NEW TRIAL FOR JUDICIALLY-LYNCHED GEORGE STINNEY?

After a two-hour trial in 1944, the 14-year-old black boy became and remains the youngest person ever executed in the U.S.

In March 1944, two little white girls aged 7 and 11 were picking wildflowers when they were brutally beaten to death in Alcolu, South Carolina. Sheriff’s deputies acting on a tip that George Stinney had been seen talking to the girls, arrested the 14-year-old black boy. The cops said Stinney gave them an oral confession. The authorities had no evidence that the boy murdered the two girls other than the alleged confession.

Stinney was put on trial. His court appointed attorney did not present any defense. After a two-hour trial, the case went to an all-white jury. After only 10 minutes of deliberations, the jury came back with a guilty verdict. Stinney was executed in South Carolina’s electric chair just 84 days after the girls were murdered. He remains the youngest person ever executed in the U.S.

Supporters of the boy are now seeking a symbolic acquittal and have asked a South Carolina judge to grant Stinney a new trial. Legal experts say it is unlikely the request for a new trial will be granted. South Carolina does not allow the introduction of new evidence once a trial is over unless the information had been impossible to discover before the trial and would likely have changed the outcome had it been introduced. Lawyers have also filed a request to pardon the boy with the S.C. Department of Probation, Parole and Pardon Services in case a new trial is not granted.

It seems incredulous that a murder defendant, regardless of his age, could have been executed after a two-hour trial with no evidence other than an alleged oral confession and with no defense offered by his court appointed lawyer. Stinney may or may not have murdered the two girls but in either case, the trial and execution was nothing more than the shameful judicial lynching of a young black boy by a whites-only Jim Crow era justice system.