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| He was too small to lift the murder weapon. |
Josh Aiken performs George Stinney in Edison Theatre in Washington University in St. Louis at the 2012 Poetry Grand Slam.
Lawyers seek new trial for 14-year-old South Carolina boy executed in 1944.
'The request for a new trial points out that at 95 pounds, Stinney likely couldn't have killed the girls and dragged them to the ditch.
The motion also hints at community rumors of a deathbed confession from a white man several years ago and the possibility Stinney either confessed because his family was threatened or he was given ice cream. But the court papers provide little information and the lawyers also wouldn't elaborate.
At 14, Stinney was the youngest person executed in this country in the past 100 years, according to statistics gathered by the Death Penalty Information Center.
Newspaper stories from his execution had witnesses saying the straps to keep him in the electric chair didn't fit around his small frame and an electrode was too big for his leg.''
(Wikipedia) George Junius Stinney, Jr., (October 21, 1929 – June 16, 1944) was, at age 14, the youngest person executed in the United States in the 20th century.
Stinney was convicted of murdering two pre-teen girls after police said he confessed to the murders. But the question of Stinney's guilt, the validity of his alleged confession, and the judicial process leading to his execution have been criticized as "suspicious at best and a miscarriage of justice at worst" and as an example of the many injustices African-Americans suffered in courtrooms in the United States in the first half of the 20th century.
