George Stinney
|
|||
|
|||
Born
|
George Junius Stinney, Jr.
October 21, 1929 Pinewood, South Carolina, United States |
||
Died
|
June 16, 1944 (aged 14)
Columbia, South Carolina, United States |
||
Criminal
penalty
|
Death by electric chair
|
||
Criminal
status
|
|
||
Conviction(s)
|
First-degree murder (vacated)
|
||
George Junius Stinney Jr. (October 21, 1929 – June 16, 1944), an
African-American, age 14, was convicted at a flawed trial of murder in 1944 in
his home town of Alcolu, South Carolina. He was the youngest
person in the United States in the 20th-century to be sentenced to death and to
be executed.
Stinney
was convicted in 1944 in a one-day trial of the first-degree murder of two white
girls: 11-year-old Betty June Binnicker and 8-year-old Mary Emma Thames. After
being arrested, Stinney was said to have confessed to the crime. There was no
written record of his confession apart from notes provided by an investigating
deputy, and no transcript of the brief trial. He was executed by electric chair.
Since
Stinney's conviction and execution, the question of his guilt, the validity of
his reported confession, and the judicial process leading to his execution have
been extensively criticized.
A
group of lawyers and activists investigated the Stinney case on behalf of his
family. In 2013 the family petitioned for a new trial. On December 17, 2014,
his conviction was posthumously vacated
70 years after his execution, because the circuit court judge ruled that he had
not been given a fair trial; he had no effective defense and his Sixth Amendment
rights had been violated. The judgment noted that while Stinney may in fact
have committed the crime, the prosecution and trial were fundamentally flawed.
 |
|
"Contemplate
that if Hitler falls into our hands we shall certainly put him to death. Not a
Sovereign who could be said to be in hands of Ministers, like Kaiser. This man
is the mainspring of evil. Instrument - electric chair, for gangsters no doubt
available on lend-lease."
|
No comments:
Post a Comment