Judge CLEARS 14-year old Boy who has since been Executed 70 Years ago for Killing two White Girls in 1944

Boy executed 70 years ago for crime he did not commit

70 years after South Carolina executed a 14-year-old boy so small he sat on electric chair, now court judge threw out his murder conviction that he did not get a fair trial. So why now? 

       

On Wednesday morning, Judge Carmen Mullins vacated the decision against George Stinney Jr., a black teen who was convicted of beating two young white girls to death in the small town of Alcolu in 1944.

       

Civil rights advocates have spent years trying to get the case reopened, arguing that Stinney's confession was coerced. At the time of his arrest, Stinney weighed just 95 pounds. Officials said Stinney had admitted beating the girls, 11 and 8 years old, with a railroad spike.

       

In a 2009 affidavit, Stinney's sister said she had been with him on the day of the murders and he could not have committed them.

                           His surviving Sisters wept after he was exonerated
 

Stinney was put on trial and then executed within three months of the killings. His trial lasted three hours, and a jury of 12 white men took 10 minutes to find him guilty.

       

He is often cited as the youngest person executed in the U.S. in the 20th century. At the time of the crime, 14 was the legal age of criminal responsibility in the state.