On
this date, June 16, 1944, At age 14, George Junius Stinney, Jr. becomes the
youngest person executed in the United States in the 20th century. I will post
information about this Juvenile Killer from Wikipedia and other links.
George Stinney
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Born
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George Junius Stinney, Jr.
October 21, 1929 Pinewood, South Carolina, United States |
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Died
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June 16, 1944 (aged 14)
Columbia, South Carolina, United States |
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Criminal
penalty
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Death by electric chair
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Criminal
status
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Conviction(s)
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First-degree murder (vacated)
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George Junius Stinney Jr. (October 21, 1929 – June 16, 1944),
an African-American, age 14, was convicted at a flawed trial of murder in 1944
in his home town of Alcolu, South Carolina. He was the youngest
person in the United States in the 20th-century to be sentenced to death and to
be executed.
Stinney
was convicted in 1944 in a one-day trial of the first-degree murder of two white
girls: 11-year-old Betty June Binnicker and 8-year-old Mary Emma Thames. After
being arrested, Stinney was said to have confessed to the crime.
There was no written record of his confession apart from notes provided by an
investigating deputy, and no transcript of the brief trial. He was executed by electric
chair.
Since
Stinney's conviction and execution, the question of his guilt, the validity of
his reported confession, and the judicial process leading to his execution have
been extensively criticized.
A
group of lawyers and activists investigated the Stinney case on behalf of his
family. In 2013 the family petitioned for a new trial. On December 17, 2014,
his conviction was posthumously vacated
70 years after his execution, because the circuit court judge ruled that he had
not been given a fair trial; he had no effective defense and his Sixth Amendment
rights had been violated. The judgment noted that while Stinney may in fact
have committed the crime, the prosecution and trial were fundamentally flawed.
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Betty June Binnicker, 11, was murdered along
with her friend, Mary Emma Thames, 8. Both had received major blows to the
head. Stinney was charged with the crimes.
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Case background
In
1944 George Junius Stinney, Jr. lived in Alcolu, Clarendon County, South Carolina.
The 14-year-old African-American boy lived with his father, George Stinney,
Sr., mother Aime, brother Charles, age 12, and sisters Katherine, age 10, and
Aime, age 7, and a stepbrother, Johnny. George Sr. worked at the town's
sawmill, and the family lived in housing provided by George Sr.'s employer. Alcolu
was a small, working-class mill town, where white and black neighborhoods were
separated by railroad tracks. The town was typical of small Southern towns of
the time, with separate schools and churches for white and black residents, who
rarely interacted.
The
bodies of Betty June Binnicker, age 11, and Mary Emma Thames, age 8, were found
in a ditch on the black side of Alcolu on March 23, 1944. They had been beaten
with an improvised weapon variously reported as a piece of blunt metal or a
railroad spike. The girls were last seen riding their bicycles looking for
flowers. As they passed the Stinney property, they asked young George Stinney
and his sister, Aime, if they knew where to find "maypops", a local name for passionflowers.
According to Aime she was with George at the time of the murders.
When
the girls did not return home, search parties were organized. George's father
was among the searchers. The bodies of the girls were found the next morning,
on the black side of town, in a ditch filled with muddy water. According to an
article reported by the wire services on March 24, 1944, and published widely,
with the mistake of the boy's name preserved, the sheriff announced the arrest
and said that "George Junius" had confessed and led officers to
"a hidden piece of iron." Both girls had suffered blunt
force trauma to the face and head. Reports differed as to what kind of
weapon had been used. According to a report by the medical examiner, these
wounds had been "inflicted by a blunt instrument with a round head, about
the size of a hammer." Both girls' skulls were punctured. The girls had
not been sexually assaulted and their hymens were intact. The medical examiner
reported the genitalia of the older girl were slightly bruised.
Investigation
George
Stinney was arrested on suspicion of murdering the girls along with his older
stepbrother Johnny. Johnny was released, George was held and not allowed to see
his parents until after his trial and conviction. According to a handwritten
statement, the arresting officer was H.S. Newman, a Clarendon County deputy,
who stated "I arrested a boy by the name of George Stinney. He then made a
confession and told me where to find a piece of iron about 15 inches were [sic]
he said he put it in a ditch about six feet from the bicycle." No
confession statement signed by Stinney is known to exist.
George
was reported to have gotten into fights at school, including a fight where he
scratched a girl with a knife. This assertion by Stinney's seventh-grade
teacher, who was black, was disputed by Aime Stinney Ruffner when it was
reported in 1995. A local white woman who remembered Stinney from childhood
said Stinney had threatened to kill her and her friend the day before the
murder, and that he was known as a bully.
Following
George's arrest, his father was fired from his job at the local sawmill, and
the Stinney family had to immediately vacate the housing provided by Stinney
Sr's employer. The family feared for their safety. His parents did not see
George again before the trial. He had no support during his 81-day confinement
and trial; he was kept at a jail in Columbia 50 miles from town because of the
risk of lynching. Stinney was questioned alone, without his parents or an
attorney. Although the Sixth Amendment
guarantees legal counsel, it was not until 1963 that Gideon v. Wainwright explicitly required
representation through the course of criminal proceedings.
Trial
The
entire proceeding against Stinney, including jury selection, took one day.
Stinney's court-appointed defense counsel was Charles Plowden, a tax
commissioner campaigning for election to local political office. Plowden did
not challenge the three police officers who testified that Stinney confessed to
the two murders, despite this being the only evidence against him, and despite
the prosecution's presentation of two different versions of Stinney's verbal
confession. In one version Stinney was attacked by the girls after he tried to
help one girl who had fallen in the ditch and he killed them in self defense.
In the other version he had followed the girls, first attacking Mary Emma and
then Betty June. There was no physical evidence linking him to the murders.
There is no written record of Stinney's confession apart from Deputy Newman's
statement.
Stinney's
trial had an all-white jury. More than 1,000 people crowded the
courtroom but no blacks were allowed. Other than the testimony of the three
police officers, at trial prosecutors called three witnesses: Reverend Francis
Batson, who discovered the bodies of the two girls, and the two doctors who
performed the post-mortem examination. Conflicting confessions were reported to
have been offered by the prosecution. The court allowed discussion of the
"possibility" of rape despite an absence of evidence in the medical
examiner's report. Stinney's counsel did not call any witnesses, did not
cross-examine witnesses and offered little or no defense. Trial presentation
lasted two and a half hours. The jury took ten minutes to deliberate,
after which they returned with a guilty verdict. The judge sentenced Stinney to
death by the electric chair. There is no transcript of the trial. No appeal was
filed.
Stinney's
family, churches and the NAACP appealed to Governor Olin
Johnston for clemency, given the age of the boy. Others urged the governor
to let the execution proceed, which he did. Johnston stated in a response to
one appeal for clemency that "It may be
interesting for you to know that Stinney killed the smaller girl to rape the
larger one. Then he killed the larger girl and raped her dead body. Twenty
minutes later he returned and attempted to rape her again, but her body was too
cold. All of this he admitted himself."
These
assertions were not supported by the medical examiner's report.
Between
the time of Stinney's arrest and his execution, Stinney's parents were allowed
to see him once, after the trial in the Columbia penitentiary.
Execution
The
execution of George Stinney was carried out at the Central Correctional Institution
in Columbia on June 16, 1944, at
7:30 p.m. Standing 5 feet 1 inch (155 cm) tall and weighing
just over 90 pounds (40 kg), Stinney was so small compared to the usual
adult prisoners that law officers had difficulty securing him to the frame
holding the electrodes. The state's adult-sized face-mask did not fit him; as
he was hit with the first 2,400 V surge of electricity, the mask covering his face slipped off.
Stinney was declared dead within four minutes of the initial electrocution.
From the time of the murders until Stinney's execution, 83 days had passed.
Reopening of case
In
2004, George Frierson, a local historian who grew up in Alcolu, started
researching the case after reading a newspaper article about it. His work
gained the attention of South Carolina lawyers Steve McKenzie and Matt Burgess.
In addition, Ray Brown, attorney James Moon, and others contributed countless
hours of research and review of historical documents, in finding witnesses and
evidence to assist in exonerating young Stinney. Among those who aided the case
were the Civil Rights and
Restorative Justice Project (CRRJ) at Northeastern University School of
Law, who filed an amicus brief with the court in 2014. Frierson and
the pro bono lawyers first sought relief through the Pardon and Parole
Board of South Carolina.
McKenzie
and Burgess, along with lawyer Ray Chandler representing Stinney's family,
filed a motion for a new trial on October 25, 2013.
If we can get the case re-opened, we can go to the judge and say, 'There wasn't any reason to convict this child. There was no evidence to present to the jury. There was no transcript. This case needs to be re-opened. This is an injustice that needs to be righted.' I'm pretty optimistic that if we can get the witnesses we need to come forward, we will be successful in court. We hopefully have a witness that's going to say — that's non-family, non-relative witness — who is going to be able to tie all this in and say that they were basically an alibi witness. They were there with Mr. Stinney and this did not occur.— Steve McKenzie
George
Frierson stated in interviews, "there has been a person that has been
named as being the culprit, who is now deceased. And it was said by the family
that there was a deathbed confession." Frierson said that the rumored
culprit came from a well-known, prominent white family. A member, or members of
that family, had served on the initial coroner's inquest jury which had
recommended that Stinney be prosecuted.
In
its amicus brief, the CRRJ said:
There is compelling evidence that George Stinney was innocent of the crimes for which he was executed in 1944. The prosecutor relied, almost exclusively, on one piece of evidence to obtain a conviction in this capital case: the unrecorded, unsigned “confession” of a 14-year-old child who was deprived of counsel and parental guidance, and whose defense lawyer shockingly failed to call exculpating witnesses or to preserve his right of appeal.
New
evidence in the court hearing in January 2014 included testimony by Stinney's
siblings that he was with them at the time of the murders. In addition, an
affidavit was introduced from the "Reverend Francis Batson, who found the
girls and pulled them from the water-filled ditch. In his statement he recalls
there was not much blood in or around the ditch, suggesting that they may have
been killed elsewhere and moved." Wilford "Johnny" Hunter, who
was in prison with Stinney, "testified that the teenager told him he had
been made to confess" and always maintained his innocence.
Rather
than approving a new trial, on December 17, 2014, circuit
court Judge Carmen Mullen vacated
Stinney's conviction. She ruled that he had not received a fair trial, as he
was not effectively defended and his Sixth Amendment
right had been violated. The ruling was a rare use of the legal principle of coram
nobis. Judge Mullen ruled that his confession was likely coerced and
thus inadmissible. She also found that the
execution of a 14-year-old constituted "cruel and unusual punishment."
Mullen confined her judgment to the process of the prosecution, noting that
Stinney "may well have committed this crime." With reference to the
legal process Mullen wrote "No one can justify a 14-year-old child
charged, tried, convicted and executed in some 80 days," concluding that
"In essence, not much was done for this child when his life lay in the
balance."
Family
members of both Betty Binnicker and Mary Thames expressed disappointment at the
ruling. They said that, although they acknowledge his execution at the age of
14 is controversial, they never doubted his guilt. The niece of Betty Binnicker
has said she and her family have extensively researched the case, and argues
that "people who [just] read these articles in the newspaper don't know
the truth." Binnicker's niece said that, in the early 1990s, a police
officer who had arrested Stinney had contacted her and said: "Don't you
ever believe that boy didn't kill your aunt." These family members said
that the claims of a deathbed confession from an individual confessing to the
girls' murders have never been substantiated.
The
solicitor for the state of South Carolina, who argued for the state against exoneration,
was Ernest A. Finney III. He is the son of Ernest A. Finney, Jr., appointed as South
Carolina's first African-American State Supreme Court justice since
Reconstruction.
Books and films about Stinney's case
David
Stout based his first novel Carolina Skeletons (1988) on this
case. He was awarded the 1989 Edgar Allan Poe Award for Best First Novel.
Stout suggests in the novel that Stinney, whom he renames Linus Bragg, was
innocent. The plot revolves around a fictitious nephew of Stinney/Bragg, who
unravels the truth about the case decades later.
The
novel was adapted as a 1991 television movie of the same name directed by John
Erman, featuring Kenny Blank as Stinney/Bragg. Lou
Gossett, Jr. played Stinney's/Bragg's younger brother James.
As
of February 2014, another movie about the Stinney case, 83 Days,
was planned by Pleroma Studios, written and produced by Ray Brown with Charles Burnett as director.
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