Southern Style Judicial Apology: With All Deliberate Speed

Wrong Execution's Apology Comes 70 Years Too Late

George Stinney Jr. was only 14 years old when he was sentenced to death for the fatal beating of two white girls in the racially charged South in 1944.  

BY: BREANNA EDWARDS

Posted: Dec. 17 2014 

George Stinney Jr. 

YOUTUBE

It’s been 70 years since George Stinney Jr., a 14-year-old South Carolina boy, faced the electric chair for the 1944 murders of two young white girls in Alcolu, but his name has finally been cleared after a circuit court judge tossed his murder conviction, NBC

George was so small, weighing just 95 pounds at the time of his execution, that he had to sit on top of a phone book in the electric chair.

Civil rights advocates and George’s lawyers have been trying to get George’s case tossed for years, believing that his confession was coerced. The boy’s trial lasted only three hours, and it took his jury, consisting of white men, only 10 minutes to find him guilty, NBC notes. There were no appeals made.

George is said to be the youngest person executed in the U.S. in the past century, NBC notes.