Today’s Slight Yet Truly Morbid Fact!
Two-hundred and eight-two children (i.e., 17 years old or younger at the time of the crime) have been executed in America, including 10 females, according to Victor Streib, a professor of Law at Cleveland State University. As recently as 1944, a 14-year-old boy was executed in South Carolina. George Stinney, the 14-year-old black son of a sawmill worker, confessed to beating Betty Binnicker, 11, and Mary Thames, 8, to death with a railroad spike. The little white girls were picking flowers, and the older one apparently refused his sexual advances. Stinney’s lawyer – who was running for office – never filed an appeal. The Associated Press reported that “the guards had difficulty strapping the boy’s slight form into the wooden chair built for adults” and he was so small “it was difficult to attach the electrode to the right leg.” Stinney was the youngest person executed in this country during the 20th century.
Culled from: An Underground Education