On June 16, 1944, Stinney was executed in South Carolina. He was only 14 years old and weighed just 95 pounds.  He was so small that he had to sit on a phone book to fit in the electric chair.

Stinney was sentenced to die three months after he was convicted for the bludgeoning murder of two white girls in the community.  Police, at the time, said he gave an oral confession but did not produce written records of his confession.

In an interview, Stinney's former cellmate told reporters that all throughout their time together, Stinney always said he never killed the girls and never confessed to any murder.

The boy's trial only lasted three hours and the all white jury deliberated for only 10 minutes before finding him guilty, despite the fact that there was no physical evidence linking Stinney to the murders, and his sister and family said he was with them at the time the killing took place.

Stinney's defense did not call any witnesses and did not cross-examine.

According to reports, a judge agreed to reopen the case in January because the State handled the original trial so badly, and to give a 14 year old the death penalty, although it was the legal age of criminal responsibility at the time, was cruel.

Circuit Judge Carmen Tevis Mullen was the Judge who tossed out Stinney's original conviction.

"Given the particularized circumstances of Stinney's case, I find by a preponderance of the evidence standard, that a violation of the Defendant's procedural due process rights tainted his prosecution," she said.

Although it comes seven decades too late, Stinney's name has finally been cleared.

The state, on the other hand, said Attorney Miller Shealy, who represented Stinney post-mortem at the new trial, "had very unclean hands."