Remembering the Execution of 14-year-old George Stinney, 80 Years Later

June 16, 2024, marks 80 years since South Carolina exe­cut­ed 14-year-old George Stinney Jr. Historical reports indi­cate that on March 24, 1944, Mr. Stinney and his younger sis­ter, Aime, were play­ing out­side when two white girls approached them, ask­ing where they could find a par­tic­u­lar flower. Neither Mr. Stinney nor his sis­ter knew where the young girls could find these flow­ers and they quick­ly moved along. That evening, when both young girls failed to return home, a search par­ty was sent to find them. Mr. Stinney and his fam­i­ly joined the search par­ty, and he men­tioned to anoth­er searcher that he had seen the girls ear­li­er in the day. The next morn­ing, after a pastor’s son dis­cov­ered the bod­ies of both girls in a shal­low ditch, Mr. Stinney was arrest­ed and charged with their mur­ders. According to police, Mr. Stinney con­fessed to blud­geon­ing both girls to death despite the absence of any phys­i­cal evi­dence con­nect­ing him to the crime. Mr. Stinney was charged with cap­i­tal mur­der and rape, tried, con­vict­ed, and exe­cut­ed in South Carolina’s elec­tric chair in just under three months.

Just days after Mr. Stinney’s arrest, his father was fired from his job and the fam­i­ly was forced to flee town because of threats of vio­lence. On March 26, a white mob attempt­ed to lynch Mr. Stinney, but failed to do so only because he had already been moved to a jail in a dif­fer­ent town. A month lat­er, Mr. Stinney went to tri­al, but his fam­i­ly and oth­er African Americans were not allowed to enter the seg­re­gat­ed cour­t­house. Mr. Stinney’s attor­ney had no expe­ri­ence rep­re­sent­ing cap­i­tal defen­dants and failed to call any wit­ness­es in his defense. The pros­e­cu­tor only pre­sent­ed tes­ti­mo­ny from the local sher­iff, who described Mr. Stinney’s alleged con­fes­sion. After just 10 min­utes of delib­er­a­tion, an all-white jury sen­tenced Mr. Stinney to death for rape and mur­der. Governor Olin Johnston refused to grant clemen­cy to Mr. Stinney, and he was exe­cut­ed by the elec­tric chair on June 16, 1944. Newspapers report­ed that guards had trou­ble get­ting Mr. Stinney strapped into the elec­tric chair built for adults, as he stood at just 5 foot 1 and weighed 95 pounds. When the exe­cu­tion­er flipped the switch and the ini­tial 2,400 volts surged through Mr. Stinney’s body, the over­sized mask placed on his face slipped, expos­ing the tears stream­ing from his fright­ened eyes. Mr. Stinney remains the youngest per­son exe­cut­ed in the United States dur­ing the 20^th century.

Mr. Stinney’s sib­lings always main­tained that he was not involved in the mur­ders but it was not until 2004 when legal efforts to exon­er­ate Mr. Stinney began. In October 2013, attor­neys for the Stinney fam­i­ly filed a peti­tion ask­ing the court to over­turn the guilty ver­dict. Just three months lat­er, Sumter County Circuit Judge Carmen Mullen held a two-day evi­den­tiary hear­ing to deter­mine whether Mr. Stinney received a fair tri­al. George’s sis­ter, Aime Ruffner, repeat­ed the same sto­ry she had told since 1944, not­ing that she remem­bered the day well because ​“no white peo­ple came around” to the Black side of town. ​“Somebody fol­lowed those girls and killed them,” she told the court.

In December 2014, Judge Mullen for­mal­ly vacat­ed Mr. Stinney’s cap­i­tal con­vic­tion, deter­min­ing that he was deprived of due process through­out his tri­al. In her order, Judge Mullen wrote that ​“Stinney’s appoint­ed coun­sel made no inde­pen­dent inves­ti­ga­tion, did not request a change of venue or addi­tion­al time to pre­pare the case, he asked lit­tle or no ques­tions on cross-exam­i­na­tion of the State’s wit­ness­es and pre­sent­ed few or no wit­ness­es on behalf of his client based on the length of the tri­al. He failed to file an appeal or a stay of exe­cu­tion. That is the essence of being inef­fec­tive…” Ultimately, Judge Mullen could ​“think of no greater injus­tice than the vio­la­tion of one’s Constitutional rights which has been proven to [her] in this case.”

Katherine Robinson, one of Mr. Stinney’s sis­ters, said that ​“when we got the news, we were sit­ting with friends…I threw my hands up and said, ​‘Thank you, Jesus!’ Someone had to be lis­ten­ing. It’s what we want­ed for all these years.” Ms. Robinson said that despite the many years between her brother’s exe­cu­tion and exon­er­a­tion, she has great mem­o­ries of the time they spent togeth­er. ​“I’m hap­py for this day because it’s been such a long time com­ing, but then I cringe when I go back into that child­hood and think of George back in the day,” Ms. Robinson said. ​“He had no one to help him. I get chills every time I think about it.”