Judge: 1944 execution of black boy, 14, was wrong

South Carolina Department of Archives and History / AP

This undated file photo provided by the South Carolina Department of Archives and History shows George Stinney Jr., the youngest person ever executed in South Carolina, in 1944.

By Jeffrey Collins, Associated Press

Wednesday, Dec. 17, 2014 | 10:37 a.m.

COLUMBIA, S.C. — A judge has overturned the murder conviction of a 14-year-old black boy who was executed in 1944 in the deaths of two white girls in segregated South Carolina.

Circuit Judge Carmen Mullen ruled the state did a great injustice when it put George Stinney in the electric chair less than two months after he was convicted and just 12 weeks after he was arrested.

Mullen heard testimony in the 70-year-old case in January, but most of the evidence from the original trial was gone. Mullen says Stinney got an unfair trial and it was impossible to determine the boy's guilt or innocence.

She was careful to say her ruling doesn't apply to other families who felt their relatives were discriminated against by a Jim Crow justice system ran by whites.