George Stinney Jr: The boy sentenced to die in the electric chair and declared innocent 70 years later

On June 16, 1944, George Stinney Jr. became the youngest person in American history to be executed. At only 14 years old, he was charged with murder after discovering two bodies, Betty June Binnicker and Mary Emma Thames, ages 7 and 11, respectively, in South Carolina.

As he sat on the defendants' bench in the Clarendon County courtroom on the afternoon of April 24, 1944, his fate was decided in a trial that lasted only five hours and with a jury that took only a few minutes to reach a verdict, reported Infobae.

As soon as he was convicted, George was transferred to Columbia State Penitentiary, where he wore a striped suit for the first time and was locked in a cell on death row.

“I didn't do it. I didn't do it. Why are they going to kill me for something I didn't do?" George asked his cellmate, Wilford Hunter, another black man.

Two months later, he would be executed. 

"He is sentenced to die by electrocution until his body is dead according to the law. And may God have mercy on his soul," read his sentence.

Shortly after 6:00 a.m., little George received an electric shock and convulsed to death.

It took 70 years for his case to be reopened and concluded that the child had been tried without due process, convicted without evidence or witnesses, and wrongfully executed.

In 2014, George Stinney Jr. was acquitted of his charges, and his conviction was deemed a mistrial by the South Carolina circuit court after it was found that the beam with which the two girls were killed weighed more than 42 lbs (19 kg) and it was clear that the juvenile would be incapable of lifting it, much less striking both girls with it.

Discovery of the two corpses

On March 24, 1944, the bodies of Betty June Binnicker and Mary Emma Thames were found in a water-filled ditch a few yards behind the Clarendon Baptist Church in Clarendon, South Carolina.

The killer had smashed the skulls of the two girls with a heavy wooden beam that was found covered with blood a few meters from the scene of the crime, near the railroad tracks. On one side of the tracks, the whites lived; on the other, the blacks lived.

That morning, the victims went out for a bike ride and picked flowers from the "forbidden" side of the tracks. They passed George and his younger sister Amie, asking them where they could find the flowers they liked, but the Stinney brothers replied that they didn't know.

Betty and Mary disappeared sometime later. George had told a neighbor that he had seen the girls while the whole town was searching for them.

This statement was the only cause for the police to accuse George of being the murderer of the two little girls. The officers went to look for George at his home in Alcolu, the black sector of the town.

When they arrived, George's parents were not home. No one demanded an arrest warrant, nor did anyone stop them from taking him and his older brother Johnny, whom no one had seen near the scene of the crime.

“The police were looking for someone to blame, so they used my brother as a scapegoat," Amie revealed many years later when the case was reopened.
According to the agents, George confessed to murdering the two girls, but no one recorded his alleged statement, nor was a paper of the interview shown.

The officers' testimony caused George to be officially charged as the killer of Betty June Binnicker and Mary Emma Thames.