Seventy-seven years ago , at 7:30 a.m. on June 16, 1944, George Junius Stinney Jr. was escorted to the death chamber by four guards. Despite his tender age of 14, he maintained a composed demeanor,5 feet 1 inch and weighing only 95 pounds holding his Bible tightly under his arm. Standing at a mere five-foot-one-inch height, he was dressed in socks but lacked shoes as the guards prepared him for the electric chair. An officer asked George if he had any last words to say before the execution took place, but he only shook his head and said “No, sir.”His small stature posed challenges during the procedure, with the guards struggling to attach the electrode to his right leg. Even in death, Stinney was denied dignity. Too small for the electric chair, he had to sit on a stack of books so the electrodes could be affixed to his head. Additionally, the face mask, designed for an adult, slipped off as the executioner initiated the switch. As the procedure took place of 2,400 volts going through his body from the crown of head to the soals of his gace his face became visible wearing revealing a face contorted in agony and tears streaming down his cheeks.with his widened eyes and saliva was emanating from his mouth for all the witnesses in the room to see. After two more jolts of electricity, it was over.. The second volt was what killed him. This tragic occurrence marked George Stinney as the youngest person to face execution in the United States during the twentieth century, a somber distinction that endures to this day. The Murder Conviction was Overturned 70 Years Later.
George Stinney’s murder conviction was thrown out in 2014. His siblings claimed that his confession was coerced and that he had an alibi: At the time of the murders, he was with his sister Aime watching the family’s cow.
They also noted that a man named Wilford “Johnny” Hunter, who claimed to be Stinney’s cellmate, said that Stinney denied murdering Binnicker and Thames.
“He said, ‘Johnny, I didn’t, didn’t do it,’” Hunter said. “He said, ‘Why would they kill me for something I didn’t do?’”
After months of consideration, on December 17, 2014, Judge Carmen T. Mullen vacated the murder conviction, calling George Stinney Jr.’s death sentence a “great and fundamental injustice.”
George Stinney Jr.’s siblings were overjoyed to learn that their brother was exonerated after 70 years, appreciating that they were able to live long enough to see it happen.
“It was like a cloud just moved away,” said Stinney’s sister, Katherine Robinson. “When we got the news, we were sitting with friends… I threw my hands up and said, ‘Thank you, Jesus!’ Someone had to be listening. It’s what we wanted for all these years.”
