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Aime Ruffner recalled helping her 14-year-old brother, George Stinney Jr., graze the family cow one day in March 1944 in the tiny South Carolina town of Alcolu, deep in the Jim Crow South.
Ruffner, then 8 years old, testified at a court hearing in January that two young white girls approached the black siblings and asked where to find the best "may pops," the fruit of a purple passionflower. Ruffner told them she didn't know.
"Then they left and went about their business, and we went home," Ruffner testified.
The next day, March 24, 1944, George was arrested and charged with murdering Betty June Binnicker, 11, and Mary Emma Thames, 7. They were found in a ditch, their skulls crushed. At his trial investigators testified that the girls were beaten with a 12-inch drift pin, a piece of metal that hitches railroad cars together.
Exactly a month later, on April 24, he was convicted by an all-white jury. On June 16, he died by electrocution -- the youngest defendant executed in the United States in the 20th century.
Seventy years later, George's conviction was vacated by a South Carolina judge, who cited "fundamental, constitutional violations of due process."
His conviction and execution represent "a truly unfortunate episode in our history," Circuit Court Judge Carmen T. Mullen wrote. Her ruling Wednesday gave some comfort to Ruffner and two other surviving siblings, who have maintained for seven decades that George was at home...