George Stinney Jr. was exonerated Wednesday, 70 years after the 14-old-boy was executed in South Carolina for a murder conviction. Stinney was the youngest person executed in the U.S. in the 20th century.
Stinney, a black teen, was convicted of beating two white girls to death in 1944. On Wednesday, Judge Carmen Mullen threw out the conviction.
Civil rights advocates argued that Stinney’s confession was coerced, and his sister said she had been with him on the day of the murders.
Mullen said the court failed to give the boy a fair trail.
The trial, by an all-white jury, lasted one day and the jury deliberated for 10 minutes before convicting Stinney.
"From time to time we are called to look back to examine our still-recent history and correct injustice where possible," Mullen wrote. "I can think of no greater injustice than a violation of one's constitutional rights, which has been proven to me in this case by a preponderance of the evidence standard."
Stinney family attorney Matthew Burgess said Stinney’s three surviving siblings were pleased with Wednesday’s ruling.
"This is something that's been weighing on them for seven decades now,"
Burgess said, according to Reuters.
Stinney didn’t have an opportunity to appeal the conviction and was executed within about three months of his arrest. Due to his small stature, the boy sat on a phone book in the electric chair.
Twitter users were pleased with the judge's decision.
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