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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.

Reading "The Warmth of Other Suns", by Isabel Wilkerson, a narrative of the Great Migration of blacks from the Jim Crow South to the north, roughly 1915 to 1975. Though I had heard most of the stories before, what the blacks had to put up with under Jim Crow was positively stunning. The book is filled with everyday indignities and accounts of beatings, torture and killing.
A boil on freedom-loving America's ass as big as (maybe bigger than) that of the Native American holocaust.

Kleany, call me what you will, but isn't this just clogging up a courtroom for something that happened 70 years ago?

Cap'n Cat wrote:Reading "The Warmth of Other Suns", by Isabel Wilkerson, a narrative of the Great Migration of blacks from the Jim Crow South to the north, roughly 1915 to 1975. Though I had heard most of the stories before, what the blacks had to put up with under Jim Crow was positively stunning. The book is filled with everyday indignities and accounts of beatings, torture and killing.
A boil on freedom-loving America's ass as big as (maybe bigger than) that of the Native American holocaust.

Yeah, they weren't welcomed with open arms and loved too well in the North either. Hatred and racism isn't solely a Southern trait.


What a waste of time and money this trial is. Right or wrong, it won't bring that boy back.

Ibanez wrote:

Cap'n Cat wrote:Reading "The Warmth of Other Suns", by Isabel Wilkerson, a narrative of the Great Migration of blacks from the Jim Crow South to the north, roughly 1915 to 1975. Though I had heard most of the stories before, what the blacks had to put up with under Jim Crow was positively stunning. The book is filled with everyday indignities and accounts of beatings, torture and killing.
A boil on freedom-loving America's ass as big as (maybe bigger than) that of the Native American holocaust.

Yeah, they weren't welcomed with open arms and loved too well in the North either. Hatred and racism isn't solely a Southern trait.


What a waste of time and money this trial is. Right or wrong, it won't bring that boy back.

Well, they didn't go running back to the South, did they?

Grizalltheway wrote:

Ibanez wrote:
Yeah, they weren't welcomed with open arms and loved too well in the North either. Hatred and racism isn't solely a Southern trait.


What a waste of time and money this trial is. Right or wrong, it won't bring that boy back.

Well, they didn't go running back to the South, did they?

They actually did, starting in the mid 1960s. But that isn't the point. The Great Migration sent them to the ghettos of Harlem, Queens, South Side Chicago,Detroit... They were pushed to the outskirts, by influential whites. They went from the south, where people called them the n-word on Main Street to the North where they were put out of sight, out of mind.

Southerners back then were more...overt in their racism. That's a general statement but I think it's true for the most part.


If you want to get high and mighty, tell me which states sent the first 5 African Americans to Congress.

Spoiler: show

I'll give a clue, they weren't from the tolerant North or Midwest.

This is not a trial about justice. This is a trial about money. The lawsuits can be worth tons of coinage for people that didn't suffer as a result of any injustice.

I remember all the busing scandals in the 1970s.

It was ironic, because in a social studies class (I think we were maybe 6th or 7th graders) we talked about busing and what was happening in those far off states of Indiana, Illinois and Michigan. A 7th grade class that was 50-50 white-black in rural North Carolina and we were talking about all those racial problems they were having up north.

CAA Flagship wrote:This is not a trial about justice. This is a trial about money. The lawsuits can be worth tons of coinage for people that didn't suffer as a result of any injustice.

Exactly. It's too late for justice.

grizzaholic wrote:Kleany, call me what you will, but isn't this just clogging up a courtroom for something that happened 70 years ago?

Justice has to be done. If you ae a real American, you would do the right thing, no matter how painful it might be.

To coin a popular donk phrase:

"What difference, at this point, does it make?"

Ibanez wrote:

Grizalltheway wrote:
Well, they didn't go running back to the South, did they?

They actually did, starting in the mid 1960s. But that isn't the point. The Great Migration sent them to the ghettos of Harlem, Queens, South Side Chicago,Detroit... They were pushed to the outskirts, by influential whites. They went from the south, where people called them the n-word on Main Street to the North where they were put out of sight, out of mind.

Southerners back then were more...overt in their racism. That's a general statement but I think it's true for the most part.


If you want to get high and mighty, tell me which states sent the first 5 African Americans to Congress.

Spoiler: show

I'll give a clue, they weren't from the tolerant North or Midwest.

If you're trying to argue that blacks, on the balance of things, had it worse in the North than in the South in the 20th century, a word of advice...

Ibanez wrote:

Grizalltheway wrote:
Well, they didn't go running back to the South, did they?

They actually did, starting in the mid 1960s. But that isn't the point. The Great Migration sent them to the ghettos of Harlem, Queens, South Side Chicago,Detroit... They were pushed to the outskirts, by influential whites. They went from the south, where people called them the n-word on Main Street to the North where they were put out of sight, out of mind.

Southerners back then were more...overt in their racism. That's a general statement but I think it's true for the most part.


If you want to get high and mighty, tell me which states sent the first 5 African Americans to Congress.

Spoiler: show

I'll give a clue, they weren't from the tolerant North or Midwest.

Regarding the first 5 AA's in Congress, Mark, those states were forced into it during Reconstruction with much southern grumbling, but they were at the tip of a post-war bayonet. Soon after, the North (and the federal Government) turned its back on the situation in the South and they were free to do as they wanted with the Negro, dreaming up the discriminatory laws and decrees that made up Jim Crow. It wasn't until nearly 80 years later that the Fed Gov't acted again, a period during which the Great Migration was in its full ascendancy.

Yeah, there were indignities and discrimination faced by the black folks when they arrived in the North, but it was not institutionalized as down South. They were able to get by and even experienced a measure of respect.
And they didn't return to the South because it had somehow undergone a wholesale cultural change. Many returned as economic ups and downs afflicted the heavy industries up North. When they did return it was to Southern states that had, at least, modified the codes and exercised some restraint in regard to past treatment, places like Texas, Arkansas, Florida and a few border states. Unfortunately, the ones that got the most attention were the ones which held out most bitterly for segregation, backward places like Mississippi and Alabama.

CID1990 wrote:I remember all the busing scandals in the 1970s.

It was ironic, because in a social studies class (I think we were maybe 6th or 7th graders) we talked about busing and what was happening in those far off states of Indiana, Illinois and Michigan. A 7th grade class that was 50-50 white-black in rural North Carolina and we were talking about all those racial problems they were having up north.

Very good point, Cid. The North was experiencing at that time, in my opinion only, their own integration self-examination and, bad rather than good, busing became the manifest of it all.

Grizalltheway wrote:

Ibanez wrote: They actually did, starting in the mid 1960s. But that isn't the point. The Great Migration sent them to the ghettos of Harlem, Queens, South Side Chicago,Detroit... They were pushed to the outskirts, by influential whites. They went from the south, where people called them the n-word on Main Street to the North where they were put out of sight, out of mind.

Southerners back then were more...overt in their racism. That's a general statement but I think it's true for the most part.


If you want to get high and mighty, tell me which states sent the first 5 African Americans to Congress.

Spoiler: show

I'll give a clue, they weren't from the tolerant North or Midwest.

If you're trying to argue that blacks, on the balance of things, had it worse in the North than in the South in the 20th century, a word of advice...

I'm not saying anything like that. That's asinine. Look at the Great Migration, look where the majority went to live and then look at why they left the North and Midwest to return to the South. The point- Northern states weren't the paradise they anticipated it would be.

Cap'n Cat wrote:

Ibanez wrote: They actually did, starting in the mid 1960s. But that isn't the point. The Great Migration sent them to the ghettos of Harlem, Queens, South Side Chicago,Detroit... They were pushed to the outskirts, by influential whites. They went from the south, where people called them the n-word on Main Street to the North where they were put out of sight, out of mind.

Southerners back then were more...overt in their racism. That's a general statement but I think it's true for the most part.


If you want to get high and mighty, tell me which states sent the first 5 African Americans to Congress.

Spoiler: show

I'll give a clue, they weren't from the tolerant North or Midwest.

Regarding the first 5 AA's in Congress, Mark, those states were forced into it during Reconstruction with much southern grumbling, but they were at the tip of a post-war bayonet. Soon after, the North (and the federal Government) turned its back on the situation in the South and they were free to do as they wanted with the Negro, dreaming up the discriminatory laws and decrees that made up Jim Crow. It wasn't until nearly 80 years later that the Fed Gov't acted again, a period during which the Great Migration was in its full ascendancy.

Yeah, there were indignities and discrimination faced by the black folks when they arrived in the North, but it was not institutionalized as down South. They were able to get by and even experienced a measure of respect.
And they didn't return to the South because it had somehow undergone a wholesale cultural change. Many returned as economic ups and downs afflicted the heavy industries up North. When they did return it was to Southern states that had, at least, modified the codes and exercised some restraint in regard to past treatment, places like Texas, Arkansas, Florida and a few border states. Unfortunately, the ones that got the most attention were the ones which held out most bitterly for segregation, backward places like Mississippi and Alabama.

See my overt racism comment.

Economics forced many to return to the South. Economics is forcing many industries long held in the Midwest and NW to move south. We're less hostile.

Cap'n Cat wrote:Reading "The Warmth of Other Suns", by Isabel Wilkerson, a narrative of the Great Migration of blacks from the Jim Crow South to the north, roughly 1915 to 1975. Though I had heard most of the stories before, what the blacks had to put up with under Jim Crow was positively stunning. The book is filled with everyday indignities and accounts of beatings, torture and killing.
A boil on freedom-loving America's ass as big as (maybe bigger than) that of the Native American holocaust.

But Phil Robertson said blacks were happy under Jim Crow, so that book must be a lie.

This is nothing more than precedent setting.... redressing past injustices for people who are no longer around to actually enjoy the fruits of the justice itself, and censure for those who are no longer around to suffer the censure.

Want to talk about dog whistles?

When I first went to a "deep South" state in 1986 (Louisiana), I was dumbfounded at how subservient blacks seemed to make themselves to be everywhere. Maybe it was some "show" for tourists, but it was very prevalent. My comparisons, of course, were Iowa, Minneapolis, Chicago, Detroit, Pittsburgh, where I found blacks to be much more assertive and grounded in their existence as human beings and citizens. There certainly weren't any "subservient" blacks in the locker room at UNI!

I told this story on AGS before, but, my first wife and I did some exploring in the hinterlands of outstate Louisiana one weekend and we ended up in a bar in a hamlet called Natalbany. Being curious Northerners and recent college grads, we asked the bartender, who was also the owner, about the state of race relations there in '86. With a think Cajun accent, he said, "Well, the law requires that I let 'em in here, but this guarantees they don't stay very long", and he lifted a large old shotgun from underneath the bar.

We lived in New Orleans on Carrolton Avenue, right near the exit to I-10 and frequented another bar down the street, a dive by any definition anywhere, filled with drunk old people, my kind of clientele. They were thrilled to death that a guy who was trying out for their beloved Saints actually came to their bar! After a few dozen drinks, virtually none of which we had to pay for, the bartender handed me a key to the bar. WTF?! "Yeah come in anytime, just don't bring no 'undesirables' witcha", he said. Three sheets to the wind, I laughed and pocketed the key. Actually used it thereafter because, curiously, the door was always locked during business hours.

Found out later that it was a "key club", a place where blacks were not admitted. Kinda soured me on the experience and we discovered a better, more lively and diverse, place at Carrolton and St. Charles, Cooter Brown's.

CAA Flagship wrote:This is not a trial about justice. This is a trial about money. The lawsuits can be worth tons of coinage for people that didn't suffer as a result of any injustice.

ding ding ding

mrklean wrote:

grizzaholic wrote:Kleany, call me what you will, but isn't this just clogging up a courtroom for something that happened 70 years ago?

Justice has to be done. If you ae a real American, you would do the right thing, no matter how painful it might be.

CID1990 wrote:This is nothing more than precedent setting.... redressing past injustices for people who are no longer around to actually enjoy the fruits of the justice itself, and censure for those who are no longer around to suffer the censure.

Want to talk about dog whistles?

Unless you are the family which has had to live with this villainy for so many decades. Good luck to them.

Cap'n Cat wrote:

CID1990 wrote:This is nothing more than precedent setting.... redressing past injustices for people who are no longer around to actually enjoy the fruits of the justice itself, and censure for those who are no longer around to suffer the censure.

Want to talk about dog whistles?

Unless you are the family which has had to live with this villainy for so many decades. Good luck to them.

I get that this would be an opportunity for this deceased young man to have his name cleared, but to the point others are making here....if this conviction is overturned, the kid is still dead, the folks who convicted him likely are as well, and his family may get some settlement from the state/locality/feds. It's penalizing and rewarding groups of people that weren't around to be perpetrators or victims.

ASUG8 wrote:

Cap'n Cat wrote:
Unless you are the family which has had to live with this villainy for so many decades. Good luck to them.

I get that this would be an opportunity for this deceased young man to have his name cleared, but to the point others are making here....if this conviction is overturned, the kid is still dead, the folks who convicted him likely are as well, and his family may get some settlement from the state/locality/feds. It's penalizing and rewarding groups of people that weren't around to be perpetrators or victims.

I'm not totally outta your way of thinking', G. Just imagine, however, the stain that family has lived with for all those years. If it were my family, I'd be doing the same thing and I believe many others of us would, as well.

One analogous thing may be what the family of Jim Thorpe does in their constant agitation to get him the Olympic medals he deserves. That deal would be hard to live with.

I'll be curious to see what kind of evidence or lack thereof that will come out in this case. There's really not going to be anything new, no evidence will exist...

Given the general state of the black man in SC in the 1940s, I'd say that there is a statistical probability this kid was railroaded.

But that said, we could re-try every murder trial ever held in the US that occurred before 1950 and probably overturn half of them. This is a show, nothing more.