The niece of 11-year-old Betty June Binnicker said Wednesday evening that a Circuit Court judge who decided to vacate the girl's alleged killer's conviction took "the easy way out."
In an order signed Tuesday and recorded Wednesday with the Clarendon County Clerk of Court, Judge Carmen T. Mullen said the murder conviction and subsequent death sentence handed down in 1944 to George Julius Stinney Jr. violated his right to due process and other Constitutional rights. Attorney Matt Burgess says the decision essentially exonerates the boy, who was 14 when he was executed just 88 days after his arrest.
"I think that it's a travesty because now she's opened up a Pandora's box," said Frankie Bailey Dyches, whose mother was Betty June Binnicker's little sister. Betty June, 11, and Mary Emma Thames, 7, were killed in March 1944, and authorities later arrested Stinney for the murder. Authorities later presented a confession at Stinney's trial, which lasted three hours and was heard before an all-white jury, Mullen noted in her decision.
Dyches said her mother didn't dwell on the case.
"We all knew that Betty June was murdered, how she was murdered and who murdered her; we kids grew up with that," Dyches said. "And over the years, somehow the arresting officer found out who I was. He came to me and told me, 'Don't ever doubt that boy killed your aunt.' He said not one link in that whole chain of events was broken, from the time Gov. Johnson called him to go and investigate that case until (Stinney) was electrocuted. He said it was a clear-cut case."
Dyches pointed to Stinney's confession as a sign of the boy's guilt.
"He confessed, but not only that, he took him to the place where he had thrown the iron spike ... He retrieved it and brought it to (the arresting officer). Who else would have known where it was?" Dyches said.
Though Mullen said in her decision that issues like the Stinney case would need to be handled on a case-by-case basis using the legal remedy she allowed, Dyches thinks the decision will allow for too many convictions to be overturned.
"This whole thing is about wrongful death," Mullen said "They're upset that he was executed at such a young age. That's how the law worked then. And I hear they're already in the works to sue the state for wrongful death. And that will cost the state who knows how many dollars."
