Slate has an
article by
Laura Bradley about justice, a little late:
In 1944, it took twelve white men ten minutes to convict fourteen-year-old George Stinney Jr. (photo) for beating two young white girls to death. On Wednesday, Circuit Court Judge Carmen Mullins vacated the decision, which sent Stinney to the electric chair on what civil rights advocates have said for years was a coerced confession.
In Alcolu, a small town in South Carolina, NBC News reports that Stinney confessed to beating two girls, ages eleven and eight, with a railroad spike. He weighed 95 pounds when he was arrested, and was so small he had to sit on a phone book in the electric chair when he was executed within three months of the murders.
Civil rights advocates have pushed for the case to be reopened for years, NBC News reports. “He is often cited as the youngest person executed in the US in the twentieth century,” according to NBC News. According to The Grio, his trial lasted around three hours, with no witnesses called to his defense. “No physical evidence or trial transcript exists,” The Grio reports.
NBC News notes that “in a 2009 affidavit, Stinney’s sister said she had been with him on the day of the murders and he could not have committed them.”
Ray Brown, who’s producing a film called 83 Days, based on Stinney’s execution timeline, said he was overwhelmed by the ruling. “It’s never too late for justice,” Brown said. “There’s no statute of limitations on justice. One of the things I can say about South Carolina, and I can give them credit for it, is that they got it right this time. During a period of time in our nation where we seem to have such a great racial divide, you have a southern state that has decided to admit they made a mistake and correct it.”
Rico says yeah, great;
Stinney, wherever he is, surely is happy they corrected it...
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