Judge: Boy, 14, Shouldn't Have Been Executed

COLUMBIA, S.C. — More than 70 years after South Carolina
sent a 14-year-old black boy to the electric chair in the
killings of two white girls in a segregated mill town, a judge
threw out the conviction, saying the state committed a great
injustice.
George Stinney was arrested, convicted of murder in a one-
day trial and executed in 1944 - all in the span of about
three months and without an appeal. The speed in which the
state meted out justice against the youngest person
executed in the United States in the 20th century was
shocking and extremely unfair, Circuit Judge Carmen Mullen
wrote in her ruling Wednesday.
"I can think of no greater injustice," Mullen wrote.
The girls, ages 7 and 11, were beaten badly in the head with
an iron railroad spike in the town of Alcolu in Clarendon
County, about 45 miles southeast of Columbia, authorities
said. A search by dozens of people found their bodies
several hours later.
Investigators arrested Stinney, saying witnesses saw him
with the girls as they picked flowers. He was kept away
from his parents, and authorities later said he confessed.
His supporters said he was a small, frail boy so scared that
he said whatever he thought would make the authorities
happy. They said there was no physical evidence linking
him to the deaths. His executioners noted the electric chair
straps didn't fit him, and an electrode was too big for his
leg.
During a two-day hearing in January, Mullen heard from
Stinney's surviving brother and sisters, someone involved in
the search and experts who questioned the autopsy findings
and Stinney's confession. Most of the evidence from the
original trial was gone and almost all the witnesses were
dead.
It took Mullen nearly four times as long to issue her ruling
as it took in 1944 to go from arrest to execution.
Stinney's case has long been whispered in civil rights
circles in South Carolina as an example of how a black
person could be railroaded by a justice system during the
Jim Crow era where the investigators, prosecutors and
juries were all white.
The case received renewed attention because of a crusade
by textile inspector and school board member George
Frierson. Armed with a binder full of newspaper articles and
other evidence, he and a law firm believed the teen
represented everything that was wrong with South Carolina
during the era of segregation.
Frierson said he heard about the judge's decision from a
co-worker. He had to attend a school board meeting later in
the day, so the news hadn't sunk in yet.
"When I get home, I'm going to get on my knees and thank
the Lord Almighty for being so good and making sure justice
prevailed," Frierson said.
Attorneys argued that Stinney should get a new trial, but
Mullen went a step further by vacating Stinney's conviction.
Her 29-page order included references to the 1931
Scottsboro Boys case in Alabama, where nine black teens
were convicted of raping two white women. Eight of them
were sentenced to death.
The convictions were eventually overturned before the teens
went to the death chamber and the charges were dropped.
Mullen noted Stinney did not even get the consideration of
an appeal.
The judge was careful to say her ruling doesn't apply to
other families who felt their relatives were discriminated
against.
"The extraordinary circumstances discussed herein simply
do not apply in most cases," Mullen wrote.