George Junius Stinney, Jr. (October 21, 1929 – June 16, 1944) was an African American boy who was convicted and the youngest American to be sentenced to death and executed, in a proceeding later vacated as an unfair trial, of murdering two girls, ages 7 and 11, in his hometown of Alcolu, South Carolina.
He was accused of killing the two white girls, 11-Year-old Betty June Binnicker, and Mary Emma Thames of 7, The girls had been beaten with a weapon, variously reported as a piece of blunt metal or a railroad spike. The girls were last seen riding their bicycles looking for flowers. their bodies were found in a ditch near the house where the teenager resided with his parents.
Police arrested 14-year-old George Stinney as a suspect. They stated that he had confessed to the crime while under custody. No transcript was recorded of the brief trial. There was a written record of his confession in the form of notes provided by an investigating deputy.
Stinney was convicted of first-degree murder of the two girls in less than 10 minutes by an all-white jury, during a two hour trial. The court refused to hear his appeal.
During his trial, even on the day of his execution, he always carried a bible in his hands, claiming to be innocent.
A report by the medical examiner established that, these wounds had been “inflicted by a blunt instrument with a round head, about the size of a hammer.” Both girls’ skulls were punctured. The medical examiner reported no evidence of sexual assault to the younger girl, though the genitalia of the older girl were slightly bruised.
At that time, all members of the jury were white. The trial lasted only 2 hours, and the sentence was dictated 10 minutes later.
The Boy’s parents were threatened, and prevented from being present in the courtroom, and subsequently expelled from that city.
According to a handwritten statement, the arresting officer was H.S. Newman, a Clarendon County deputy, who stated, “I arrested a boy by the name of George Stinney. He then made a confession and told me where to find a piece of iron about 15 inches where he said he put it in a ditch about six feet from the bicycle.” No confession statement signed by Stinney is known to exist. The 14 year old claimed that the arresting officers starved him and then bribed him with food to confess.
The entire proceeding against Stinney, including jury selection, took one day. Stinney’s court-appointed defense counsel was Charles Plowden, a tax commissioner campaigning for election to local office. Plowden did not challenge the three police officers who testified that Stinney confessed to the two murders, despite this being the only evidence against him.
He did not challenge the prosecution’s presentation of two differing versions of Stinney’s verbal confession. In one version, Stinney was attacked by the girls after he tried to help one girl who had fallen in the ditch, and he killed them in self defense. In the other version, he had followed the girls, first attacking Mary Emma and then Betty June. There was no physical evidence linking him to the murders. There is no written record of Stinney’s confession apart from Deputy Newman’s statement.
He was executed that year, still age 14, by electric chair. George Stinney was executed at the Central Correctional Institution in Columbia, South Carolina on June 16, 1944, at 7:30p.m. At 7:25pm, standing 5 feet 1 inch tall and weighing just over 90 lbs three police officers approached the cell where George was being held, one officer entered and took him out of his cell. The officers escorted him to the execution room where they placed him in the electric chair, using the Bible he was carrying as a booster seat because George was so small. He was electrocuted with 4,300 volts in his head, imagine all that voltage in a teenager’s head.
Before the execution, George spent 81 days in prison without being able to see his parents more than once, under the threat of lynching, they were not allowed to see him any other time.
He was held in solitary, 80 miles from his city. Stinney was questioned alone, without his parents or an attorney.
His father was allowed to approach George to say his final words to his son. An officer asked George if he had any last words to say, but George just shook his head. George Stinney could only whimper and take big deep breaths as one of the officers pulled a strap from the chair and placed it over his mouth, causing George to break into tears. They then placed the face mask over his face, which did not fit him, as George continued sobbing. When the lethal electricity was applied, the mask covering George’s face slipped off, revealing George’s burned scalp and tears streaming down his face, saliva dripping from his mouth. Stinney was declared dead after eight minutes. His teeth were smoking and he had one eye missing. He was buried in an unmarked grave in Sumter, South Carolina.
Re-Examination of His Case
A re-examination of Stinney’s case began in 2004, and several individuals and Northeastern University School of Law sought a judicial review. His conviction was overturned in 2014, 70 years after he was executed when a court ruled that he had not received a fair trial.
McKenzie and Burgess, along with attorney Ray Chandler representing Stinney’s family, filed a motion for a new trial on October 25, 2013.
If we can get the case re-opened, we can go to the judge and say, ‘There wasn’t any reason to convict this child. There was no evidence to present to the jury. There was no transcript. This case needs to be re-opened. This is an injustice that needs to be righted.’ I’m pretty optimistic that if we can get the witnesses we need to come forward, we will be successful in court. We hopefully have a witness that’s going to say — that’s non-family, non-relative witness — who is going to be able to tie all this in and say that they were basically an alibi witness. They were there with Mr. Stinney and this did not occur.
— Steve McKenzie
George Frierson stated in interviews, “there has been a person that has been named as being the culprit, who is now deceased. And it was said by the family that there was a deathbed confession.” Frierson said that the rumored culprit came from a well-known, prominent white family. A member, or members, of that family had served on the initial coroner’s inquest jury, which had recommended that Stinney be prosecuted.
In its amicus brief, the CRRJ said:
There is compelling evidence that George Stinney was innocent of the crimes for which he was executed in 1944. The prosecutor relied, almost exclusively, on one piece of evidence to obtain a conviction in this capital case: the unrecorded, unsigned “confession” of a 14-year-old who was deprived of counsel and parental guidance, and whose defense lawyer shockingly failed to call exculpating witnesses or to preserve his right of appeal.
New evidence in the court hearing in January 2014 included testimony by Stinney’s siblings that he was with them at the time of the murders. In addition, an affidavit was introduced from the “Reverend Francis Batson, who found the girls and pulled them from the water-filled ditch. In his statement he recalls there was not much blood in or around the ditch, suggesting that they may have been killed elsewhere and moved. Wilford “Johnny” Hunter, who was in prison with Stinney, “testified that the teenager told him he had been made to confess and always maintained his innocence”
On a day like this, he would have been 90years of age, maybe a successful man with kids, grandchildren and great-grandchildren. His life was cut short, but 70 years into his execution, his innocence was finally proven by a judge in South Carolina. The boy was innocent, someone set it up to blame him for being black. His destiny was punctured, but not destroyed. Because if we are still referring to him, it signified that, he still lived to affect lives positively.
George! today is your day! May your innocent soul rest in peace!
#PurposeDrivenLife #GeorgeStinney #RacismIsDemonic #ItBringsSorrow