The Youngest Person Ever Executed in the U.S.

[QueEx]

He Was The Youngest Person Ever Executed In The U.S.

• On June 16th, 1944, the United States put to rest the youngest person ever to be subjected to the death penalty.

• He was only 14 when he was arrested and charged for allegedly murdering an 8 and an 11-year - old duo of white girls with a large railroad spike.

• The sheriff at the time said Stinney admitted to the killings, but there is only his word — no written record of the confession has been found.

• The girls had disappeared while out riding their bicycles looking for flowers.

• As they passed the Stinney property, they asked young George Stinney and his sister, Katherine, if they knew where to find "maypops", a type of flower.

• When the girls did not return, search parties were organized, with hundreds of volunteers. The bodies of the girls were found the next morning in a ditch filled with muddy water. Both had suffered severe head wounds.

• Stinney was arrested a few hours later and was interrogated by several officers in a locked room with no witnesses aside from the officers; within an hour, a deputy announced that Stinney had confessed to the crime

• A lawyer with the case figures threats of mob violence and not being able to see his parents rattled the seventh-grader.

• According to the confession, Stinney (90 lbs, 5'1") wanted to "have sex with" 11 year old Betty June Binnicker and could not do so until her companion, Mary Emma Thames, age 8, was removed from the scene; thus he decided to kill Mary Emma. When he went to kill Mary Emma, both girls "fought back" and he thus decided to kill Betty June, as well, with a 15 inch railroad spike that was found in the same ditch a distance from the bodies[

• According to the accounts of deputies, Stinney apparently had been successful in killing both at once, causing major blunt trauma to their heads, shattering the skulls of each into at least 4-5 pieces.

• The next day, Stinney was charged with first-degree murder.

 

[QueEx]

Charged April 24, 1944

32 days later

The Trial

• The trial took place on April 24 at the Clarendon County Courthouse. Jury selection began at 10 am, ending just after noon, and the trial commenced at 2:30 pm

• The trial took place on April 24 at the Clarendon County Courthouse.

• Jury selection began at 10 am, ending just after noon, and the trial commenced at 2:30 pm.

• Jury selection began at 10 am, ending just after noon, and the trial commenced at 2:30 pm.

• Stinney's court appointed lawyer was 30-year-old Charles Plowden, who had political aspirations.

• Plowden did not cross-examine witnesses; his defense was reported to consist of the claim that Stinney was too young to be held responsible for the crimes. However the law in South Carolina at the time regarded anyone over the age of 14 as an adult.

• Closing arguments concluded at 4:30 pm, the jury retired just before 5 pm and deliberated for 10 minutes, returning a guilty verdict with no recommendation for mercy.

• Stinney was sentenced to death in the electric chair.

• When asked about appeals, Plowden replied that there would be no appeal, as the Stinney family had no money to pay for a continuation. When asked about the trial, Lorraine Binnicker Bailey, the sister of Betty June Binnicker, one of the murdered children, stated: “Everybody knew that he done it, even before they had the trial they knew that he done it. But, I don't think that they had too much of a trial.”

 

[QueEx]

81 days after being charged; Executed

• Local churches, the N.A.A.C.P., and unions pleaded with Governor Olin D. Johnston to stop the execution and commute the sentence to life imprisonment, citing Stinney's age as a mitigating factor.

• There was substantial controversy about the pending execution, with one citizen writing to Johnston, stating, "Child execution is only for Hitler."

• Still, there were supporters of Stinney's execution; another letter to Johnston stated: "Sure glad to hear of your decision regarding the n i g g e r Stinney."

• Johnston did nothing, thereby allowing the execution to proceed.

• The execution of George Stinney was carried out at the South Carolina State Penitentiary in Columbia, South Carolina, on June 16, 1944.
  
  • At 7:30 p.m., Stinney walked to the execution chamber with a Bible under his arm.
  
  
  • Standing 5'1" and weighing just over 90 pounds, he was small for his age, which presented difficulties in securing him to the frame holding the electrodes.
  
  
  • Neither did the state's adult-sized face-mask fit Stinney; his convulsions exposed his face to witnesses as the mask slipped free.
  
  
  • Stinney was declared dead within four minutes of the initial electrocution.

• From the time of the murders until Stinney's execution, eighty one days had passed.

 

[Dr.Porn]

Wow..

 

[totalcall]

Now you know dam well that kid had nothing to do with those girls being murdered. Some child molesting white fuck did it and it got penned on "the black man" or in this case the black child. I hope those responsible for that kids death, as well as the one responsible for the girls death face a God that is very pissed off.

 

[TurellSmith]

This shit make me hate white people. The injustices that whites have done to African Americans are unforgivable.

 

[anonymous]

Those were some hard times for black people.

 

[QueEx]

South Carolina Judge Vacates Conviction
of George Stinney in 1944 Execution​

​

George J. Stinney Jr. was 14
​

The New York Times
By CAMPBELL ROBERTSON
DEC. 17, 2014


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 order was a rare application of coram nobis, a legal remedy that can be used only when a conviction was based on an error of fact or unfairly obtained in a fundamental way and when all other remedies have been exhausted.

“I am not aware of any case where someone who was convicted has had the trial conviction and sentence vacated after they’d been executed,” said Miller W. Shealy Jr., a professor at the Charleston School of Law and one of the lawyers who worked on behalf of the Stinney family to have the conviction thrown out.

Ernest A. Finney III, the solicitor who had opposed the request on the state’s behalf — and a son of the first black State Supreme Court justice since Reconstruction — had argued in a two-day hearing in January that the conviction was valid under the legal system in place at the time. He did not return calls for comment.

At the hearing, in Sumter, Mr. Stinney’s two sisters testified, and a videotaped deposition from his brother was played. They spoke of the morning in March 1944 when the two girls, Betty June Binnicker, 11, and Mary Emma Thames, 7, were seen riding bicycles by the pastures in rural Alcolu. The girls’ bodies were found the next morning in a ditch, their skulls crushed. Mr. Stinney was taken into custody within hours, and confessed to the murders that day.

Two white men who had helped search for the girls also testified, and a cellmate of Mr. Stinney’s recounted conversations in which Mr. Stinney said he was innocent and had been made to confess. Less than three months passed between the murder and the execution; the trial and sentencing took less than a day.

Some of the problems of due process highlighted in the ruling were not rare in the Jim Crow South. Still, Mr. Shealy cautioned that this case was exceptional, due in part to Mr. Stinney’s age. Judge Mullen also emphasized that it should not become a standard resort for families grieving over decades-old injustices.

“The extraordinary circumstances discussed herein simply do not apply in most cases,” she wrote.


A version of this article appears in print on December 18, 2014, on page A28 of the New York edition with the headline: Judge Vacates Conviction in 1944 Execution.

​

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/18/us/judge-vacates-conviction-in-1944-execution.html?_r=0

 

[thoughtone]

This is commendable, but South Carolina has a long list of injustices to address.

 

[QueEx]

I can't say its even commendable. Far too late justice serves lil George Stinney, Jr., far too damn late.

Whats the teaching lesson here ?

 

[thoughtone]

I can't say its even commendable. Far too late justice serves lil George Stinney, Jr., far too damn late.

Whats the teaching lesson here ?

Very true.

With the police brutality incidents of late, I don't think too many lessons are learned.

 

[QueEx]

Very true.

With the police brutality incidents of late, I don't think too many lessons are learned.

Perhaps, the most recent incidents of police brutality, as you aptly point out, and grand jury reluctance that we continue witness in police-involved deaths of minorities teaches us that we need to take a longer look at the way police-involved incidents are processed. That is, because of the close and "inter-dependent" relationship between the police & the prosecution, maybe its time (or overdue) that a third party or process be interjected between police and prosecution -- in the case of police-involved shootings/deaths.

???

.