The four attorneys who represented George Julius Stinney Jr. and his family for several years as the family attempted to get the boy's conviction overturned said Wednesday they are elated with a judge's decision finally doing so.
Ray Chandler, Matt Burgess and Steve McKenzie joined with Charleston School of Law professor Miller Shealy last year in filing for a writ of coram nobis, a rare legal doctrine that allows a court to overturn a conviction when no other legal remedy exists.
Circuit Court Judge Carmen T. Mullen granted that remedy Wednesday, vacating a 70-year-old conviction that led South Carolina to execute the youngest person in the 20th century. Stinney was electrocuted in June 1944 for the murder of Betty June Binnicker, 11, and Mary Emma Thames, 7.
"The writ of coram nobis is quite rare; I'd say you might see it once every 30 to 40 years," Chandler said. "But we just didn't see where other statutes gave us as much of a chance. The other statute we'd have brought this under, the rule is very restrictive and it's set so that they're only a few exceptions that things can be regurgitated in the system, reexamined in the system or overturned by the system."
Chandler said they initially brought the case under a statute asking for a new trial.
"I felt, however, that we were stretching the tolerance of that rule," he said. "It would have been very easy then for someone looking at it from an intellectual standpoint to say, 'Y'all have a great set of facts. And this is an unjust decision and result. However, we cannot place it within the parameters of that rule.'"
Both Chandler and McKenzie approached separate law professors. McKenzie called in Shealy.
"He is just a brilliant professor, and he's really the one who guided the coram nobis issue," Chandler said. "We decided that was the argument we should rely on, and we brought both of them in the alternative. That is to say, we didn't choose one or the other. We brought them both. We figured, if we had to go down a dark hall, we'd rather have a shotgun than a rifle. The shotgun was the coram nobis."
Chandler said - and Mullen noted in her decision - that a writ of coram nobis is considered only when you have exceptional circumstances in a case, and when there is some error of fact that may not have been known at the time of the trial by any of the parties.
"We needed something to present to a judge where they could find a reason compelling enough to reach back and examine 70-year-old facts which had virtually expired from the face of the earth," Chandler said.
Mullen said in her decision that very little existed of the trial record. Indeed, she opined that no transcript from Stinney's three-hour trial may have ever been documented as his attorney filed no appeal.
"We had the burden of proof, showing beyond a preponderance of the evidence that there were exceptional circumstances, that this 14-year-old child was killed," Chandler said. "That's the reason we brought out the expert witness on his confession."
Chandler said that the entire time he has worked with the Stinney family, the thing he is told most by those who believe in the boy's guilt is that he confessed to the murders.
"That seems to be the panacea that keeps people from having a guilty conscience," Chandler said. "Our contention always has been that George Stinney could not confess to this murder, even if those words came out of his mouth. But that belief, 'Well, he confessed so he did it,' makes that which would normally be nauseating and repugnant somewhat palatable."
Chandler said Stinney was too young to confess, to which his expert witness testified in a two-day hearing before Mullen in January. That witness also told the court that Stinney, a young black boy, would have been easily coerced with a group of white men and with no adult from his life present in the room during interrogation.
"Other than that he could not have confessed, even if he did say the words, we were working from the standpoint, from the theory that there are things that should have been done by his defense lawyer that weren't done," Chandler said. "Therefore, we're placing our finger clearly on the failure of the defense to be proactive in this case. That confession is something his attorney could have looked at. But here we are 70 years later dealing with this."
Chandler said Mullen's decision was "exhilarating."
"I was exhilarated to give his family the opportunity to be heard under oath in a courtroom in South Carolina, something they didn't get 70 years ago," Chandler said. "Now I feel elated because George Stinney's case has been heard. He has been exonerated."
Chandler said should 3rd Circuit Solicitor Ernest "Chip" Finney III choose to appeal Mullen's decision he is "absolutely" ready to go to court once again.
"We are prepared should he appeal it," Chandler said.
