"Let justice be done, though the heavens may fall"
You are seriously against 60 years of basic constitutional law and basic criminal law if you believe that government was within its limited powers to arrest a large assortment of people for merely associating at a conference. Whether they were ultimately murderers or terrible people is complete irrelevant to that legal analysis.
To the legal analysis it's irrelevant, I agree. But life isn't only legal analysis. Sometimes even the whacking of a too violent gangster by somebody who wants the streets to be quiet can be considered a good thing (or at least a lesser evil), even though it's illegal. I personally enjoy every situation in which organized crime bosses have trouble, being it constitutional or not. I would rather save my feeling of "being sorry" for people who were framed for the crimes they didn't commit, criminals with extenuating circumstances, political prisoners etc.
From an abstract juridical point of view, those gangsters were detained illegally, but to use it as an illustration of "bad law" isn't really a good example in my opinion, there were many other people much more deserving of the title "victim". If the Apalachin police raid hadn't happened, it would have been worse.
