George Stinney Jr. was vindicated Wednesday, 70 years after he was put to death for killing two little girls. He weighed just 95 pounds when he was electrocuted atop a book — placed in his execution chair to compensate for his short stature — in 1944.
The black 14-year-old was accused of killing two white girls in Alcolu, South Carolina. Prosecutors said he admitted to killing the two, 8 and 11, using a railroad spike. In a trial by a jury of his peers, 12 white male jurors deliberated for ten minutes before finding the teenager guilty. The trial itself took less than a day, and he was killed three months later, leaving his family afraid of speaking out about his innocence.
https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2014/12/executed-14-year-old-cleared-after-70-years.html
