![]() Joyner’s lawyers showed evidence the men were framed by a small-time criminal who took a plea deal that saved his life and testified against them.īut Frierson said a pardon would be little comfort to him in the Stinney case. In 2009, two great-uncles of syndicated radio host Tom Joyner were pardoned by the board nearly 100 years after they were sent to the electric chair in the death of a Confederate Army veteran. Lawyers also filed a request for to pardon Stinney before the state Department of Probation, Parole and Pardon Services in case the new trial is not granted. Florida put a 16-year-old boy to death for rape in 1944 and Mississippi, Nevada, Ohio and Texas executed 17-year-olds that year. Newspaper stories from his execution had witnesses saying the straps to keep him in the electric chair didn’t fit around his small frame and an electrode was too big for his leg.Įxecuting teens wasn’t uncommon at that time. But the court papers provide little information and the lawyers also wouldn’t elaborate.Īt 14, Stinney was the youngest person executed in this country in the past 100 years, according to statistics gathered by the Death Penalty Information Center. The motion also hints at community rumors of a deathbed confession from a white man several years ago and the possibility Stinney either confessed because his family was threatened or he was given ice cream. The request for a new trial points out that at 95 pounds, Stinney likely couldn’t have killed the girls and dragged them to the ditch. The first step in a pardon is to admit you are wrong and ask for forgiveness. McKenzie thought the information from someone not related to Stinney would be especially powerful, but the person suddenly stopped cooperating after stringing the lawyers along for years. Lawyer Steve McKenzie said he planned to file the request for a new trial then, but heard from a man in Tennessee who claimed his grandfather was with George Stinney the day of the killings. Therefore, we made a decision for the safety of the family to leave it be,” Charles Stinney wrote in his sworn statement.Ĭharles Stinney said he remembered the events vividly because “for my family, Friday, March 24, 1944, and the events that followed were our personal 9/11.”īoth statements were made in 2009. “George’s conviction and execution was something my family believed could happen to any of us in the family. Charles Stinney’s statement explains why the family didn’t speak to authorities at the time. He was ordered to leave after his son was arrested, said Stinney’s brother Charles Stinney, who was 12 when his older brother was arrested. Stinney’s dad worked for the major mill in town and lived in a company house. Newspaper accounts suggested a lynch mob was nearly formed to attack the teen in jail. His family wouldn’t see the boy again until after his trial. They came to Stinney’s home and took him away. We made a decision for the safety of the family to leave it beĭeputies got a tip the girls had been seen talking to Stinney. They were found the next morning in a water-filled ditch, their heads beaten with a hard object, likely a railroad spike. The girls never came home and hundreds of people searched for them through the night. “It was strange to see them in our area, because white people stayed on their side of Alcolu and we knew our place,” Ruffner wrote. The sister, Amie Ruffner, said her brother told them he didn’t know and the girls left. Stinney’s sister, who was 7 at the time, said in her new affidavit that she and her brother were letting their cow graze when the girls asked them where they could find flowers called maypops. The girls were last seen looking for wildflowers in the tiny, racially-divided mill town of Alcolu about 50 miles southeast of Columbia. ![]() ![]() A date for a hearing on the matter has not been set. A spokesman said their lawyers had not seen the motion and do not comment on pending cases. The South Carolina Attorney General’s Office will likely argue the other side of the case before the Clarendon County judge. AP Photo/The Columbia Record, Jimmy Price, File “Why was George Stinney electrocuted? The state can’t produce any paperwork to justify why he was,” said George Frierson, a local school board member who grew up in Stinney’s hometown hearing stories about the case and decided six years ago to start studying it and pushing for exoneration. Only a few pages of cryptic, hand-written notes remain, according to the motion. Notes from Stinney’s confession and most other information deputies and prosecutors used to convict Stinney in a one-day trial have disappeared along with any transcript of the proceedings. The request for a new trial includes sworn statements from two of Stinney’s siblings who say he was with them the entire day the girls were killed.
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