10 Heartbreaking Details Surrounding George Stinney Jr., The Youngest American To Ever Be Executed In The Electric Chair

6 /10 Defenseless

George’s confession was the sole piece of evidence offered up, although it was not written or shared publicly. It was also not a legal confession by today’s standards, as it was given with no supervisor or attorney present.

George’s only legal defense didn’t offer up much contest to the claims of the double homicide and rape.

This was all despite the coroner’s report that no sexual assault occurred on the bodies before or after and noted only minor bruising around the older victim’s genitals. But that was enough.

5 /10 Jury Without Peers

Because African-American people weren’t allowed to vote in the 1940s in South Carolina, they were also ineligible to sit on a jury.

The entire courtroom except for George was white on the day he was sentenced to death. George’s family made appeals, the church they belonged to, and the then NAACP to the Governor to reconsider death due to the boy’s age.

However, the Governor had heard of the rumors of rape, despite the evidence proving the contrary, and declined them on that basis.

4 /10 Young To Die

George was sentenced to death via electric chair, a still considered valid and humane method at the time.

Due to his short stature, being only 14 and the device fitted for fully grown men, George had to sit on a Bible to reach the apparatus that would deliver the electric shock.

George’s father was only allowed to approach once to hear his son’s final words, which George declined to give.

He cried as the process began, and due to his size, he slipped out of the face-covering partway through the procedure.

3 /10 Too Long A Criminal

George Stinney died June 16, 1944, as the murderer of two white girls. Though he confessed, there was never any evidence found to corroborate his own story, and there were multiple witnesses who spoke out that it could not have happened the way it was reported.

The criminality of the justice system itself began to fall into question. George was kept alive by his family, particularly his sister Aime, who grew to have a long and healthy life.

Nearly 70 years after her brother was wrongfully convicted and killed, she led the charge for her brother’s dismissal due to the wrongful trial and forced confessions to make things right.

2 /10 Coram Nobis

After many hearings and much deliberation, and the overdue witness testimony of George’s siblings regarding his whereabouts and the review of the criminal police procedures conducted, George was vacated of his conviction.

He was no longer marked in the legal system as a criminal in 2014 when a Judge issued a remedy of coram nobis, an admission of error resulting in revoking a previous judgment after it had been made.

1 /10 Justice For George

Justice came too late for George as it has come too late for many others. George Stinney’s case was brought up during the Civil Rights movement as an example of the racial favoritism that the segregated states allowed.

Although he died long before his time for a crime he did not commit; his legacy helped bring forth a movement for racial equality and the successful passing of landmark bills that severely restricted the death sentence and fast judgments based on racial lines.