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| George Junius Stinney Jr., 14, the youngest person executed in the United States in the 20th Century. |
Family of George Junius Stinney Jr. still waiting to clear his name for the 1944 murders of Mary Thames and Betty Binnicker in South Carolina
Stinney, who was black, was charged, tried, convicted and executed in 83 days. He was sentenced to die by an all-white, all-male jury. A forensic psychiatrist called Stinney's statement 'a coerced, compliant, false confession.'
George Junius Stinney Jr. was charged, tried, convicted and executed in 83 days for the killing of two girls in South Carolina in 1944. No physical evidence linked him to the crimes.
The skinny black naif, posing for a mugshot in jail stripes, was on a legal steamroller bound for the electric chair.
And the defeated look on his face suggests he was well aware of his destiny.
The boy was George Junius Stinney Jr., 14, who was accused of killing 2 white girls 70 years ago in the Jim Crow south, in the company mill village of Alcolu, S.C.
The crime was a nightmare.
By all accounts, so was the hasty retribution.
On March 23, 1944, Mary Thames, 7, and Betty Binnicker, 11, pedaled a bicycle into the countryside in search of wild passion flower blossoms.
They failed to return home, and their bodies were discovered the next day in a watery ditch near the black side of town, where Stinney lived with his parents and 3 siblings. The girls had been brained with a 15-inch railroad spike.
Deputy Sheriff H.S. Newman, acting on "information I received," arrested Stinney, who had spoken to the girls as they passed his home.
Newman and a state cop questioned the boy and soon emerged with a full confession - 2 confessions, in fact.
In the 1st, the boy said he was helping the girls after Mary fell into the ditch. They suddenly began hitting him, so he defended himself. In the 2nd version, he said he killed Mary so he could sexually assault Betty, although there was no evidence of rape.
Stinney's trial began and ended on April 24, a month after the murders. No physical evidence linked him to the crime, so his prosecution hinged on the confession.
The defense attorney, Charles Plowden, 33, did not challenge the confession. Instead, he claimed Stinney was too young for a murder conviction. It was a wasted argument since state law said 14-year-olds could be charged as adults.
The jury, 12 white men, convicted Stinney in 10 minutes. They recommend no mercy, and the boy was sentenced to die.
Plowden filed none of the legal challenges that were standard in death penalty cases even then.
"There was nothing to appeal on," he later said.
A budding politician, Plowden had antebellum family roots there in Clarendon County. Some say his primary defense strategy was to avoid upsetting the white power structure.
And he succeeded.
With little national notice in a country distracted by World War II, Stinney was sent to death row - the youngest person to face legal execution in America last century.
Local clergymen and black leaders lobbied Gov. Olin Johnston for clemency, but he was not inclined to show mercy.
In a reply to one minister, Johnston suggested that Stinney got off easy: "The colored people of Alcolu would have lynched this boy themselves had it not been for the protection of the officers."
Stinney was electrocuted on June 16, 1944, not yet 3 months after the murders. He was 14 years, 7 months and 29 days old, stood 5-feet-1 and weighed 95 pounds.
Most of his family, which fled Alcolu in fear in the days after the boy's arrest, eventually relocated to the New York area.
For decades, his siblings - Charles Stinney, Katherine Robinson and Amie Ruffner - have sought a reexamination of the case.
They finally got a day in court last January, when South Carolina Circuit Judge Carmen Mullen presided over a hearing to determine whether Stinney got a fair trial.
"They took my brother away and I never saw my mother laugh again," Amie Ruffner, now 78, testified. "I would love his name to be cleared."
A forensic psychiatrist called Stinney's statement "a coerced, compliant, false confession."
Today, the sly police art of manipulating a false confession from gullible kids has been well documented. Judge Mullen seemed to recognize that Stinney didn't stand a chance in 1944.
"No one here can justify a 14-year-old child being charged, tried and executed in 83 days," Mullen said. "In essence, not much was done for this child when his life lay in the balance."
Even the prosecutor at the hearing, Ernest (Chip) Finney III, saw the case as a travesty.
"Back in 1944," he said, "we should have known better, but we didn't."
Most expected a quick ruling. But nearly a year after the hearing, Mullen remains mum.
Ray Brown, a Baltimore writer who manages a "Redeem George Stinney Jr." Facebook page, told the Justice Story that he sees politics at play.
"Judge Mullen had all the information she needed to make a ruling at the close of that hearing," said Brown, who is working on a film about the case. "I believe the delay was a choreographed dance to keep this thing under wraps during an election year ... The powers that be in South Carolina are doing their best to not have to deal with a very ugly bit of history. At this point, I think the feds have to step in if we ever hope to get justice."
Stinney's brother, Charles, 83, lives in Brownsville, Brooklyn.
After 70 years of waiting, he said he has little faith in worldly justice.
"I don't know what the delay is about with the judge," he said last week. "But I'm a patient man because I know that, in the end, we all get final justice before the Lord."
Source: New York Daily News, December 7, 2014