George Stinney

He lived in a small home with a chicken coop in his hometown of Alcolu, South Carolina, with his father, George Junius Stinney Sr. (1902–1965), mother Aimé Brown Stinney (1907–1989), 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, where white and black neighborhoods were separated by railroad tracks.

The town was typical of small Southern towns of the time.

Given segregated schools and churches for white and black residents, there was limited interaction between them.

George Junius Stinney Jr. (October 21, 1929 – June 16, 1944) was a boy who, at the age of 14, was convicted and then executed in a proceeding later vacated as an unfair trial for the murders of two young white girls in March 1944 – Betty June Binnicker, age 11, and Mary Emma Thames, age 8 – in his hometown of Alcolu, South Carolina.

He was convicted, sentenced to death, and executed by electric chair in June 1944, thus becoming the youngest American with an exact birth date confirmed to be both sentenced to death and executed in the 20th century.

In 1944, George Stinney stood 5 feet 1 inch (154 cm), and weighed 90-95 pounds.

On March 23, 1944, the bodies of Betty June Binnicker (b. December 9, 1932) and Mary Emma Thames (b. March 14, 1937) were found in a ditch on the African-American side of Alcolu after the girls failed to return home the night before.

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.

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."

The medical examiner reported no evidence of sexual assault to the younger girl, though the genitalia of the older girl were slightly bruised.

The girls were last seen riding their bicycles looking for flowers.

As they passed the Stinneys' property, they had asked Stinney and his sister, Aimé, if they knew where to find "maypops", a local name for passionflowers.

According to Aimé, she was with Stinney at the time the police later established the murders occurred.

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."

George and his older brother John were arrested 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.

According to a handwritten statement, his arresting officer was H.S. Newman, a Clarendon County deputy, who 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."

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.

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.

In 1995, Stinney's seventh-grade teacher, W.L. Hamilton— a black man— spoke in an interview with The Sumter Item about George.

Hamilton stated, "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."

Stinney's sister, Aimé Ruffner, denied those allegations and 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.

Following Stinney's arrest, his father was fired from his job at the local sawmill and the Stinney family had to immediately vacate their company housing.

The family feared for their safety.

Stinney's parents did not see him again before the trial.

He had no support during his 81-day confinement and trial; he was detained at a jail in Columbia, 50 mi from Alcolu, due to the risk of lynching.

Stinney was questioned alone, without his parents or an attorney.

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 vacated in 2014, seventy years after he was executed, with a South Carolina court ruling that he had not received a fair trial, and was thus wrongfully executed.