Entries tagged with “George Stinney”
Issues
Jun 14, 2024
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…
Issues
Women
,Aug 01, 2022
Massachusetts Formally Exonerates Last ‘Witch’ Wrongfully Condemned During Salem Hysteria. Will Connecticut Follow Suit?
As Massachusetts formally exonerated the last person condemned for witchcraft in the colony, efforts are under way to clear the names of the 46 people wrongfully charged with witchcraft in neighboring Connecticut during the 17th century Puritan witch hunts. 329 years after she was wrongfully convicted and sentenced to death, the Massachusetts state senate amended the state’s budget to include a provision to exonerate Elizabeth Johnson Jr., the last of the people convicted during the Salem…
Issues
Jun 21, 2022
Pennsylvania Teen Exonerated 91 Years After Sham Trial and Execution on Racially Motivated Charges that He Had Murdered a White Woman
An African-American teenager who was convicted and sentenced to death in Pennsylvania on false charges that he had murdered a white woman has been exonerated, 91 years after he was executed. On June 13, 2022, Delaware County Court of Common Pleas Judge Kevin Kelly granted a motion filed jointly by lawyers for Alexander McClay Williams and the Delaware County District Attorney’s office to posthumously overturn Williams’ conviction and death sentence. (Williams is pictured with then-District…
Issues
Methods of Execution
,May 06, 2021
South Carolina Legislature Authorizes Use of Electric Chair and Firing Squad as State Reaches 10 Years Without an Execution
One day shy of the tenth anniversary of the state’s last execution, the South Carolina legislature, frustrated by the state’s inability to obtain execution drugs, approved a bill that would authorize putting prisoners to death in the electric chair or by firing squad. On May 5, 2021, the South Carolina House of Representatives voted 66 – 43 to approve Senate Bill 200, bringing the bill closer to final passage. The State Senate passed an earlier version of the bill on March 2 by a vote of 32 – 11.
Issues
Mar 12, 2014
Efforts Underway to Exonerate 14-Year-Old Executed in South Carolina in 1944
Attorneys representing the family of George Stinney, Jr., recently filed a request for a posthumous exoneration of Mr. Stinney, the youngest person executed in the U.S. in the 20th century. Stinney, an African-American 14-year-old, was executed in 1944 for the murder of two young white girls less than three months after a trial that was filled with errors. Although Clarendon County, South Carolina, where the trial took place, had a population that was 72% black, only whites served on Stinney’s…