George Junius Stinney Jr. (October 21, 1929 – June 16, 1944) was a boy who, at the age of 14, was convicted and then executed in a proceeding later vacated as an unfair trial for the murders of two young white girls in March 1944 – Betty June Binnicker, age 11, and Mary Emma Thames, age 8 – in his hometown of Alcolu, South Carolina. He was convicted, sentenced to death, and executed by electric chair in June 1944, thus becoming the youngest American with an exact birth date confirmed to be both sentenced to death and executed in the 20th century. [3] A re-examination of Stinney's case began in 2004, and several individuals and the Northeastern University School of Law sought a judicial review. Stinney's murder conviction was vacated in 2014, seventy years after he was executed, with a South Carolina court ruling that he had not received a fair trial, and was thus …show more content…
George Burke Jr. died two to three years after the murders of the two girls, in 1947, at age 29. Stinney's mother had worked for the Burke family for a brief period. Stinney's sister recalled that her mother had once come home, saying that Burke Sr. had made advances to her, and their father had told their mother to no longer go back. Stinney's sister claimed to have heard that the Burke boys had framed Stinney because "[their] mother didn't want to give it up." Burke Sr. conducted an initial search for the girls and was the owner of the territory behind Greenhill Baptist Church where the girls' bodies were found. He was also the foreman of the grand jury that indicted Stinney, and has been accused of helping steer the blame off of his son and onto Stinney. Two elderly women in Alcolu recalled that Burke Jr. was known as a womanizer for committing theft and getting away with it. [