It took 10 minutes to convict George Stinney & 70 years after his execution to exonerate him. In March 1944, deep in the Jim Crow South, police came for 14-year-old George Stinney. Without any physical evidence or eyewitnesses, Stinney was charged with the first-degree murders of 11 year old Betty Binnicker and 7 year old Mary Thames in Alcolu, South Carolina. According to the police, the two young white girls were found brutally murdered, beaten over the head with a railroad spike and dumped into a water-logged ditch. Stinney's entire jury was white due to racial segregation; and even worse, his family was ran out of town, leaving young Stinney with no support during his trial. His lawyer, who was no help in the case had never represented a criminal defendant. After a 10-minute jury deliberation, George Stinney was sentenced to Columbia penitentiary to be executed by electric chair. .
This topic is important and something everyone should know because it spreads awareness of George Stinney, the youngest person ever executed in the United States in the 20th century and portrays a good example of a victim of racial profiling. Racial profiling is the use of an individual's race or ethnicity as a key factor in deciding whether to engage in enforcement and is very controversial and is illegal in many jurisdictions. Being that George Stinney was black it really didn't matter to the jury if he had committed the crime or not. They had absolutely no evidence to prove that stinney had killed those girls. This shows how racist the court was and how anyone of color could be charged for something with no evidence in those days. .
In January of 2014, Judge Carmen Mullen re-opened his case because he felt that the decision that was made for George was completely wrong and he wanted to help the family feel some kind of justice after 70 years. Judge Carmen Mullen found "fundamental, constitutional violations of due process" in the one-day trial.
Not reported on the above chart I found and even younger boy George Stinney who was executed in South Carolina possibly before 1973. ... At fourteen years old, Stinney was the youngest Afro- American, juvenile and male executed in the United States. ... The following bullets are cases that lay the foundation of the death penalty today, ∙ In Thompson v. ...
