"George Stinney, Black Teen Executed In 1944, May Get New Trial," is by Jeffrey Collins for Associated Press, via Huffington Post. It's also available at the Grio. Here's an extended excerpt from the beginning of the report:
Supporters of a 14-year-old black boy executed in 1944 for killing two white girls are asking a South Carolina judge to take the unheard-of move of granting him a new trial in hopes he will be cleared of the charges.George Stinney was convicted on a shaky confession in a segregated society that wanted revenge for the beating deaths of two girls, ages 11 and 7, according to the lawsuit filed last month on Stinney's behalf in Clarendon County.
The request for a new trial has an uphill climb. The judge may refuse to hear it at all, since the punishment was already carried out. Also, South Carolina has strict rules for introducing new evidence after a trial is complete, requiring the information to have been impossible to discover before the trial and likely to change the results, said Kenneth Gaines, a professor at the University of South Carolina's law school.
"I think it's a longshot, but I admire the lawyer for trying it," Gaines said, adding that he's not aware of any other executed inmates in the state being granted a new trial posthumously.
The request for a new trial is largely symbolic, but Stinney's supporters say they would prefer exoneration to a pardon.
Stinney's case intersects some long-running disputes in the American legal system — the death penalty and race. At 14, he's the youngest person executed in the United States in past 100 years. He was electrocuted just 84 days after the girls were killed in March 1944.
The request for a new trial includes sworn statements from two of Stinney's siblings who say he was with them the entire day the girls were killed. Notes from Stinney's confession and most other information deputies and prosecutors used to convict Stinney in a one-day trial have disappeared along with any transcript of the proceedings. Only a few pages of cryptic, hand-written notes remain, according to the motion.
Time posts, "Youngest Person Executed In 100 Years May Get New Trial," by Charlotte Alter.
Stinney was convicted by an all-white jury after only ten minutes of deliberation. The boy allegedly confessed to police, although no written confession has ever been found nor did he have a lawyer present. Some reports say that police gave him ice cream during the interrogation in order to make him cooperate. Stinney was not read his Miranda rights, his parents were not allowed to see him in jail, and a lynch mob forced the family to leave town before his trial. Stinney’s court-appointed lawyer was a tax commissioner who allegedly called no defense witnesses to testify, and the trial lasted just over two and a half hours. Recently, two of Stinney’s siblings have sworn that they were with him all day when the girls were murdered.
George Frierson, a Claredon county School District board member who has been advocating for Stinney’s innocence since he first heard about the case eight years ago, says that Stinney would have been physically incapable of murdering the girls because their wounds indicated that they were inflicted by someone extremely large. At just over 5 feet tall and 90 pounds, Stinney had to have a specially fitted electric chair for his execution.
Related posts are in the race category index.
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