In June of 1944, George Stinney Jr. was convicted of the first-degree murder of 11-year-old Betty June Binnicker, and 8-year-old Mary Emma Thames. The bodies of the girls were found in a ditch filled with muddy water in Alcolu, South Carolina. Both had suffered severe head wounds.

Stinney was executed in the electric chair at the South Carolina State Penitentiary in Columbia, on June 16, 1944. He was 14 years old at the time, the youngest person executed in the United States in the 20th century.

No physical evidence connected Stinney to the crime. The only evidence against him was the fact that he and his sister had spoken to the girls shortly before their murder, and the testimony of three white police officers, who testified at the two- hour trial that Stinney had confessed to the murders.

The jury at Stinney’s trial was all white; no African-Americans were allowed in the courtroom. The trial lasted two-and-a-half hours. The jury took ten minutes to deliberate before returning with a guilty verdict.

Lawyers working on behalf of Stinney’s family for another trial have gathered new evidence, including sworn statements from his relatives accounting for George’s whereabouts the day the girls were killed and from a pathologist disputing the autopsy findings. They also claim to have a deathbed confession from the perpetrator, who is now deceased. Today, they are presenting that evidence to a South Carolina circuit court judge.

However, experts say a new trial is unlikely. South Carolina law has a high bar to grant new trials, something they obviously should have had when it came to convictions 70 years ago. Also, African-American defendants were often found guilty in the South during segregation with little evidence to support a conviction. If the judge finds in favor of Stinney, it could open the door for hundreds of other appeals.

Stinney’s supporters say that if the motion for a new trial fails, they will ask the state to pardon him.