Staff reports | Students in a new clinical externship program at the Charleston School of Law will assist in the filing of a civil rights case for redress of wrongs done in 1944 to George Stinney Jr., a 14-year-old Clarendon County resident pictured above who was executed for murder without an appeal that year.
“The George Stinney case is back,” Charleston School of Law President Ed Bell said this morning at a press conference. Nothing can bring back George Stinney Jr., but we can use the civil court process to try to get justice for his family.
“A big lesson we try to provide students at the law school is that they need to give back to the community — and righting this wrong through the legal process will be a great learning experience as well as being the right thing to do,” said Bell, who added that his Georgetown law firm said would file the case with the help of the students.
This month, the school started a clinical externship program to allow students to practice law under the tutelage of a professor and licensed, practicing attorneys. Seventeen students are enrolled in the course, which will provide a real-world involvement in the practice of law in an array of cases, including medical malpractice, automobile accidents and cases of post-conviction relief and civil rights.
“Our students will work with Bell Legal Group to develop the causes of civil actions in filing a civil rights case on behalf of George Stinney Jr. and his family,” said Charleston School of Law Professor Miller Shealy, who is leading the new program. “This will be an action arising out of the wrongful treatment, conviction and execution of a 14-year-old boy in 1944 — a conviction vacated by a state circuit court judge in 2014 who found there were constitutional violations during the murder trial.
On March 23, 1944, two white girls, ages 7 and 11, were killed in the small Clarendon County town of Alcolu. Stinney was convicted April 24 after a jury deliberated 10 minutes. Despite pleas from citizens for a pardon for Stinney, he was executed on June 16, 1944, which Shealy said made him the youngest person in the 20th century to be convicted and sentenced to death in the United States. Seventy years later, S.C. Circuit Judge Carmen T. Mullen vacated the conviction after ruling there were constitutional violations during the original trial.
We Can Do Better, South Carolina!