We continue to receive inquiries about the story of George Stinney Jr. He was the youngest person sentenced to death in the United States at the time, dying in the electric chair at just 14 years old. 

Overall, the story is correct, but it also contains some errors and ambiguities that we would like to address in this article. This is about the following status contribution:

Screenshot of the requested Facebook post
Screenshot of the requested Facebook post

George Stinney Jr. of African descent was the youngest person sentenced to death in the United States in the 20th century. He was only 14 years old when he was executed in the electric chair.
During his trial, even on the day of his execution, he always carried a Bible in his hand and claimed he was innocent.
He was accused of killing two white girls, 11-year-old Betty and 7-year-old Mary. The bodies were found near the house where the teenager lived with his parents.
At this point, all members of the jury were white. The trial lasted only 2 hours, and the verdict was dictated 10 minutes later.
The boy's parents were threatened and prevented from being present in the courtroom and were subsequently expelled from the city.
Before the execution, George spent 81 days in prison without being able to see his parents.
He was held in solitary confinement, 80 miles from his town. He was heard alone without the presence of his parents or a lawyer.
He was executed with 5,380 volts in his head, imagine all that voltage in a teenager's head.
Seventy years later, his innocence was finally proven by a judge in South Carolina. The boy was innocent, someone had staged it to blame him for being black.

The fact check

We already reported on the George Stinney Jr. case in August 2019 . The 14-year-old was executed in the electric chair on June 16, 1944 in South Carolina, USA, after allegedly killing two girls.

The images shown are footage from the 1991 film “ Carolina Skeletons ” (German title: “The End of Silence”), which is based on the case. 1988 novella “ Carolina Skeletons

The execution scene of the boy, named “Linus Bragg” in the novel and film, can viewed on YouTube . So it shows an actor and not George Stinney Jr. himself.

It is unclear whether the boy always had a Bible in his hand

Snopes colleagues found various newspaper articles showing that George had a Bible under his arm during his execution . It is unclear whether the boy actually carried the book with him at all times.

The girls were not found near his home

The Stinney family's lawyers suspect that the instrument was a 30 centimeter long and wide piece of metal or iron that was used in rail construction and also in wood processing yards.

It is suspected that the real perpetrator was the now deceased son of a sawmill owner on whose property the girls' bodies were found.

The voltage was 2,400 volts

Admittedly, this is not necessarily decisive, since both 2,400 volts, as Charles Kelly describes in his book “ Next Stop, Eternity , ” and the 5,380 volts written in the post are deadly.

After the first shock of 2,400 volts, George's mask slipped off his face and his eyes were open. He was then given two more shocks of 1,400 volts and 500 volts until he was pronounced dead.

George had a lawyer

This actually makes the case even more frightening, because George had a lawyer in Charles H. Plowden, but he worked against the boy: he did not object to the all-white jury, he did not call any witnesses (siblings had an alibi for George ), he did not demand any evidence during the very short trial and did not appeal the death sentence.

Verdict overturned after 70 years

In December 2014, the “ Coram nobis ” (Latin for “in our presence”) case was reopened. This type of application involves a court admitting a previously made error and, if possible, correcting it.

Judge Carmen Tevis Mullen approved the motion on December 17, 2014. However, she did not acquit George Stinney Jr., but strictly speaking only overturned the conviction. An acquittal can only occur in a new trial, which cannot take place because both the boy and potential witnesses are dead. There are hardly any documents left about the case and physical evidence no longer exists.

However, the verdict could be overturned because, as Judge Mullen noted, the court was not functioning properly at the time. For example, no witnesses were heard (his siblings assert that the boy was at home at the time of the crime), the boy's constitutional rights were not respected, the instrument of the crime was unclear, and the boy's lawyer did not file an appeal against the verdict, although this was possible were.

Conclusion

The George Stinney Jr. case is true. Even though some of the details of the story are a bit mixed up in the status post, it doesn't make the case any less frightening. George was actually the youngest person sentenced to death at the time.

In keeping with the topic: The crass Dr. Summer answer: Not fake!


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Notes:
1) This content reflects the current state of affairs at the time of publication. The reproduction of individual images, screenshots, embeds or video sequences serves to discuss the topic. 2) Individual contributions were created through the use of machine assistance and were carefully checked by the Mimikama editorial team before publication. ( Reason )