By Jesse Wegman in The New York Times
Seventy years after he was executed in South Carolina, George Stinney’s conviction was vacated by a state judge Wednesday on the grounds that he had not received a fair trial.
Stinney, a 14-year-old black boy, was arrested in March 1944 for the murder of two white girls in Clarendon County, S.C. In less than three months, he was tried, convicted and put to death.
He was the youngest person to be executed in the U.S. in the 20th century. Reports from the execution chamber said he was so small that the jolt of electricity knocked the mask from his face.
In a 28-page order, Judge Carmen T. Mullen — who heard testimony on the case in January — did not rule on the merits of the murder charges against Stinney, but found that there were “fundamental, constitutional violations of due process” across the board.
Indeed, nothing about Stinney’s case came close to meeting basic constitutional requirements.
He was arrested without a warrant and questioned without a lawyer.
The lawyer eventually appointed to defend him was a tax commissioner who had never before represented a criminal defendant.
The only evidence against him was the word of the local police chief who said he had confessed.
Stinney’s entire capital trial lasted three hours. His lawyer neither cross-examined the prosecution’s witnesses nor called any witnesses for the defense.
The jury — all white in a county that was almost three-quarters black — convicted and condemned him in 10 minutes. There were no appeals.
Read more at The New York Times
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