This is one of the saddest cases I’ve ever read about….and that’s saying a lot.
This case, alone, should make people realize how unjust the Death Penalty is and how we will never be able to separate it from racism.
And another word to my Republican “Friends”, you can’t be “pro-life” and “pro-death penalty”. It’s a contradiction in terms….
From RawStory.com:
Over 67 years after 14-year-old George Junius Stinney Jr. was put to death by the state of South Carolina, he may soon be cleared of the crime that people familiar with the case say he never could have committed.
A lawyer and an activist both told Raw Story recently that new evidence will show that the black boy could not have possibly murdered two white girls, 11-year-old Betty June Binnicker and seven-year-old Mary Emma Thames.
Stinney, the youngest person to receive the death penalty in the last 100 years, was executed on June 16, 1944. At five feet one inch and only 95 pounds, the straps of the electric chair did not fit the boy. His feet could not touch the floor. As he was hit with the first 2,400-volt surge of electricity, the mask covering his face slipped off, “revealing his wide-open, tearful eyes and saliva coming from his mouth,” according to author Joy James.
After two more jolts of electricity, the boy was dead.
MORE: New evidence could clear 14-year-old executed by South Carolina | The Raw Story.