The events leading to the execution of 14-year-old George Stinney, Jr., began in the tiny mill town of Alcolu, South Carolina.
In March 1944, two white girls, ages eleven and seven, were beaten to death while picking wildflowers along the railroad tracks separating the white and black sections of town.
Shortly afterward, authorities arrested George Stinney, Jr., and claimed he gave an oral confession.
“Their bodies were found in a creek bed in this general area and they had been brutally murdered,” said George Frierson, a local historian.
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His family was run out of town, and Stinney was tried for murder in this courthouse packed with whites only.
Ray Brown, who’s producing a movie about the Stinney case, says the real killer got away and the trial was a sham.
“It’s a situation where he clearly was railroaded, you know, there was no evidence. Nobody could find anything.”
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The trial lasted just two hours. The jury took only ten minutes to convict, and Stinney was sentenced to die.
But now, a South Carolina law firm has filed a motion seeking a new trial, which if granted, could clear Stinney’s name.
Click here to read more about the push to re-open the George Stinney case.
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