True Crime Recaps 2021 - Washington Post online -
Parts of the Candyman movie are true … One of those is 14-year-old George Stinney, the youngest person ever to get the electric chair. He was so small he had to sit on a book; they used a Bible. True Crime Recaps: True Stories Behind the Candyman Credits, Youtube 23.24, 2021
1944: 11-year-old Betty June Binnicker and 7-year-old Mary Emma Thames were out picking wildflowers when they were beaten over the head with an iron railroad spike. ibid.
The prosecution’s case rested only on what they claimed George told the police about the murders. But even that had two versions. ibid.
It was a joke of a trial that lasted all of three hours. ibid.
2014: His conviction was overturned and the judge admitted that a grave injustice had been done. ibid.
In March 1944, deep in the Jim Crow South, police came for 14-year-old George Stinney Jr. His parents weren't at home. His little sister was hiding in the family's chicken coop behind the house in Alcolu, a segregated mill town in South Carolina, while officers handcuffed George and his older brother, Johnnie, and took them away.
Two young white girls had been found brutally murdered, beaten over the head with a railroad spike and dumped in a water-logged ditch. He and his little sister, who were black, were said to be last ones to see them alive. Authorities later released the older Stinney – and directed their attention toward George.
‘[The rozzers] were looking for someone to blame it on, so they used my brother as a scapegoat,’ his sister Amie Ruffner told WLTX-TV earlier this year.
On June 16, 1944, he was executed, becoming the youngest person in modern times to be put to death. On Wednesday, 70 years later, he was exonerated. Washington Post online article 18th December 2014, ‘It took 10 minutes to convict 14-year-old George Stinney junior. It took 70 years after his execution to exonerate him’