The case that inspired CAROLINA SKELETONS still in the news
Earlier this week we shared a report from NBC, about the law firm that's trying to overturn the conviction of George J. Stinney, Jr.
Stinney was 14 when he was convicted and executed for the murder of two white girls in South Carolina in 1944. There was no evidence linking him to the crime, and many hold that Stinney was convicted because he was black.
The New York Times has published an article about the story, which served as the inspiration for David Stout's Edgar Award-winning novel, Carolina Skeletons.
SUMTER, S.C. — After South Carolina electrocuted George J. Stinney Jr. in 1944, his family buried his burned, 14-year-old body in an unmarked grave in the hopes the anonymity would allow him to rest in peace.
But on two mornings this week, nearly 70 years after the electrocution that ultimately made Mr. Stinney, a black teenager in the segregated South, the youngest person executed in the United States in the 20th century, lawyers and spectators crowded into a courtroom with a very different agenda: shedding enough light on the case to try to clear Mr. Stinney’s name.
