New lead for 70-year–old case of George Stinney Jr, on trial

By Jobs & Hire Staff Reporter | Jan 20, 2014 11:59 AM EST

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A new lead from South Carolina lawyers over George Stinney Jr. case, a 14-year-old black teenager who was convicted and executed 70 years ago after killing two white girls is under investigation.

Stinney was trialed june 1944, for a single day and a month after the murder, he was executed. Reports say that the 14-year-old black trial took only 10 minutes before he was sentenced to death by electrocution.

Stinney, who was 14 years old, then, was with his younger sister sitting on a railroad tracks when two girls, Betty June Binnicker, 11, and Mary Emma Thames, 7, approached them. The two girls, with their bicycles, were found dead with cracked skull and bicycle on top of them.

The two girls were reported to look for wildflowers and never returned home.

Stinney, being the last person with the girls before they disappeared, was arrested and accused of murder.

There were no official record or hearings, no participants on the trial are still alive and there were no evidences preserve, making it harder for the lawyers who want to re-open the case.

It was October last year when the request for new trial was filed, urging numbers of witnesses that can help Stinney be exonerated from the case. This includes Stinney's cellmate who says that the teen was forced by the police to confess and the autopsy reports had lapses.

Relatives of the two victims did not want the case be revisited if there are no good intensions or reasons.

Aimie, George sister did not testify, fearing that it could make the situation worse for his brother at that time. However, she admitted that she was with his brother the entire day the crime happened.

Solicitor Ernest Finney III, the prosecutor who will attend the said hearing consider Stinney's case the most interesting case but he will argue that no existing information regarding the trial that will show it had been conducted improperly.

"We're talking about procedures and rules 70 years ago that none of us were around to understand. There's not going to be enough evidence to open it up."

This was an interesting story since Stinney was the youngest to be executed in the United States and such request to re-open the case is first of its kind in the state.

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