COLUMBIA, S.C. — Families of South Carolinians wrongfully executed by the state would be eligible to get $10 million under a state House Democrat's proposal.
The bill, filed by Rep. Cezar McKnight, a Williamsburg Democrat, would create the "George Stinney Fund," named after a 14-year-old Black child who was executed in 1944. Stinney was sentenced to death after a three-hour trial after two white girls were found murdered. The all-white jury deliberated for 10 minutes.
In 2014, decades after Stinney's death, he was exonerated posthumously. The circuit court judge's ruling said that "fundamental, Constitutional violations of due process exist in the 1944 prosecution of George Stinney, Jr."
McKnight, a lawyer, said he was inspired to pre-file the legislation while in court, when he saw a picture of the judge who oversaw Stinney's case and sentenced him to death, Judge Philip H. Stoll.
"As I sat there and looked at that picture where we're honoring a person who presided over a tragedy, I thought we have to do something," McKnight said.
McKnight said it's impossible to give Stinney's family and the families of others wrongfully executed justice because they can't bring back their family member from the dead.
"What the state can do would be atone for its wrongs," McKnight said.
McKnight's bill was filed as the state prepares to resume carrying out executions after a decadelong hiatus after the General Assembly passed legislation to resume executions earlier this year. Lawmkers often retold Stinney's story during debate over the measure, which made the electric chair the default method of execution and added a firing squad method to skirt a nationwide shortage of lethal injection drugs.
McKnight's bill would create a grant program under the South Carolina Department of Administration, where families of the wrongfully executed could apply to get paid. If their family member was exonerated by a court, like Stinney, the department must give the family of the wrongfully executed person $10 million dollars regardless of when the person was wrongfully executed, the bill said.
"It's time we do the right thing by the Stinney family and bring this chapter to a close," McKnight said.
