South Carolina Vacates the Conviction of 14-Year-Old Executed in 1944

On December 16, 2014, a South Carolina judge vacat­ed the con­vic­tion of George Stinney, Jr., the youngest per­son exe­cut­ed in the U.S. in the last cen­tu­ry. Judge Carmen Mullen wrote: ​“I can think of no greater injus­tice than the vio­la­tion of one’s Constitutional rights which has been proven to me in this case.” 

Stinney, a black, 14-year-old boy, was con­vict­ed by an all-white jury of killing two young white girls. Police said Stinney con­fessed to the crime, but no con­fes­sion was ever pro­duced. His sis­ter said in an affi­davit in 2009 that she was with Stinney on the day of the mur­ders and he could not have com­mit­ted them, but she was not called to tes­ti­fy at his trial. 

The Stinney fam­i­ly was forced to leave town because of dan­ger of vio­lence. His tri­al last­ed just 3 hours, and the jury delib­er­at­ed for only ten min­utes before find­ing him guilty. He was sen­tenced to die by elec­tro­cu­tion. His attor­neys did not file an appeal, and he was put to death less than three months after the offense.

One of the legal rea­sons for over­turn­ing Stinney’s con­vic­tion was the lack of ade­quate rep­re­sen­ta­tion. Judge Mullen wrote: ​“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 tri­al. He failed to file an appeal or a stay of exe­cu­tion. That is the essence of being ineffective.…”