George Stinney, Jr. was a 14-year-old African-American child who was executed in South Carolina in 1944 for the murders of two white girls. He was later exonerated in 2014, 70 years after his execution. George Stinney, Jr. was the youngest person to be executed by electric chair in U.S. history and the youngest person to be executed by electric chair in modern history.
Wiki/Biography
George Stinney Jr. was born on Monday, October 21, 1929 (he died at the age of 14) in Pinehurst, South Carolina, USA. He grew up in the segregated mill town of Alcolu, a small working-class mill town in South Carolina where blacks and whites were separated by railroad tracks. Although black and white families lived on opposite sides of the railroad spur, men of both races worked side by side for D.W. Alderman & Sons. George lived with his parents and four siblings in a three-room company house next to the railroad tracks in Alcolu, which was reserved for black families only. George Stinney Jr. was a 7th grade student at the Alcolu School for Black Children.
A rare photo of George Stinney Jr.
appearance
Height: 5′ 1″
Eye color: Black
Hair color: Black
Family and Race
George Stinney Jr. comes from an African-American family in South Carolina.
Parents and siblings
His father, George Stinney Sr., was a sharecropper who worked at the town’s sawmill, and his mother, Aime, was a cook at the Alcolu School for Black Children. George Stinney Jr. has two brothers, John (17; half brother) and Charles (12). He has two sisters, Katherine (10) and Aimee (7).
Portrait of Aime Ruffner and her brother, George Stinney Jr.
George Stinney Jr.’s sister, Katherine Robinson, testified that she remembered what happened the day George was arrested.
Two white girls were murdered
On March 24 or 25, 1944, the bodies of two white teenage girls, Betty June Binnicker (age 11) and Mary Emma Thames (age 7), were found in Alcolu, South Carolina. The girls had disappeared the day before.
Betty Jonbenik
Mary Emma Thames
While biking in Alcolu, the girls were searching for flowers. When the girls passed George Stinney II’s house, they saw George and his sister Aimee, and the girls stopped to ask them if they could tell them where they could find passion fruit, which is a yellow edible fruit. That was reportedly the last time the girls were seen alive.
Historian George Frierson on the railroad tracks where Stinney spoke to his victims
Betty Jean Binnick and Mary Emma Thames did not return home that day. Binnick and Thames’ disappearance led hundreds of Alcolu residents, including George Stinney’s father, to come together to search for the missing girls. The next morning, a search party led by George Burke Sr., one of the big lumber mill owners, found the bodies of the two young girls in a wet ditch in Alcolu’s African-American neighborhood.
The bodies of Betty June Binnicker, 11, and Mary Emma Thames, 7, were found in a waterlogged ditch in these woods.
According to Dr. Cecil Bozard of Asbury, who had examined the bodies of Binnick and Thames, the two girls died horribly, with multiple head injuries, but no obvious signs of a struggle. The two girls were brutally murdered, with Thames’ skull having a hole that went through her forehead. Thames also had a two-inch-long wound above her right eyebrow. Meanwhile, Binnick had been hit in the head at least seven times. Later, it was reported that the back of Binnick’s head was “just a pile of broken bones.” Bozard concluded that the two girls were likely attacked with “a round object about the size of a hammer head.” Later, a rumor circulated around town that the two girls had stayed at the home of a white family on the same day they were murdered; however, this was never confirmed, and the police never looked for a white killer. When a witness informed Clarendon County law enforcement officers that the girls had been seen talking to Stinney, law enforcement officers raided the home of George Stinney II and arrested George Stinney and his brother Johnny. Later, Johnny was released, but George was detained.
The Trial of George Stinney Jr.
After George Stinney II was quickly handcuffed, the trial lasted less than two hours, during which he was questioned in a small room without a lawyer, witnesses, or even his parents. According to police, Stinney confessed to killing Binnick and Thames in an attempt to have sex with one of the girls. Arresting officer HS Newman wrote in a handwritten statement:
I arrested a boy named George Stinney. He then confessed the crime and told me where to find a piece of iron about fifteen inches long. He said he had placed it in the ditch about six feet from the bicycle.
The coroner’s report says that 11-year-old Betty June Binnicker and 7-year-old Mary Emma Thames were killed by 14-year-old George Stinney Jr.
Soon after Stinney’s arrest, rumors of a lynching began to spread throughout town, and the police kept Stinney’s whereabouts secret, and even Stinney’s parents were unaware of his whereabouts. Nearly a month after Binnick and Thames were killed, George Stinney II’s trial began in the Clarendon County Courthouse. Although Charles Plowden was appointed by the court as defense attorney, he “barely” defended George Stinney II. During the two-hour trial, no substantial evidence was presented in George’s defense, and the strongest evidence against him was his alleged confession, although there was no written record. During the trial, Stinney was surrounded by nearly 1,500 strangers, and he had not seen his parents in weeks. After less than 10 minutes of deliberation, George Stinney II was found guilty by an all-white jury, and the jury did not recommend leniency. On April 24, 1944, Kingstree Judge P. H. Stoll sentenced George Stinney Jr. to electrocution.
George Stinney Jr.’s fingerprints from 1944
protest
As the date for George Stinney’s execution approached, protests began to grow across South Carolina. Protesters petitioned Governor Orin Johnston to go easy on George because of his young age. The governor’s office received hundreds of letters and telegrams from across the state and the country asking for clemency for George.
A pardon letter to Governor Orin Johnston regarding the 1944 death sentence of George Stinney II
Protesters also warned Governor Orin Johnston of racial tensions; however, Johnston did not back down and wrote back describing the brutality of George’s alleged crimes. Johnston wrote:
I just spoke to the officer who made the arrest. In case you’re wondering, Stinney killed the little girl and then raped the older girl. He then killed the older girl and raped her corpse. Twenty minutes later he came back and tried to rape her again, but her body was too cold. He admitted to it all. ”
Youngest death row inmate executed in the U.S.
When George Stinney II walked into the execution chamber at the South Carolina State Penitentiary in Columbia on June 16, 1944, the day of his execution, he wore a baggy striped jumpsuit and held a Bible under his arm. At the time, 14-year-old George Stinney II was 5 feet 1 inch tall and weighed only 95 pounds.
George Stinney Jr. enters the execution chamber at the South Carolina State Penitentiary in Columbia
George was strapped to an adult-sized electric chair, and because of his small stature, state electricians had a hard time adjusting the electrodes to George’s right leg. The mask George was using was reportedly too large to cover his face.
The electric chair that electrocuted George Stinney
Before his execution, when Stinney was asked if he had any last words, he replied,
No, sir.”
When the prison doctor asked,
Don’t you want to tell me what you did?”
George replied again,
No, sir.”
When the police flipped the switch, 2,400 volts of electricity reportedly rushed into Stinney’s body, causing the mask on George’s face to slip off. According to witnesses who were present at the time, George’s eyes were wide open, tears were streaming down his face, and saliva was flowing from his mouth. After two more shocks, George Stinney Jr. was pronounced dead.
Exoneration
In 2014, George Stinney II’s murder conviction was overturned, and he was acquitted 70 years after his execution. On December 17, 2014, while overturning George’s murder conviction, Judge Carmen T. Mullen said the death penalty was —
A huge and fundamental injustice.”
George’s sister, Katherine Robinson, was delighted with his acquittal. She said:
It felt like a cloud had just lifted off. We were sitting with friends when we got the news… I raised my hands and said, ‘Thank you Jesus! ’ Someone must be listening. This is what we’ve wanted for so many years.”
In the mass media
David Stout’s first novel, Carolina Skull (1988), was based on the case of George Stinney II. In 1991, the novel was adapted into a television movie of the same name. In 1993, the famous American writer Albert French wrote a novel, Billy, based on the case. In 1996, Stephen King’s novel The Green Mile was also based on the Stinney case. The novel was adapted into a Hollywood movie of the same name in 1999, starring Tom Hanks and Michael Clarke Duncan, who played “John Coffey” in the film, a character inspired by Stinney’s story.
In 2015, Francis Pollock created an opera, Stinney. In 2018, a short film titled 83 Days was released.
83 Days (2018)
Facts/Trivia
- George spent his short life in Alcolu, a sawmill village along the northern hills of the Pocotaglio Swamp in rural Clarendon County, about 80 miles north of Charleston.
- George’s family grew vegetables in the garden and raised a cow, which George Stinney Jr. would often take out to the pasture to graze.
- On Sundays, he would go to the nearby Greenhill Baptist Church with other black families in Alcolu.
- According to George’s cellmate, Wilford “Johnny” Hunter, George, then 17, was arrested for joyriding in a stolen car and loved singing country songs from The Grand Ole Opry, his favorite being “Walking the Floor Over You” by Ernest Tubb.
- George also likes to play hide and seek in his bed.
- When he was arrested by police at home, his father, George Sr., was fired from his job at the factory.
- After George was arrested, his family fled to his grandmother’s home in Pinewood.
- According to a reporter from Columbia State, George looked calm throughout the trial and “didn’t seem too worried.”
- George was wearing jeans and a faded blue shirt as he went on trial at the Clarendon County Courthouse in downtown Manning.
- According to George’s cellmate, Wilford “Johnny” Hunter, George once told him,
Johnny, when they electrocute me, I’ll be back and haunt you!
Wilford “Johnny” Hunter
- At George’s request, Johnny Hunter also wrote a letter to a Florida missionary named SP Rewell, who, according to George, had helped his brother when he was in trouble.
- George once asked Johnny Hunter,
Johnny, why are they killing me for something I didn’t do? Why?
- In the space of just 83 days, 14-year-old George was accused of murder, tried, convicted, and executed by the state.
Categories: Biography
Source: HIS Education