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George Stinney

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George Stinney
Stinney's 1944 mugshot
Born
George Junius Stinney Jr.

(1929-10-21)October 21, 1929
Pinewood, South Carolina, U.S.
DiedJune 16, 1944(1944-06-16) (aged 14)
South Carolina Penitentiary, South Carolina, U.S.
Resting placeCalvary Baptist Church Cemetery, Paxville, South Carolina, U.S.
MonumentsHeadstone memorial in Alcolu[1]
Three memorial crosses dedicated to Stinney and other two victims where the bodies were found[2]
Known forYoungest confirmed person to be executed in the United States in the 20th century
Criminal status
ConvictionMurder (posthumously vacated)
Criminal penaltyDeath
Date apprehended
March 23, 1944

George Junius Stinney Jr. (October 21, 1929 – June 16, 1944) was an African American boy who was wrongfully executed at the age of 14 after being convicted, during an unfair trial, for the murders of two white girls – 11-year-old Betty June Binnicker (December 9, 1932 – March 22, 1944) and 7-year-old Mary Emma Thames (March 14, 1937 – March 22, 1944) – in his hometown of Alcolu, South Carolina. He was tried, convicted, and sentenced to death on a single day on April 24, 1944, and then executed by electric chair on June 16, 1944, after Governor Olin D. Johnston refused to grant him clemency.

A re-examination of Stinney's case began in 2004, and several individuals and the Northeastern University School of Law sought a judicial review. Stinney's murder conviction was posthumously vacated in 2014, with Judge Carmen Mullen ruling that he had not received a fair trial. Judge Mullen stated that while Stinney may have actually been guilty, his pre-trial confession was likely coerced, his civil rights had been violated, and his execution was thus illegal.[3][4] Mullen also stated that regardless of Stinney's guilt, the execution of a 14-year-old child could not be justified.[5]

Stinney reportedly led the police directly to the murder weapon, had a corroborated history of violent behavior prior to the murders,[6][7][8] and is reported to have repeatedly confessed to the murders after his conviction.[9][10] The credibility of Stinney's siblings, who insisted that their brother was innocent, has also been questioned due to numerous discrepancies in their testimony and contradictions in previous statements that they had made about the case.[11]

George Stinney is the youngest person with an exact birth date confirmed to be executed in the United States in the 20th century.[12]

Background

[edit]
Stinney, circa 1941

In 1944, George Stinney stood 5 feet 1 inch (154 cm), and weighed 95 pounds (43 kg). He lived in a small home with a chicken coop in his hometown of Alcolu, South Carolina, with his father, George Junius Stinney, mother Aimé Brown Stinney, brother Charles Stinney, 12, and sisters Katherine Stinney, 10, and Aimé Stinney Ruffner, 7. Stinney's father worked at the town's sawmill, and the family resided in company housing. Alcolu was a small, working-class mill town. White and black neighborhoods were separated by railroad tracks, which was common for small Southern towns of the time. Given segregated schools and churches for white and black residents, there was limited interaction between them.[5]

On March 23, 1944, the bodies of 11-year-old Betty June Binnicker and 8-year-old Mary Emma Thames were found in a ditch on the African-American side of Alcolu after the girls failed to return home the night before.[13][14] Stinney's father assisted in the search. The girls had been beaten with a weapon, variously reported as a piece of blunt metal or a railroad spike. Binnicker and Thames both suffered severe blunt force trauma, resulting in penetration of both girls' skulls.[15][16] According to a report by the medical examiner, these wounds had been "inflicted by a blunt instrument with a round head, about the size of a hammer."[5][17][18]

The girls were last seen riding their bicycles looking for flowers. As they passed the Stinneys' property, they stopped to ask Stinney and his sister, Aimé,[5] if they knew where to find "maypops", a local name for passionflowers.[19]

In 2014, Aimé testified that she was with Stinney at the time the police later established the murders occurred. She claimed that Stinney had left with their father to search for the girls.[5] However, Aimé's credibility as a witness is questionable. A signed statement that Aimé made in 2009 about her memories of what took place made no mention of either this or of herself hiding in a chicken coop when the police arrived. Aimé also could not recall making the signed statement at all.[11]

Stinney has been reported to have had a history of violent behavior prior to the murders. Two weeks before the murders occurred, Stinney allegedly shoved a 16-year-old white boy off his bicycle. The incident was corroborated by Reverend Francis Batson, who would submit an affidavit on behalf of Stinney in 2014.[5] In oral and written accounts, Batson, who was 16 at the time, stated that Stinney had confronted him and shoved him off his bicycle in March 1944.[6]

A day before the murders, Stinney allegedly cut a black girl at his school.[7] Stinney's mother had previously complained Ben Alderman, a prominent local white man in the town whom local black people felt comfortable enough to approach for help, that George wouldn't listen to her or his father, frequently stole things, and did as he pleased.[9]

In 1995, Stinney's seventh-grade teacher, W.L. Hamilton—a black man—spoke in an interview about George. He corroborated the cutting incident. Hamilton recounted, "I remember the day he killed those children, he got into a fight with a girl at school who was his neighbor. In those days you didn't have to worry about children carrying guns and knives to school, but George carried a little knife and he scratched this child with his knife. I took him outside and we went for a little walk, and I talked to him. We went back into the school, in a submissive way, he begged for the child's pardon."[5]

One of Stinney's sisters, Aimé Ruffner, claimed years later that she had contacted Hamilton after it was published. Aimé stated, "I asked him why he would say something like that," she said. "He told me someone paid him to say it. I don't know who paid him but his exact words were, 'because they paid me.'" Hamilton died shortly after his interview was published.[20] It's unclear how Ruffner, who never returned to Alcolu, other than briefly for the posthumous review of the case, and spent the rest of her life in New Jersey, learned about what Hamilton said or contacted him over 50 years later.[8] The interview was only published in The Sumter Item, a South Carolina newspaper.[5][21]

The same day, Stinney allegedly threatened to kill two white girls, Sadie Duke and Violet Freeman, who had gone near Stinney's church to get some water and play. Stinney reportedly told them to leave and threatened to kill them if they ever return. The claims were made by Duke and Freeman's sister, Ruth Hill Turner, in 2014. Freeman herself could not be asked since she died in 2008. Duke said she couldn't conclusively say that Stinney was guilty, but personally believed that he was the murderer. Turner also said she believed that Stinney he was guilty, but that he was too young to be executed.[22][23]

According to an article reported by the wire services on March 24, 1944, the sheriff announced the arrest of "George Junius" and stated that the boy had confessed and led officers to "a hidden piece of iron."[24][19]

Investigation

[edit]

George and his older half-brother, 19-year-old John Green, were arrested by constable Sidney J. Pratt and deputy H.S. Newman on suspicion of murdering the girls. John was released by police, but George was held in custody. He was not allowed to see his parents until after his trial and conviction.[5] According to a handwritten statement, Newman stated, "I arrested a boy by the name of George Stinney. He then made a confession and told me where to find a piece of iron, about 15 inches where he said he put it in a ditch about six feet from the bicycle."[5][18]

As for how Stinney had become a suspect, Pratt said in an interview in 1982 that he thought the murderer must've lived nearby. Pratt said he asked a black man who might've committed the crime, after which the man immediately told him that Stinney was "the meanest fellow in this community." Pratt said he did not suspect Stinney until getting close to his house. At that point, Pratt said he overheard someone in the house say, "You won't tell on me," which he thought was sufficient to warrant questioning.[25] The two were questioned separately. Pratt said he pressed John about what Stinney, whom he assumed he said, "You won't tell on me," about what he meant. When John says he didn't know, the police accepted the answer and released him.[25]

Stinney was interrogated alone, without a counsel or his parents. Although the Sixth Amendment guarantees legal counsel, this was not routinely observed until the United States Supreme Court's 1963 ruling in Gideon v. Wainwright that explicitly required representation through the course of criminal proceedings.[16]

Pratt said that at first, Stinney had firmly maintained his innocence. However, Pratt said Stinney's demeanor suddenly changed when he told him that he was in "deep trouble", but Ben Alderman might be able to help him. At this, Stinney said he wanted to see Ben Alderman. He then confessed and led Pratt and Newman directly to the murder weapon. Pratt said the weapon was not a railroad spike, but rather a piece of iron pipe.[26] Pratt said Stinney also admitted to "fooling with" (sexually assaulting) the older girl, Betty June Binnicker, after hitting her.[26] A medical examiner reported that the hymens of both girls were intact, though the genitalia of Binnicker were slightly bruised.[5]

After word of Stinney's reported confession spread, a lynch mob gathered outside the jail. Stinney's request to see Ben Alderman was granted. After Alderman privately talked with Stinney, he, Newman, and sheriff James Gamble Sr. lied to the lynch mob that Stinney had been cleared as a suspect and was about to be released. In an interview in 1983, a confessed member of the lynch mob, Lee Burke, later recounted that after the mob dispersed, Alderman had broken down into tears in front of him, said Stinney had confessed to the murders, and that Pratt was already secretly transporting him to another jail. Lee Burke said Alderman had then warned Stinney's father that he and the rest of his family had to flee the town immediately. Lee Burke said that if Alderman had not warned George Stinney Sr., "I reckon we would have got him."[26]

Stinney was taken to the Sumter County Jail. His parents did not see him again before the trial. He had no support during his 81-day confinement and trial.[27]

Trial

[edit]

The entire proceeding against George Stinney, including jury selection, took place on April 24, 1944. Stinney's court-appointed counsel was Charles Plowden, a tax commissioner campaigning for election to local office. Plowden did not challenge the three police officers who testified that Stinney confessed to the two murders, nor did he try to defend Stinney. He also did not challenge the prosecution's presentation of two differing versions of Stinney's verbal confession. In one version, Stinney was attacked by the girls after he tried to help one girl who had fallen in the ditch, and he killed them in self defense. In the other version, he had followed the girls, first attacking Mary Emma and then Betty June.[5] There is no written record of Stinney's confession apart from Deputy Newman's statement.[13]

Other than the testimony of the three police officers, at trial prosecutors called three witnesses: Reverend Francis Batson, who discovered the bodies of the two girls, and the two doctors who performed the post-mortem examination. The court allowed discussion of the "possibility" of rape due to bruising on Binnicker's genitalia. Stinney's counsel did not call any witnesses, did not cross-examine witnesses, and offered almost no defense. The trial presentation lasted two and a half hours.[5]

More than 1,000 white Americans crowded the courtroom, but no black Americans were allowed.[13] As was typical at the time, Stinney was tried before an all-white jury (in 1944 most African-Americans in the South were disenfranchised and therefore not present on the rolls of those available to serve on juries). After deliberating for less than 10 minutes, the jury found Stinney guilty of murder. The jury did not make a recommendation of mercy, making a death sentence mandatory in the case. Judge Philip H. Stoll sentenced Stinney to death by electrocution. There is no transcript of the trial and no appeal was filed by Stinney's counsel.[13]

Death row

[edit]

Stinney's family, churches, and many others appealed to Governor Olin D. Johnston for clemency, given the age of the boy. Some pleas from whites came with affirmations of white supremacy, but expressions of unease or outright disgust over the execution of a 14-year-old boy. Most of the South Carolinians who wrote to the governor to ask him to spare Stinney's life were white women.[28]

Several of the women referenced the case of Ernest Feltwell, a 16-year-old white boy who had recently been prosecuted for the rape and murder of Diane Tatton, a 7-year-old white girl, on federal property in 1943.[28] Ironically, Feltwell's guilt has also since been questioned due to substantial inconsistencies in the case against him. It has been suggested that the real murderer was a Marine Corps officer whom Feltwell, prior to his confession that he accidentally killed the girl during an attempted rape,[29] claimed to have seen with Tatton shortly before the murder.[30] Unlike Stinney, Feltwell would avoid execution. After his lawyer advised him to plead guilty since a judge would most likely to spare his life if the decision was left to him alone, Feltwell pleaded guilty to second degree murder. He was sentenced to 20 years in prison and paroled in the late 1950s.[30][31]

Others urged the governor to let Stinney's execution proceed, which he did.[32] Johnston visited George Stinney in the Death House two days before his execution, on June 14. Johnston wrote a response to one appeal for clemency, stating, "I have just talked with the officer who made the arrest in this case. It may be interesting for you to know that Stinney killed the smaller girl to rape the larger one. Then he killed the larger girl and raped her dead body. Twenty minutes later he returned and attempted to rape her again but her body was too cold. All of this he admitted himself." It was reported that these were merely rumors, and Johnston's claims were not corroborated by the girls' autopsies. That said, unexplained bruising on Binnicker's genitalia had been used to argue that the murders were sexually motivated.[5][33]

Between the time of Stinney's arrest and his execution, his parents were allowed to see him once after the trial, when he was held at the South Carolina Penitentiary. Under the threat of lynching, they were not allowed to see him any other time.[5]

It is reported that Stinney repeatedly confessed after his conviction, including at least three times less than a week before his execution. All three late confessions are documented by contemporary newspapers.[10] In separate interviews in 1982, 1995, and 2003, James A. Gamble Jr., the son of Sheriff James E. Gamble Sr., consistently maintained that he had accompanied his father and Stinney on the drive to the state penitentiary. Gamble Jr. said Stinney shouldn't have been executed due to his age, but was guilty and admitted to the murders during the car ride. He said Stinney had apologized and said he hadn't intended to kill the girls.[25][8][34]

In a 2016 book, Next Stop, Eternity, the son of Stinney's chaplain, Reverend Charles M. "Red" Kelly,[35] also wrote that Stinney had confessed to his father and fellow clergymen. Reverend Kelly met with Governor Johnston and urged him to spare Stinney's life on account of his age, but was unsuccessful.[36]

Five days before the execution, Dr. J. Baxter Funderburk, a member of the South Carolina Board of Pardons who would visit all of the state's death row inmates, visited Stinney in prison. He reported that Stinney initially denied committing the murders, but then said he was guilty, albeit he said he did not know why he killed them. Stinney said the girls had asked him where he could find some flowers, after which he told them that they could find honeysuckle in the woods. Shortly after, he followed them and beat them to death, killing the younger girl first. Funderburk reported that Stinney said he used an iron rod about 12 inches long and about "as thick as his thumb." The confession was reported in the The State.[37][10]

Two days later, Stinney was reported to have confessed again, this time to the penitentiary's captain of the guard. He said he had killed the younger girl first and used a "piece of iron" to commit the murders. The confession was reported in the Columbia Record.[38]

An execution of a child as young as 14 was rare, but not unheard of in United States history. Many sources say that Stinney was the youngest person executed in the U.S. in the 20th century.[39][40] However, this may be incorrect. There are recorded executions of a 14-year-old black boy in North Carolina in 1916 who was erroneously reported as 16 or 18,[41] a 14-year-old black boy in South Carolina in 1921 who was erroneously reported as 16,[42] and of a 14-year-old white boy in Florida in 1910 who was erroneously reported as 15.[43]

Execution

[edit]
George Stinney (second from right) being led to the execution chamber.

Stinney was executed in the state's electric chair on Friday, June 16, 1944, at 7:30 a.m. The prison's black pastor, Reverend E.A. Davis, reported that Stinney and fellow death row inmate Bruce Hamilton had told him the night before that they were "ready to go."

A newspaper reported that Stinney made his final confession, which was reported in the News and Courier, The Greenville News, and The Manning Times, to Sheriff James E. Gamble Sr. less than 30 minutes before his execution. According to the reports, Stinney told Gamble Sr. that he was guilty, had acted alone, and nobody else other than him had been complicit in the murders. Afterwards, Gamble Sr. said to him, "Goodbye, George," to which Stinney replied, "Goodbye, Sheriff."[38]

Stinney was then restrained by his arms, legs, and body to the chair. An officer asked Stinney if he had any last words to say before the execution took place, but he only shook his head and said "No, sir." When asked if he was sure that he didn't want to say anything, Stinney again replied, "No, sir." The executioner then pulled a strap from the chair and placed it over Stinney's mouth. When the lethal electricity was applied, it was claimed that the mask covering slipped off, revealing that his eyes were wide open.[8]

Allegations that Stinney was sobbing at his execution, that a stack of books or a Bible was needed to place him in the chair were never reported on by contemporary newspapers and later contested by Terri Evans, the niece of Mary Emma Thames' mother, Lula Mae. Terri's uncle, Clyde Barnes, witnessed the execution. Barnes told Evans' father what he saw during the execution, which was then relayed to her years later. Her father stated that Barnes "said it was just a rumor that the hood had slipped and they did not put a stack of books under him."[20]

In an interview in 1982, Betty Binnicker's sister, Vermelle Tucker, said she had no doubts about Stinney's guilt, but had struggled with conflicting feelings towards the boy. Tucker said both Stinney and her sister were too young to die. After the execution, she recounted that her father and brother, both of whom witnessed it, were shaken and did not want to talk about it.[25] Her brother had refused to say anything and her father had only said, "Thank God he won't do it to anybody else."[44] In another interview in 1985, Tucker said her father was deeply upset.[45]

Stinney was buried in an unmarked grave at the Calvary Baptist Church Cemetery in Lee County, South Carolina.[46]

Reopening of case and vacatur of conviction

[edit]

In 2004, George Frierson, a local historian who grew up in Alcolu, started researching the case after reading a newspaper article about it. His work gained the attention of South Carolina lawyers Steve McKenzie and Matt Burgess.[5] Ray Brown, attorney James Moon, and others researched and reviewed of historical documents and sought witnesses for evidence to exonerate Stinney. Among those who aided the case were the Civil Rights and Restorative Justice Project (CRRJ) at the Northeastern University School of Law, which filed an amicus brief with the court in 2014.[47] Frierson and the pro bono lawyers first sought relief through the Pardon and Parole Board of South Carolina.

McKenzie and Burgess, along with attorney Ray Chandler representing Stinney's family, filed a motion for a new trial on October 25, 2013.[48]

If we can get the case re-opened, we can go to the judge and say, 'There wasn't any reason to convict this child. There was no evidence to present to the jury. There was no transcript. This case needs to be re-opened. This is an injustice that needs to be righted.' I'm pretty optimistic that if we can get the witnesses we need to come forward, we will be successful in court. We hopefully have a witness that's going to say—that's non-family, non-relative witness—who is going to be able to tie all this in and say that they were basically an alibi witness. They were there with Mr. Stinney and this did not occur.[49]

— Steve McKenzie

Frierson stated in interviews, "There has been a person that has been named as being the culprit, who is now deceased. And it was said by the family that there was a deathbed confession." Frierson said that the rumored culprit came from a well-known, prominent white family. He also claimed that a member, or members, of that family had served on the initial coroner's inquest jury, which had recommended that Stinney be prosecuted.[49]

In its amicus brief, the CRRJ said:

There is compelling evidence that George Stinney was innocent of the crimes for which he was executed in 1944. The prosecutor relied, almost exclusively, on one piece of evidence to obtain a conviction in this capital case: the unrecorded, unsigned "confession" of a 14-year-old who was deprived of counsel and parental guidance, and whose defense lawyer shockingly failed to call exculpating witnesses or to preserve his right of appeal.[47]

The solicitor for the state of South Carolina, who argued for the state against exoneration, was Ernest A. Finney III. He is the son of Ernest A. Finney Jr., who was appointed as South Carolina's first African-American State Supreme Court justice since Reconstruction.[50]

In January 2014, one of Stinney's sisters, Aimé Ruffner, testified that he was at home with them at the time of the murders. Ruffner swore that she and Stinney were grazing the family cow when they met the girls, but that they had returned home together for the rest of the afternoon. She said Stinney only left the house later when he went with his father to search for the missing girls and that she was hiding in the family's chicken coop when the police arrived to arrest Stinney.[11]

The credibility of Ruffner's statements were questioned by both Finney and circuit court Judge Carmen Mullen, who was presiding over the review of the case. In 2009, Ruffner had made a notarized statement about her memories of what happened. Ruffner initially could not recall ever making or signing the statement. After Ruffner said, "Maybe I did," Finney also noted that her statement in 2009 had made no mention of Stinney leaving with his father to search for the girls or of Ruffner hiding in a chicken coop.[11]

Ruffner also claimed that the NAACP had unsuccessfully fought to stop Stinney's execution. However, it has been found that the NAACP was largely silent about the case and that its national office only reported on Stinney's execution. Five days before Stinney's execution, the South Carolina Conference of the NAACP sent a single telegram to the governor, requesting clemency for Stinney based on his age. the conference's recently established youth council sent a similar telegram.[51]

An affidavit was introduced from the Reverend Francis Batson, who found the girls and pulled them from the water-filled ditch. In his statement, he said was not much blood in or around the ditch, and suggested that girls may have been killed elsewhere and their bodies moved.[5]

In 2013, an 87-year-old black man named Wilford "Johnny" Hunter claimed that was Stinney's cellmate in the Sumter County Jail after his conviction. Hunter claimed he had extensive conversations with Stinney, that Stinney had looked up to him as a "big brother," and even that he gave Stinney a haircut in jail.[52] Hunter later submitted an affidavit in which he claimed that "the teenager told him he had been made to confess" and had always maintained his innocence.[5]

However, there is no documented evidence that Hunter was actually Stinney's cellmate. Hunter never testified at the hearing and was never cross-examined.[53] Prison records also prove that Stinney was transferred from the Sumter County Jail to the South Carolina Penitentiary on April 27, 1944, just three days after his conviction.[54]

Rather than approving a new trial, on December 16, 2014, Judge Mullen vacated Stinney's conviction. She ruled that he had not received a fair trial, as he was not effectively defended and his Sixth Amendment rights had been violated.[55][56] The ruling was a rare use of the legal remedy of coram nobis. Judge Mullen ruled that his confession was likely coerced and thus inadmissible. She also found that the execution of a 14-year-old constituted "cruel and unusual punishment", and that his attorney "failed to call exculpating witnesses or to preserve his right of appeal."[47] Mullen confined her judgment to the process of the prosecution, noting that Stinney "may well have committed this crime."[5] With reference to the legal process, Mullen wrote, "No one can justify a 14-year-old child charged, tried, convicted and executed in some 80 days," concluding that, "In essence, not much was done for this child when his life lay in the balance."[5]

Reaction of Binnicker and Thames's relatives

[edit]

While Stinney's family and civil rights advocates celebrated the overturning of Stinney's conviction, relatives of both Betty Binnicker and Mary Thames expressed disappointment at the court's ruling. They said that although they acknowledge Stinney's execution at the age of 14 is controversial, they never doubted his guilt. Binnicker's niece claimed she and her family have extensively researched the case, and argues that "people who [just] read these articles in the newspaper don't know the truth."[57] She claims that, in the early 1990s, one of the police officers who arrested Stinney had contacted her and said, "Don't you ever believe that boy didn't kill your aunt."[57] These family members contend that the claims of a deathbed confession from an individual confessing to the girls' murders have never been substantiated.[57] Commenting on the public opinion regarding Stinney's case, she said the case has always been "one-sided" and that Stinney has been incorrectly portrayed as a "poor pitiful little black boy".[58] At the same time, another niece of Binnicker, while remaining convinced of Stinney's guilt, agreed that Stinney did not receive a fair trial and that he should not have received the death penalty, adding that she felt bad for Stinney and his family and that she hoped they eventually would find peace. A childhood acquaintance of Binnicker also stated, "I'm sorry that they electrocuted him. I wish they had just sent him to prison."[59]

Alternate suspect

[edit]

After Stinney's conviction was vacated, George Washington Burke Jr. (July 28, 1917 – February 1, 1947) the son of a wealthy white businessman, George Burke Sr., has been the subject of speculation as a possible suspect for the murders. George Burke Jr. died less than three years after the murders of the two girls, in 1947, at age 29. Aimé Ruffner has since claimed that her mother had worked for the Burke family for a brief period. She said that her mother had once come home saying that Burke Sr. had made advances to her, and their father had warned their mother to no longer go back. She also claimed that she once heard that the Burke boys had framed Stinney because "[their] mother didn't want to give it up." Burke Sr. conducted an initial search for the girls and was the owner of the territory behind Greenhill Baptist Church where the girls' bodies were found. He was also the foreman of the grand jury that indicted Stinney, and has been accused of helping steer the blame off of his son and onto Stinney.[60] Two elderly women in Alcolu recalled that Burke Jr. was known as a womanizer and for committing theft and getting away with it.[60][61]

Sonya Eaddy-Williamson, a white Alcolu resident who grew close to Stinney's sisters, investigated the case. According to her, George Burke Jr.'s son, Wayne Burke, told her that his grandmother had told him that his father had picked the girls up in his lumber truck by his grandmother's house on the day of the girls' murders. In 2017, Wayne Burke denied saying this and said he remained convinced of Stinney's guilt .Since her brother's conviction was vacated, Aimé Ruffner has claimed that after the two girls had asked about maypop flowers, a lumber truck drove down the road.[61] However, Wayne Burke pointed out that nobody else had ever come forward to say they saw the girls allegedly riding with George Burke Jr.[60]

Lawyers for the Stinney family have stated that there had been rumors of a deathbed confession to the murders by a member of a prominent white family.[61] However, the alleged confession has never been proven, is denied by Burke's family. The theory of Burke Jr. as an alternative suspect was never raised at the rehearing on the Stinney case in 2014, either.[57]

Legacy

[edit]

George Stinney's case has been frequently referred to in debate over the use of the death penalty in the United States, especially in arguments against the death penalty, due to Stinney later having his conviction vacated.[62]

In January 2022, South Carolina state representative Cezar McKnight introduced a bill named after Stinney, the George Stinney Fund, which would make the state of South Carolina pay $10 million to the families of the wrongfully executed if their conviction is posthumously overturned.[63][64][65]

Books and films about Stinney's case

[edit]
  • David Stout based his first novel, Carolina Skeletons (1988), on the Stinney case.[66] He was awarded the 1989 Edgar Award for Best First Novel (Edgar Allan Poe Award).[67] Stout suggests in the novel that Stinney, whom he renames Linus Bragg, was innocent. The plot revolves around a fictitious brother of Stinney/Bragg, who unravels the truth about the case decades later. The novel was adapted as a 1991 television movie of the same name directed by John Erman, featuring Kenny Blank as Stinney/Bragg.[68] Lou Gossett Jr. played Stinney's/Bragg's younger brother James.[69]
  • The 1993 novel Billy by Albert French was inspired by these events.
  • The 1996 Stephen King novel The Green Mile was loosely based on Stinney's story. Like Stinney, the character John Coffey is an African American who is wrongfully executed for the rape and murder of two white twin girls. It is eventually revealed that another character is the actual killer.
  • In February 2014, another movie about the Stinney case, 83 Days, was announced by Pleroma Studios, written and produced by Ray Brown with Charles Burnett slated to direct.[48][70] Ultimately directed by Andrew Paul Howell, the film was released in 2018.[71]
  • An opera, Stinney: An American Execution, was written in 2015 by Frances Pollock, who had just earned her master's degree at the Peabody Institute. It was performed to a full house at 2640 Space in Baltimore, Maryland the same year. Several cousins of George Stinney from Baltimore and other parts of Maryland attended the opening night.[72] In 2022, Opera Grand Rapids in Grand Rapids Michigan produced the world premiere of Stinney: An American Execution at The Wege Theater.
  • Karyn Parsons' How High the Moon has a subplot where a friend of the main character is framed for murdering two white girls, similarly to the George Stinney case.[73]
  • Jericho Brown's 2021 poem "Inaugural" makes reference to Stinney's execution.[74]
  • Nia DaCosta's 2021 film Candyman features Stinney in a cameo as one of the souls trapped in the Candyman "hive": in his Candyman form, Stinney rides a bicycle with his hand in a hook. Stinney was previously featured in DaCosta's 2020 promotional short film of the same name, his death and resurrection depicted in the form of shadow puppetry.[75]
  • Filmmaker Jamison Stalsworth's short film The Current: The Story of George Stinney was released in 2017.[76][77][78]
  • George Stinney is cited in Chain-Gang All Stars, a novel by Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah, as the youngest person ever executed by the United States. The novel incorrectly states that George Stinney was exonerated seventy years after his execution, instead of correctly stating that his conviction was vacated.

See also

[edit]

References

[edit]
  1. ^ "George Stinney memorial unveiled in Alcolu". June 15, 2014.
  2. ^ "New details emerge about an alternate suspect in Alcolu girls' murders". March 28, 2018.
  3. ^ Wilks, Avery G. (December 16, 2016). "70 years later, George Stinney's conviction vacated". The State.
  4. ^ "George Stinney, 14-year-old convicted of '44 murder, exonerated". WIS TV. December 17, 2014. Archived from the original on March 3, 2016. Retrieved December 17, 2014.
  5. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t McVeigh, Karen (March 22, 2014). "George Stinney was executed at 14. Can his family now clear his name?". The Observer. Retrieved June 28, 2021.
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Further reading

[edit]
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