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New trial sought for SC teen executed in 1944
Attorneys in South Carolina say they have fresh evidence that warrants a new trial in the case of a 14-year-old black teenager put to death nearly 70 years ago for the murders of two white girls.
...The defense filed its motion requesting a new trial in October based on newly discovered evidence. Since then, new witnesses who could help exonerate Stinney have come forward, including a former cellmate who says the teen told him police forced his confession, attorneys said. The defense also is relying on old newspaper accounts and a few records in state and county archives to make their case to a judge in Sumter, about 20 miles from the town where Stinney was tried and convicted.
Lawyers said they had determined Stinney was convicted solely on testimony by police who said the teen confessed to killing Betty June Binnicker, 11, and Mary Emma Thames, 7. The two girls disappeared on March 23, 1944, after leaving home on their bicycles to look for wildflowers.
The girls rode a distance of about a mile to a railroad track that divided the segregated town, according to the defense's account of the case in court records. Stinney and his younger sister Amie were sitting on the tracks as their family cow grazed nearby. Stinney's sister recalls the girls asking where they could find flowers before both pairs of children went their separate ways.
Binnicker and Thames never returned home. A search party found their bodies the next morning in a shallow ditch behind a church. Their skulls had been crushed and the bicycles laid on top of them. After Stinney told someone he had seen the girls along the railroad tracks, he was picked up by police and held for five days before being arrested, said Matthew Burgess, one of the attorneys seeking a new trial.
...Stinney's lawyers called no witnesses during his day-long trial a month after the murders, according to the current defense team, and a jury of white men deliberated for only 10 minutes before finding him guilty. Then-governor Olin D. Johnston refused to grant clemency. Stinney, who weighed just 95 pounds, was executed by electrocution in June 1944.
http://news.msn.com/crime-justice/new-trial-sought-for-sc-teen-executed-in-1944-1
...The defense filed its motion requesting a new trial in October based on newly discovered evidence. Since then, new witnesses who could help exonerate Stinney have come forward, including a former cellmate who says the teen told him police forced his confession, attorneys said. The defense also is relying on old newspaper accounts and a few records in state and county archives to make their case to a judge in Sumter, about 20 miles from the town where Stinney was tried and convicted.
Lawyers said they had determined Stinney was convicted solely on testimony by police who said the teen confessed to killing Betty June Binnicker, 11, and Mary Emma Thames, 7. The two girls disappeared on March 23, 1944, after leaving home on their bicycles to look for wildflowers.
The girls rode a distance of about a mile to a railroad track that divided the segregated town, according to the defense's account of the case in court records. Stinney and his younger sister Amie were sitting on the tracks as their family cow grazed nearby. Stinney's sister recalls the girls asking where they could find flowers before both pairs of children went their separate ways.
Binnicker and Thames never returned home. A search party found their bodies the next morning in a shallow ditch behind a church. Their skulls had been crushed and the bicycles laid on top of them. After Stinney told someone he had seen the girls along the railroad tracks, he was picked up by police and held for five days before being arrested, said Matthew Burgess, one of the attorneys seeking a new trial.
...Stinney's lawyers called no witnesses during his day-long trial a month after the murders, according to the current defense team, and a jury of white men deliberated for only 10 minutes before finding him guilty. Then-governor Olin D. Johnston refused to grant clemency. Stinney, who weighed just 95 pounds, was executed by electrocution in June 1944.
http://news.msn.com/crime-justice/new-trial-sought-for-sc-teen-executed-in-1944-1
