Thursday, January 23, 2014

Never have truer words been spoken...

In 1944, in South Carolina, a fourteen year old black child had his life ended in this manner.
The youngest person to be executed in the US since the 19th century, the black teenager was a little over five feet tall, weighed 95lbs, and had to put a bible on the seat beneath him so that he could fit into the electric chair. His feet dangled some way above the floor.
He was executed 84 days after his trial ended. A trial which convicted him after lasting all of three hours and after an all-white jury determined after ten minutes he had bludgeoned two young white girls to death.

After all these years the young man's case, the case of George Stinney may be reopened, the scab removed after a seventy-year old lingering wound.

And now we come to a family member of the victims, who opposes reopening the case, but sums up attitudes towards past injustice in this country vividly.
Frankie Bailey Dyches said she believed Stinney had “got what he deserved” and that “justice was served, according to the laws in 1944”.
And that, apparently, is justice enough. Meanwhile, things stay pretty awesome for wealthier white guys.

[cross-posted at Firedoglake]

6 comments:

Montag said...

There were flagrant abuses of due process combined with a damning indifference of defense counsel. That alone ought to prompt a hearing for a new trial.

As for the comments from the family member, I suppose that blind faith in the state's presumed omniscience is not unexpected, given the skin colors involved. Had a white teenager been convicted and executed in such a haphazard manner for killing two black children, however, one can be sure that the recriminations would have been loud and long.

StonyPillow said...

We can trust A. Mitchell Holder to do right by BP and Halliburton.

Paragons of integritude all.

kingweasil said...

Badalamenti expressed remorse for causing "undue stress" on his relatives and friends.

"I am truly sorry for what I did," he said.
on another note,screw the people in the gulf

Anonymous said...

I saw the relatives, but forget where...oh, right, on the Lawrence O'Donnell show. Good lord, what's in the water there that makes people so vicious and ugly? At least Mississippi has an excuse, lame as it is: people there are dumber than rocks...dumber than dirt. South Carolinians are...evil.

Anonymous said...

What do you expect when a Supreme Court piece of sewage Scalia can arrogantly proclaim that being innocent is insufficient cause for a retrial, and be lauded as an "intellectual" instead of pelted with rotten vegetables and driven to living in a cave.

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