Today's Articles

People, Locations, Episodes

Fri, 06.16.1944

George Stinney is Executed

George Stinney Jr.

*On this date in 1944, a 14-year-old Black youth was executed by South Carolina.

George Stinney was found guilty of killing a 7-year-old and an 11-year-old white girl in a trial that lasted less than a day in the Southern mill town of Alcolu, S.C.  The town was segregated by race. Nearly all the evidence, including a confession central to the case against Stinney, has disappeared, along with the trial transcript.  Lawyers working on behalf of Stinney's family had sworn statements from his relatives accounting for his time the day the girls were killed, from a cellmate saying he never confessed to the crime, and from a pathologist disputing the findings of the autopsy done on the victims.

Even in 1944, there was an outcry over putting someone so young in the electric chair. Newspaper accounts said the straps in the chair didn't fit around his 95-pound body, and an electrode was too big for his leg. Stinney's supporters said racism, common in the Jim Crow era South, meant deputies in Clarendon County did a little investigation after they decided Stinney was the prime suspect.  They said he was pulled from his parents and interrogated without a lawyer.  Stinney was the only Black person in the courtroom during his one-day trial. The prosecutor arguing against him was Ernest "Chip" Finney III, the son of South Carolina's first black Chief Justice.  Finney said he won't present any evidence against Stinney at the hearing last month, but if a new trial is granted, he will ask for time to conduct a new investigation.

In 2014, the decision whether to give an executed child a new trial was in the hands of Circuit Judge Carmen Mullen. Experts said it is a long shot. South Carolina law has a high bar for new trials based on evidence that could have been discovered during the trial.

At 14, he was the youngest person executed in the United States in the past 100 years.  South Carolina did not have a statewide law enforcement unit to help smaller jurisdictions until 1947.  Stinney's supporters said if the motion for a new trial failed, they will ask the state to pardon him. George Stinney was pardoned on December 19th, 2014.

New Poem Each Day

Poetry Corner

Slaves are said to have worked hard & long on this island Sunup to sundown & beyond Sundays & Christmas off Two clothes a year are memories bestowed to old... ST. HELENA ISLAND by Tom Dent.
Read More