A Cold Case Of Non Crime But Punishment Victim Exonerated:

George Stinney, 14, Executed In Vile Act Of Injustice, Exonerated 70s Years Late
Been following this story since yesterday,and it does echoes in today's sociaty with State murder of Black people,it not about no gatdamn hoodie ,or saggy pants,do rags,being loud or non of that nonsense some people use to justify state murder it is long standing and cuts across space and time, fashion sense and youth culture , the non trial of state officials aka cops not to mention acquittal if such cases did make it to trial.
George Stinney Gets Day In Court 70 Years After Teen Was Executed For Killing White Girls

By JEFFREY COLLINS, ASSOCIATED PRESS

SUMTER, S.C. (AP) — Lawyers finally got the chance to argue on behalf of George Stinney, 70 years after the 14-year-old black boy was sent to the electric chair for killing two white girls in South Carolina.

Whether his conviction from that segregation-era court is tossed out is now up to Judge Cameron Mullen after a two-day hearing concluded Wednesday. She gave both sides at least 10 more days to consult witnesses and make more arguments.


The hearing at least gave Stinney something he was denied in 1944 — his day in court. His white lawyer back then called no witnesses and did no cross-examination. He normally handled civil cases and was running to be a legislator at a time when almost all voters were white. The boy was likely the only black face in the courthouse.

At this week's hearing, Stinney's two sisters and brother testified, remembering a young man who liked to draw and walked the family cow to a field near the railroad tracks. They also recalled their fear of white men in uniforms and strange looking cars who came and took the teen and his brother away. Stinney's older brother, Johnny, was let go after George confessed. But he almost never talked about it again. The rest of the family didn't see the teen again until his funeral, when Stinney's body, burned from the electric chair, was put in an open casket.

www.huffingtonpost.com...
For those who need text^

yea that reallys messed up. Although it would seem like the right thing to do today to give the boy a little bit of justice, the timing to revisit this vague ancient incident seems almost planned perfectly for the current social atmosphere in the country to continue the enduring rabid frothing of the mouth current civil unrest is having on the streets of our country.

I think its a good moment to step back and breathe, acknowledge the wrongdoing here, and take the time to remember the progress we have made, and the progress we have yet to achieve.

a reply to: Spider879

Personally I think it's a bit of a stretch to use something from a time of unabashed racism, segregation, and a time when people would straight up say "it's because he's black" as a parallel for today.

I see what you're trying to connect here, I just don't see that it necessarily works. Progress has been made. Is it enough progress? No. But there has been progress.

a reply to: Spider879

Remembering ones history, being aware of historical cultural contexts which play into current, present day events, is crucial in my estimation, and the history of justice in the developed world is just one of the many, many factors which play into the way this modern world works. To go about ones life without being capable of understanding the importance of historical awareness, is to go about with ones eyes closed while crossing the road. Simply put, the future is going to be an echo of today, the things we do today will live in the memory. This has never been more certain than it is today, with the advent of social media and the instantaneous sharing of data across the internet, and the mobile networks.

The things which happened in yesteryear though, while they were horrifying, immediately terrifying and terrible for those caught up in them, serve us in the present as warnings. We have hindsight to guide us, we know, because of what has been before, what must never be allowed to happen again. We know from the example of incidents like this, from the example of the second world war, from countless historical accounts of genocide and discrimination across the world, that there is a right way, and a wrong way to do things, whether we are talking about in a court of law, or out in the world, on the street.

We have the facts, we know the truth, for it is writ large beside the names and deeds of our ancestors. This is as true for the people of any nation, as it is for those living in the United States, and more specifically, South Carolina in this particular case. No matter where one lives, one has a duty to ones nation, to ones society, to ones friends, neighbours and families, and to ones self, to live aware of the pitfalls which have been stumbled into in the past, the better to avoid them in the future, and the better to serve the people of the future as an example of how a society could be, and should be.

When each of us lies cold and dusty in our graves, or scattered throughout the atmosphere as mere motes of carbonised flesh and bone in the wind, I would hope that the people of the future can look back on us with respect and fondness, that our generations, alive today on this world, can come together and bind the future to a path of equality, peace, and respect between all peoples. However, this cannot come to pass when unarmed people are shot in the street by police, and it cannot happen while war is fought for money, and it cannot happen while those who are without, are scorned and victimised by those who have much. I would hope that we can banish these diseases from our species, greed, hate for its own sake, ignorance. But it will take effort, it will take determination, and it will take honesty, and those are hard commodities to find in this day and age.

Still, there is, and always must be hope, for without it, we are surely lost.

a reply to: TrueBrit

TrueBrit I wished I had the ability to give you a thousand stars, man that was deep.
Nuff Respect

originally posted by: Shamrock6
a reply to: Spider879

Personally I think it's a bit of a stretch to use something from a time of unabashed racism, segregation, and a time when people would straight up say "it's because he's black" as a parallel for today.

I see what you're trying to connect here, I just don't see that it necessarily works. Progress has been made. Is it enough progress? No. But there has been progress.

I am thinking of the recent cases of non trials and purposely botched cases involving LOE the system that keep putting Black males in jail or killing them on a oops ! sentences far in excess of what is doled out to others,yes progress have been made but if I look over the long period from then until now it is painfully slow .

a reply to: Spider879

Understood. That comment did actually help me understand your point better and I see what you mean now. Thanks

a reply to: TrueBrit


Great speech. Now siarad of it in the context of your own country. Would it do any good or would it be fair to have that history dredged up and applied as an explanation of a current issue?

a reply to: Logarock

I see old lessons being forgotten in my own country all the time, and I think it is necessary that those lessons are continually blared from every speaker, displayed on every screen, shouted from every rooftop, every mountain, throughout every single valley and river basin, along every high street and in the halls of every block of flats, and every town council.

For example, we already know the dangers of allowing the poor to become scapegoats and whipping boys for the elite, lessons that the industrial revolution and the poorhouses taught subsequent generations very well, and yet it seems that once again our government is looking at ways to stiff the neediest people in our country. My generation are looking at never being able to retire, never being able to own their own home, never being able to change a damned thing about their circumstances by their own machinations, and having to rely on fortune alone to see them through, despite the fact that many of us are hard at work trying to make a living.

My grandfather on my mothers side campaigned for the creation of the National Health Service and other welfare infrastructure, back in the days when television was still black and white. He did that because he had learned those lessons, and right now, the government of my nation is trying to take advantage of how forgetful this country can be with regard to lessons already learned, by trying to sell the NHS out from under the people, by the back door, under the radar.

And every time the second world war comes up, we are prone to think of Winston Churchill, but we must never forget the example of Neville Chamberlain either, because it was his appeasement of Hitlers Nazi regime, and his unwillingness to put his foot down about Studetenland (which was a German-populated region of Czechoslovakia) which he signed over to the Germans in the Munich Agreement, which in turn emboldened Hitler to go ahead and take Poland. Had a more strident and less fearful man been at the head of British government at the time, then the Second World War might have been either averted, or been rendered a much shorter affair.

There are myriad lessons I learn and recall every day from the history of my nation. There are many lessons that I think many of my countrymen could sometimes do well to refresh for themselves more than they do, such is their ability to hate, to allow themselves to submit to their own greed, and their basest instincts on occasion.

I think it is right and fair that we look at our nations history honestly, with an even hand in determining the rights and wrongs of its actions, and that we examine that history to improve the narrative of the now, to ensure that at no point does any element of our present resemble the worst excesses of our past, to ensure that our futures glitter with all the promise that our pasts left unfulfilled. From my personal perspective, some of the lessons that history teaches us in general about our country can be applied to the larger things in life, like informing the way one interacts with ones fellow man, how one shows respect, how one treats the opposite sex for example.

But one also learns from ones personal history. I learned everything I needed to know about how NOT to be a man from my father. By making better, different, and better intentioned mistakes than he did, I have lived a more fulfilling, and emotionally connected life than he could ever have hoped to, had become by mid way through adolescence far better a man than he ever was or will be.

There is a great deal to be said from learning from past mistakes, and an even greater deal to be said about learning how to learn from the mistakes of those whose errors are matters of historical record. It makes for a much easier experience of life.

a reply to: TrueBrit

Ok but more directly to racism do you guys still have the Welsh up your arse every time an Englishman looks at them sideways? Are Welsh or Irish able to make claims of traditional race issues at any given time someone may have a problem with their behavior or position ect?

a reply to: Logarock

To be honest, it really depends where exactly one happens to be. There are some areas of rural Wales, where it would be ill advised for an Englishman to purchase property. There have been for a great many years, areas of Ireland which it is not a good idea to visit, if one happens to be staunchly British. Welsh folk in some English towns are often referred to as being left handed sheep stealers, or it is implied in their earshot that they molest sheep. It is not common in some of the more enlightened locations, but it is far from unheard of!

a reply to: TrueBrit

You will love this then.

There is a woman that works down the road here. One day I asked her if she was Irish because she bore the strong look of certain Irish folks. You would know the look. Anyway she asked me how I knew that and started conversing in Irish. I told her how I knew, we talked. She said she had been back over there a few times, her grandparents were from there but she was born here.

Anyway she said they were from Donegal mountains area and made the point of telling me that here people had never surrendered to the English. lol. And said it with snap. And she is a 3rd generation american still talking like this.

a reply to: Logarock

And so you can easily see how important and culturally relevant past events are, to persons living in the here and now! This woman of whom you spoke in your last post, is living proof that the past lives in the present, and that its effects reach forward in time. The crucial thing about that is that it cuts both ways. A past full of horrors and terrors can provide angst and fuel for the fires of rage and misplaced feelings of anger toward a group or a concept, simply because of ones historical connection to negative actions carried out by members of that group, or advocates of that concept. But at the very same time, one can use the horrors of the past to understand a way to gain a better present, and a better future for ones progeny.

Put it this way... If there had never been a Roman occupation of Britain, then I am pretty certain that Britain's rulers would never have started Empire building later in our history. I do not think that pre-Roman occupation Britons cared much for conquest of that sort. From what I understand of the historical and archeological finds that have been made in this country over the years, Britons were mostly interested in protecting their animals from predators, and rustlers from neighboring clans, and getting what they could from the land. They simply did not have the sort of inflated self opinion as a cultural and social group, necessary to unite together and deem themselves worthy of dominion over lands further afield.

It was only the domination by the Romans, and the rallying cry of the Iceni tribe in response to the invaders ill behaviour, which bought the Britons together in unrest, and I believe paved the way for British dominion over a huge amount of territory, much later on. In a lot of ways, I wish that the lesson that the Britons had learned from the Romans, was that no matter how awful it is to be conquered, nearly any fate is better than taking on the mantle of your own oppressor, but alas, it was not to be.

Can you see what I mean, why I think that there are things about the past which ripple through the present, why I think it is important for us to be able to see these ripples and know their meaning for the future?

It's kinda funny that this comes out NOW... My first question when I initially read this piece, was WHO CARES? There has to be hundreds of people in prison NOW for crimes they didn't commit. Funny how no one seems to give a crap, unless it's racially motivated.

a reply to: TrueBrit

Very, very true. Come next year a couple of months before the election masses of people will collectively forget everything that has happened in the last four years. As for this post I find it abhorrent that a 14 year old was executed, but was he guilty? Was his brother guilty? Like Truebrit says learn lessons from the past. But and it's the biggest but in the world, after the event and after such a long period after there are different laws and different interpretations of laws that in the past would return a verdict of innocence yet the perpetrator would be guilty. The Jimmy Saville case is a prime example. At any moment in time (past and present) the sympathies of a jury can convict or acquit a person so providing an innocent verdict on a 70 year old case can be erroneous.

a reply to: crayzeed

the sympathies of a jury can convict or acquit a person so providing an innocent verdict on a 70 year old case can be erroneous.

Yes but here is the thing there was a death bed confession so no real need to well maybe maybe not, the problem is not that some unfortunate 14yrs old was murdered by the state,but the practice never stopped, there is no clear break with 1944 America's justice system and today 2014,I am willing to bet that many here would back or sought to justify a similar verdict if exactly the same case happened today, that kid would have his Fb page heavily scrutinized for any flaws or missteps he may had made,if he dressed like an idiot with his pants down to his ankles he is a thug!, irrelevant distractions about crimes members of his community committed by % would roll of many a lips or angrily typed out on a key board,no sense of empathy needed.

a reply to: Spider879

call me blind but no where in your source link did i see where a death bed confession was made. i've read it twice, gonna read it again to make sure.

who made the confession and when, and please provide a source.

ETA: never mind i watched the video and saw where he said it.

a reply to: crayzeed

Well, I hear what you say about the difference in the manner in which law is applied in differing periods in history, but I think it is fair to say that at no point during the proceeding against the young fellow who was executed for the crime, was any evidence put forward. The lad was convicted because he was accused, and not because any effort had been made to prove the case.

Regardless of the period in history in which an event comes to pass, the rights and wrongs of it do not change. It was always wrong to own and operate slave labour. It was always wrong to murder people wantonly, and without remorse, no matter what "race" they may have been a part of. It was never acceptable to hold dominion over people using force, instead of wisdom and compassion. And in the same way, it will always be wrong to convict an innocent person of murder, and compound that gross injustice by killing the convicted party, not to mention putting the body in an open casket to be viewed by his grieving family!

I think the key thing here is that there have been many laws which were unjust, and others still which did not go far enough to protect victims and prosecute the guilty. However, justice, unlike law, does not change. It has either been done, or has not, and the law either serves it, or fails to serve it. We can identify that no matter the law on a given issue, justice has not been done in this case, nor has it been done in many cases which have come to light in recent times. That is a common theme. The specifics of how those events have come to pass may differ, but the problem they pose to persons of sound morals, and those who have a respect for justice and a determination to see it done, is precisely the same.