“Calling it a “great and fundamental injustice,” a South Carolina judge on Wednesday vacated the 1944 murder conviction of 14-year-old George J. Stinney Jr., the youngest person executed in the United States in the last century. Judge Carmen T. Mullen of Circuit Court did not rule that the conviction of Mr. Stinney for the murder of two white girls in the town of Alcolu was wrong on the merits. She did find, however, that the prosecution had failed in numerous ways to safeguard the constitutional rights of Mr. Stinney, who was black, from the time he was taken into custody until his death by electrocution. The all-white jury could not be considered a jury of the teenager’s peers, Judge Mullen ruled, and his court-appointed attorney did “little to nothing” to defend him. His confession was most likely coerced and unreliable, she added, “due to the power differential between his position as a 14-year-old black male apprehended and questioned by white, uniformed law enforcement in a small, segregated mill town in South Carolina.””* The Young Turks hosts Cenk Uygur breaks it down.
1 Family seeks justice 70 years after execution
The family of 14-year-old George Stinney, executed for murder in 1944, says he’s innocent. CNN’s David Mattingly reports.
IMPORTANT CONTENT
2 George Stinney, 14, Executed In Vile Act Of Injustice, Exonerated 70s Years Late
Gepubliceerd op 18 dec. 2014
Gepubliceerd op 16 jun. 2017
Gepubliceerd op 31 dec. 2017
This film is based in part on the true history of George Stinney Jr and on An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge by Ambrose Beirce.
Gepubliceerd op 2 okt. 2011
Gepubliceerd op 11 jan. 2015
10 Judge decides fate of 1944 trial
Gepubliceerd op 26 jan. 2014
11 Robert Ridgeway: “George Stinney led searchers to the bodies.”
Gepubliceerd op 1 mrt. 2014
16 Judge overturns conviction of 14-yo executed in 1944 Finally! – George Stinney Exonerated
I’ve been following this story a long time.
This update is bittersweet. (thanks to Kyle Kulinski from Secular Talk for the update https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8zdaN… )
A South Carolina judge on Wednesday took the unusual step of vacating the 1944 conviction of a black 14-year-old boy, the youngest person executed in the United States in the past century, saying he did not receive a fair trial in the murders of two white girls.
George Stinney Jr. was convicted by an all-white jury after a one-day trial and a 10-minute jury deliberation during a time when racial segregation prevailed in much of the United States.
Stinney died in the electric chair less than three months after the killings of Betty June Binnicker, 11, and Mary Emma Thames, 7
In her ruling, Judge Carmen Tevis Mullen said she was not overturning the case on its merits, which scant records made nearly impossible to relitigate, but on the failure of the court to grant Stinney a fair trial.
She said few or no defense witnesses testified and that it was “highly likely” that Stinney’s confession to white police officers was coerced.
“From time to time we are called to look back to examine our still-recent history and correct injustice where possible,” she wrote. “I can think of no greater injustice than a violation of one’s constitutional rights, which has been proven to me in this case by a preponderance of the evidence standard.”
The girls disappeared on March 23, 1944, after leaving home in the small mill town of Alcolu on their bicycles to look for wildflowers. They were found the next morning in a ditch, their skulls crushed.
Stinney was taken into custody that day and confessed within hours, according to Mullen’s ruling.
Last year, members of Stinney’s family petitioned for a new trial. His sister, Amie Ruffner, 77, testified in a January hearing that he could not have killed the girls because he had been with her on that day.
Citing the lack of a transcript from the original trial, no surviving physical evidence and only a handful of official documents, Mullen ruled instead to overturn the conviction outright.
Ruffner and two other surviving siblings of Stinney, who were run out of town shortly after his arrest, were pleased with the outcome, said Stinney family attorney Matthew Burgess.
“This is something that’s been weighing on them for seven decades now,” he said. “They are happy to hear that their brother has been exonerated.”
Prosecutors, who had opposed a new trial, were not immediately available for comment.
IMPORTANT CONTEXT
27 jun. 2016
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