galbo wagon away from Rochester near the ravine drawn by two horses, a gray and a sorrel.
• In the back of the wagon, underneath a canvas, was what appeared to be a barrel.
• An hour or two later, Domenico returned along the same road and witnesses (one of whom rode in the wagon) reported no barrel.
• Five barrels of wine were sold in March, 1910, to Joseph Galbo. Five barrels reached the Galbo store; four were still there after the body was discovered.
• Near the body in the ravine was a printed time card. A member of the Capon-Sullivan Company testified that he found the time cards in a desk and he threw them into the Galbo yard.
• Near the barrel there was a part of a burlap sack, which had once been filled with chicken feed. It was stained with blood. It was stamped with the label of the Dickinson Company of Chicago. It bore the tag of “Lathrop ’s Pet Shop.” Six bags of the same kind, with the same label, were found in the Galbo store, and there was another in the Galbo wagon.
• Near the burlap sack were also parts of a rope. Rope of the same material and weight was suspended from hooks, and carried bunches of bananas in the Galbo store. The rope from two hooks was missing.
• The tailboard of the wagon showed traces of white paint. White paint was found on the fence which ran along the Webster road at the top of the ravine.
• Discolored shavings of wood were found in the barrel, and other shavings, apparently discolored in the same way, were found in the Galbo barn. A chemist showed that all the shavings had been colored by the same dye.

“But nothing else that even remotely suggested guilt was found either in the barn or in the store,” the Court of Appeals wrote. “The police took possession at once; ransacked the buildings from top to bottom; tore the woodwork open and searched in every nook for traces of blood and for implements of crime. Nothing was found.”
At trial, Domenico denied any involvement or knowledge of the crime.
He was convicted of second degree murder and appealed. His first appeal was denied, and he appealed to the state’s highest court.
In its decision, the court explained the conundrum:

The People say that these acts of possession and concealment stamp the defendant as the murderer. They do, we think, beyond question justify the inference that in some way and at some stage he became connected with this crime. But the question remains, in what way and at what stage?

The problem demonstrates the different levels of guilt that conspirators face when accused of a crime.
Accessories before the fact and those who aid and abet, or induce another to commit a crime are penalized to the same extent as the person who commits the crime.
However, those who aid and abet after the fact are classified as accessories.
Domenico was charged and convicted of being a principal in the crime, in effect, an accessory before the fact.
The court pointed out that in crimes other than murder, possession of the fruits of the crime is often sufficient to adduce that the possessor is the criminal. But this usually applies in cases where the fruits of the crime are items a person would most likely want to have (e.g., swag from a burglary or larceny).
In other cases, possession of the fruits of one crime can be used to implicate the person as the criminal in another: A victim is killed in the midst of a robbery. It is a fair assumption that the robber, caught with the stolen goods, is also the murderer.
However, the court went on, with a dead body, possession of the corpse does not necessarily follow that the person is the killer.
“The possessor of the dead body wishes only to be rid of it,” the court wrote. “Its possession is thus associated more readily than that of money or jewels with the notion of concealment and thus with the form of guilt that attaches distinctively to the accessory after the fact.”
The particular facts of Manzella’s murder forced the court to look further.
“Is the guilty possessor the thief, or is he a receiver of stolen goods?” the court asked. “Judges have said that if nothing more is shown, we may take him to be the thief. But as soon as evidence is offered that the theft was committed by someone else, the inference changes.”
Deciding which inference to make is up to the jury, and the court cited many instances where juries were allowed to reach the wrong conclusion. Citing reknowned English jurist Lord Matthew Hale’s dictum, “it is better five guilty persons should escape unpunished, than one innocent person should die,” the court urged caution when juries must make such an inference.
In the case of Domenico Galbo, the jury was asked to convict a “legless cripple” for murdering “a strong man.”
“The murder followed a fierce fight in which the strong man was beaten and wounded. It seems certain that the wounds were inflicted and the head severed as parts of a single combat,” the court said. “We cannot with reason say that the cripple did these things. Least of all can we say that he was able to do them and escape without a scratch or a blood stain.”
Finding that no reasonable jury should have believed that Domenico could kill Manzella, other problems surface.
“We have no evidence, direct or circumstantial, that the actual perpetrator was assisted by any one. We have nothing to tell us when or where the crime occurred. We have no sign that it was committed in the defendant’s presence. He may have known of it in advance, and planned or encouraged it. He may have learned of it later, and attempted to shield the criminal.”
At best, the charge should have been accessory after the fact, the court found in reversing Galbo’s conviction and ordering a new trial.