SUMTER, S.C. (AP) — A 14-year-old black boy executed nearly 70 years ago is finally getting another day in court, and his lawyers plan to argue Tuesday for a new trial, saying his conviction was tainted by the segregationist-era justice system and scant evidence.

George Stinney was found guilty in 1944 of killing two white girls, ages 7 and 11. The trial lasted less than a day in the tiny Southern mill town of Alcolu, separated, as most were in those days, by race.

Nearly all the evidence, including a confession that was central to the case against Stinney, has disappeared, along with the transcript of the trial. Lawyers working on behalf of Stinney's family have gathered new evidence, including sworn statements from his relatives accounting for his whereabouts the day the girls were killed and from a pathologist disputing the autopsy findings.

The novel decision of whether to give someone executed a new trial will be in the hands of Circuit Judge Carmen Mullen. Experts say it is a longshot. South Carolina law has a high bar to grant new trials. Also, the legal system in the state before segregation often found defendants guilty with evidence that would be considered scant today. If Mullen finds in favor of Stinney, it could open the door for hundreds of other appeals.

But the Stinney case is unique. At 14, he's the youngest person executed in the United States in the past 100 years. 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 little investigation after they decided Stinney was the prime suspect. They said he was pulled from his parents and interrogated without a lawyer.

School board member George Frierson heard stories about Stinney growing up in the same mill town he did, and he has spent a decade fighting to get him exonerated. He swallowed hard as he said he hardly slept Monday night.

"Somebody that didn't kill someone is finally getting his day in court," Frierson said.

In 1944, Stinney was likely the only black in the courtroom. On Tuesday, the prosecutor arguing against him will be Ernest "Chip" Finney III, the son of South Carolina's first black chief justice. Finney said last month he won't present any evidence against Stinney at the hearing, but if a new trial is granted, he will ask for time to conduct a new investigation.

What that might find is not known. South Carolina did not have a statewide law enforcement unit to help smaller jurisdictions until 1947. Newspaper stories about Stinney's trial offer little clue whether any evidence was introduced beyond the teen's confession and an autopsy report. Some people around Alcolu said bloody clothes were taken from Stinney's home, but never introduced at trial because of his confession. No record of those clothes exists.

Relatives of one of the girls killed, 11-year-old Betty Binnicker, have recently spoke out as well, saying Stinney was known around town as a bully who threatened to fight or kill people who came too close to the grass where he grazed the family cow.

It isn't known if the judge will rule Tuesday, or take time to come to her decision. Stinney's supporters said if the motion for a new trial fails, they will ask the state to pardon him.

another way to waste money... i guess the lawyers need a new boathouse...

Without reading the post all I can think is it's kind of late isn't it? By nearly 70 years?

Make me think of this joke Todd Barry tells about a new paper article he read. It was something about the Beastie Boys being a class act. The article stated that they were a class act for apologizing for something slanderous they had said about gays in one of their song in the 80's. His final comment was that to be a real class act they wouldn't have said it in the first place. lol

the whole op sounds like the green mile, just some small variations...

cept for "dead man walking".

He was way too young to be executed. He might have grown up to be a rapper.

He could have been the best there ever was and we'll never know.

Better than Vanilla Ice? Now way dude.

What about better than Eminem?

maybe thats the real reason he was executed, they didn't want rap in the 40's...

Just think of where Rap would be now if it had started back then.

it might have come around to be real music...

Who is Enema?

He's that guy with his head stuck up his butt. Makes interesting sounds. lol

Back to the topic.
I would like to see some of the evidence and trial papers. If there are any left.

MANNING — As a circuit judge prepares to take a fresh look at the 70-year-old death-penalty case against George Stinney next week, the family of one of the two victims is looking on with a sense of dread.

About a dozen relatives and acquaintances of Betty June Binnicker gathered at a restaurant here Thursday to tell their side of one of the state’s notorious murder cases, one that ended in 1944 as Stinney was put to death at age 14, less than three months after his conviction.
Frankie Bailey Dyches of Goose Creek, whose mother-in-law was among Betty June’s older siblings, brought along a few remaining photographs of her.

Dyches helped organize the meeting to balance out media reports that have focused mostly on Stinney and whether he received justice in the Jim-Crow-era South.

“This is our aunt who we never got to know,” she said. “My mother-in-law, her sister, never got over this.”

Betty June was 11 when she and her friend, Mary Emma Thames, 7, were found dead a day after they disappeared. Both were bludgeoned in the head and left in a ditch near a church in Alcolu, a few miles north of Manning.

On Tuesday, a circuit judge will hold a hearing in Sumter to review what happened next, specifically whether Stinney’s confession and daylong trial that included no defense witnesses were flawed and if the case should be reopened.

Guilty or not
Several who gathered Thursday at the restaurant said they had met Stinney and believe that he committed the crime.

Sadie Duke said she always believed Stinney was guilty because only a day before, he had threatened her and her friend Violet Freeman as they went to a church to collect water.

“He said, ‘If you don’t get away from here and if you ever come back, I will kill you,’” Duke said.

Evelyn Roberson, who was 15 at the time of the crime, said her husband often fought with Stinney as they tended cows near the town. “They called the (Stinney) boy ‘Bully’ because he was so bad to everybody,” she said. “Everybody he met he wanted to fight.”

Roberson said Stinney first confessed to the crime to his grandmother, who called the authorities. “I don’t feel like it’s an open case,” she said. “I think he did it, and he should have gotten punished for it and he did.”

Bob Ridgeway of Manning said he was 13 at the time and remembers his father joining the search party for the girls, and the mill whistle blowing for a long time, signaling that their bodies were found and the search was over. “There was never any question in anybody’s mind to my knowledge that he did it,” he said.

Ridgeway and Ruth Turner said they remember visiting the home to view the girls’ bodies in their caskets.

“Their faces were black and blue, even with the makeup of the undertakers,” Turner said. “Maybe (Stinney) shouldn’t have gotten the electric chair, but he should have been punished.”