George Stinney Jr., 14, was the youngest person ever executed in South Carolina in 1944. Sixty-five years later, a community activist is fighting to clear Stinney’s name, saying the young black boy couldn’t have killed two white girls and was coerced into a confession.
Family members have produced sworn statements that he was with them at the time of the girls’ disappearance. There is currently no evidence on file, including the “confession.”
The two Clarendon County, S.C. white girls, ages 11 and 7, were beaten to death. Stinney was executed 84 days after the girls disappeared in the then segregated town on June 16, 1944.
His family hopes to reopen the case to prove his innocence.
