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Title: The Youngest Person Executed in the U.S.
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Published: Feb 21, 2009
Author: Wikipedia
Post Date: 2009-02-21 15:19:05 by Turtle
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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.[1] Contents [hide] Stinney, who was black, was arrested for murdering two white girls, Betty June Binnicker, age 11, and Mary Emma Thames, age 8, in Alcolu, located in Clarendon County, South Carolina, on March 23, 1944.[2] The girls had disappeared while out riding their bicycle looking for flowers.[3] As they passed the Stinney property, they asked young George Stinney and his sister, Katherine, if they knew where to find "maypops", a type of flower.[3] When the girls didn't return, a search ensued and their bodies were found the next morning in a ditch filled with muddy water.[3] Both had suffered severe head wounds.[3] Stinney was arrested a few hours later and was interrogated by several white officers.[3] Within an hour, a deputy announced that Stinney had confessed.[3] The next day, Stinney was charged with first-degree murder.[3] The murders raised a politically and racially charged tension in the town, with townsmen storming the local jail and threatening mob justice, the Stinney family left town during the night in fear for their lives.[3] The trial took place on April 24 at the Clarendon County Courthouse. Jury selection began at 10 a.m., ending just after noon, and the trial commenced at 2:30 p.m.[3] Stinney's court appointed lawyer was 30-year-old Charles Plowden, who had political aspirations.[3] Plowden did not cross-examine witnesses, his defense was reported to consist of the claim that Stinney was too young to be held responsible for the crimes.[3] However the law in South Carolina at the time regarded anyone over the age of 14 as an adult.[3] Closing arguments concluded at 4:30 p.m., the jury retired just before 5 p.m. and deliberated for 10 minutes, returning a guilty verdict with no recommendation for mercy.[3] Stinney was sentenced to death in the electric chair.[2] When asked about appeals, Plowden replied that there would be no appeal, the Stinney family had no money to pay for a continuation.[3] Local churches, the N.A.A.C.P., and unions pleaded with Governor Olin D. Johnston to stop the execution and commute the sentence to life imprisonment, citing Stinney's age as a mitigating factor.[3] Johnston did nothing, thereby allowing the execution to proceed.[3] The execution was carried out at the South Carolina State Penitentiary in Columbia, South Carolina on June 16, 1944, less than three months after the crime. At 7:30 p.m., Stinney walked to the execution chamber, a Bible under his arm.[3] There were difficulties strapping the boy, who at 5'1" and just over 90 lbs.,[2] was small for his age, to the electric chair. In addition, the face mask used in executions did not fit properly, and as a result, according to witnesses, it slid off his face during the execution, exposing his face to the witnesses.[4] Stinney was pronounced dead less than four minutes after the execution began.[3] From the day of the death of the two girls until the execution of Stinney, eighty one days had passed.[3] The Stinney case has long been regarded as controversial. The case gave rise to the novel Carolina Skeletons by David Stout.[3] The novel was adapted into the film of the same name (also known as The End of Silence) directed by John Erman, featuring Kenny Blank as Linus Bragg, who is meant to represent Stinney and Lou Gossett, Jr. as Bragg's younger brother, James.[5]
Poster Comment: Wikipedia has shown itself to be untrustworthy by continually pretending there is doubt about guilty people.
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#1. To: Turtle (#0)
Ruben Cantu Texas Convicted: 1985, Executed: 1993 A two-part investigative series by the Houston Chronicle casts serious doubt on the guilt of a Texas man who was executed in 1993. Ruben Cantu had persistently proclaimed his innocence and was only 17 when he was charged with capital murder for the shooting death of a San Antonio man during an attempted robbery. Now, the prosecutor and the jury forewoman have expressed doubts about the case. Moreover, both a key eyewitness in the state's case against Cantu and Cantu's co-defendant have come forward to say that Texas executed an innocent man. Juan Moreno, who was wounded during the attempted robbery and was a key eyewitness in the case against Cantu, now says that it was not Cantu who shot him and that he only identified Cantu as the shooter because he felt pressured and was afraid of the authorities. Moreno said that he twice told police that Cantu was not his assailant, but that the authorities continued to pressure him to identify Cantu as the shooter after Cantu was involved in an unrelated wounding of a police officer. "The police were sure it was (Cantu) because he had hurt a police officer. They told me they were certain it was him, and that's why I testified. . . . That was bad to blame someone that was not there," Moreno told the Chronicle. In addition, David Garza, Cantu's co-defendant during his 1985 trial, recently signed a sworn affidavit saying that he allowed Cantu to be accused and executed even though he wasn't with him on the night of the killing. Garza stated, "Part of me died when he died. You've got a 17-year-old who went to his grave for something he did not do. Texas murdered an innocent person." Sam D. Millsap, Jr., the Bexar County District Attorney who charged Cantu with capital murder, said he never should have sought the death penalty in a case based on testimony from an eyewitness who identified a suspect only after police showed him Cantu's photo three seperate times. Miriam Ward, forewoman of the jury that convicted Cantu, said the jury's decision was the best they could do based on the information presented during the trial. She noted, "With a little extra work, a little extra effort, maybe we'd have gotten the right information. The bottom line is, an innocent person was put to death for it. We all have our finger in that." (Houston Chronicle, November 20 & 21, 2005 and Associated Press, November 21, 2005). Cameron Willingham Texas Convicted: 1992, Executed: 2004 After examining evidence from the capital prosecution of Cameron Willingham, four national arson experts have concluded that the original investigation of Willingham's case was flawed and it is possible the fire was accidental. The independent investigation, reported by the Chicago Tribune, found that prosecutors and arson investigators used arson theories that have since been repudiated by scientific advances. Willingham was executed earlier this year in Texas despite his consistent claims of innocence. He was convicted of murdering his three children in a 1991 house fire. Arson expert Gerald Hurst said, "There's nothing to suggest to any reasonable arson investigator that this was an arson fire. It was just a fire." Former Louisiana State University fire instructor Kendall Ryland added, "[It] made me sick to think this guy was executed based on this investigation.... They executed this guy and they've just got no idea - at least not scientifically - if he set the fire, or if the fire was even intentionally set." Willingham was convicted of capital murder after arson investigators concluded that 20 indicators of arson led them to believe that an accelerent had been used to set three separate fires inside his home. Among the only other evidence presented by prosecutors during the the trial was testimony from jailhouse snitch Johnny E. Webb, a drug addict on psychiatric medication, who claimed Willingham had confessed to him in the county jail. Some of the jurors who convicted Willingham were troubled when told of the new case review. Juror Dorinda Brokofsky asked, "Did anybody know about this prior to his execution? Now I will have to live with this for the rest of my life. Maybe this man was innocent." Prior to the execution, Willingham's defense attorneys presented expert testimony regarding the new arson investigation to the state's highest court, as well as to Texas Governor Rick Perry. No relief was granted and Willingham was executed on February 17, 2004. Coincidentally, less than a year after Willingham's execution, arson evidence presented by some of the same experts who had appealed for relief in Willingham's case helped free Ernest Willis from Texas's death row. The experts noted that the evidence in the Willingham case was nearly identical to the evidence used to exonerate Willis. (Chicago Tribune, December 9, 2004). arlos DeLuna Texas Conviction: 1983, Executed: 1989 A Chicago Tribune investigation released in 2006 revealed groundbreaking evidence that Texas may have executed an innocent man in 1989. The defendant, Carlos DeLuna, was executed for the fatal stabbing of Texas convenience store clerk Wanda Lopez in 1983. New evidence uncovered by reporters Maurice Possley and Steve Mills casts doubt on DeLuna’s guilt and points towards another man, Carlos Hernandez, who had a record of similar crimes and repeatedly confessed to the murder. A news piece aired on ABC’s "World News Tonight” also covered this story. The new evidence casted strong doubt on DeLuna’s guilt. This is the fourth investigation in the past two years pointing to the execution of a probably innocent man. Similar questions have been raised in the cases of Cameron Todd Willingham and Ruben Cantu in Texas, and Larry Griffin in Missouri. David Wayne Spence, executed by the state of Texas on April 3, 1997 despite the conclusion of the police lieutenant who supervised the case that "I do not think David Spence committed this crime." The homicide detective on the case added, "My opinion is that David Spence was innocent. Nothing from the investigation ever led us to any evidence that he was involved." One of the inmates who testified in Spence's trial, Robert Snelson, said, "We all fabricated our accounts of Spence confessing in order to try to get a break from the state on our cases." In Florida, Sonia Jacobs and Jesse Tafero were convicted of murdering a state trooper and his companion in 1976 and were sentenced to death. The chief evidence against them was supplied by the third person at the scene of the crime, an ex-convict named Walter Rhodes. In exchange for his testimony, Rhodes pleaded guilty to second-degree murder and received a life sentence. In 1981 Jacobs' death sentence was reduced to life imprisonment. But in 1990 Tafero -- despite his protestations of innocence -- was executed. Micki Dickoff, a childhood friend of Jacobs', read about Tafero's execution and reestablished contact with Jacobs. Thanks to Dickoff's unflagging efforts, federal courts threw out Jacobs' conviction; in 1992 she was released when the state admitted not having the evidence to retry her. It now appears Jacobs was completely innocent. Why is the Jacobs-Tafero case so significant? If Jacobs was innocent, then the execution of Tafero was probably the execution of an innocent man, because the same evidence (later shown to be insufficient) used to convict Jacobs had also been used to convict Tafero. The information that freed her would have freed him -- if he had not already been executed. On November 15, 1996, Ellis Wayne Felker was executed by the state of Georgia. Wayne Felker was accused of the 1981 rape and murder of Joy Ludlam, an acquaintance. Felker was the main suspect and was put under police surveillance within hours of her disappearance, which occurred fourteen days before the discovery of her body in a creek. An autopsy then put her death within the previous five days. However, when police realized this would have ruled Felker out as a suspect because he had been under police surveillance for the previous two weeks, the findings of the autopsy were changed. An unqualified lab technician with no medical training conducted the autopsy. Attorneys representing Felker during the appeals process showed notes and photographs of Ludlam's body to pathologists who unanimously concluded that she could not have been dead for longer than three days. In spite of this, the appeal courts upheld Felker's conviction. Felker received a stay of execution in June, 1996, when his case became a test of the provisions of the 1996 Anti-Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act that limited federal habeas appeals. The Supreme Court accepted the Act's limitation on such appeals. Another execution date was not set until after the 1996 Olympic Games in Atlanta, which had brought international attention to the state's death-penalty record. Felker received another stay in September, 1996, minutes before he was to be electrocuted and after he had been shaved for the electrodes, and just after several boxes of evidence concerning the murder of Joy Ludlum were discovered in the offices of the district attorney and sheriff responsible for the case. Under Georgia's Open Records Act, the evidence should have been made available years earlier to the defense attorneys representing Felker in his post-conviction appeals. The September stay was only for forty days, prompting one of his attorneys to state, "There are numerous possible leads which we have had no time to investigate. The stack of new paperwork is more than two feet thick." The boxes contained a signed confession from another suspect in the crime. Forensic samples from Joy Ludlum's body and from the crime scene, which might have proven Felker innocent if they had been subjected to DNA testing, were also among this previously withheld evidence. Michael Bowers, Georgia's attorney general, denied the possibility that anyone on death row was innocent. When asked about Felker, Bowers said, "I've talked to the cops who investigated him, and I asked them, 'Guys, is there any doubt about his guilt?' And they told me, 'Bullshit.'" Felker's final appeal to the Georgia Supreme Court drew a strong dissent from Presiding Judge Norman Fletcher, who condemned the prosecution's behavior and said that the state had "repeatedly misrepresented its entire file." According to the opinion, the district attorney in charge of the case had even denied under oath that the new evidence existed, and "the State's repeated failure to comply with well-settled constitutional principles deprived Felker of a fair trial." A final stay of execution was granted by the Supreme Court on November 14, 1996, again minutes before the scheduled execution and after Felker had been shaved for the electrodes. The unanimous decision denying the appeal was issued late the next day because the judges had had a long, "leisurely" lunch. The seven-minute electrocution was conducted a few hours later.
None of which has anything to do with the article.
#2. To: bush_is_a_moonie (#1)
No place is better than Turtle Island.
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