The person who was hanged 91 years ago is innocent

She was sentenced to death for murder and hanged at the age of 16: 91 years later, a court in Pennsylvania in the eastern United States this week acquitted Alexander McLean Williams and gave justice to this African-American and the 92-year-old sister who remains.

“I’m glad it ended up the way it should have started,” teenager’s sister Susie Williams-Carter told The Philadelphia Inquirer on Thursday. “We know he’s innocent, and now everyone wants to know.”

“We cannot rewrite history. (…) But when justice is done by publicly acknowledging such wrongdoing, we must seize the opportunity, “said Delaware County Attorney Jack Stolsteimer.

After years of trial, the prosecutor spoke in a press release Monday in support of Alexander McLean Williams following the dismissal of the case by a county judge.

Recalling that the young man who was hanged on February 27, 1931 was the youngest boy to be executed in the history of this state, the lawyer said, “This decision is an acknowledgment that the charges against him should never have been.”

On October 3, 1930, the husband of Vita Roberre, the white leader of the Glen Mills School for Boys, a center for the prevention of juvenile delinquents, discovered his wife’s body and brutally murdered her. The closure of the establishment is reminiscent of a lawyer’s office.

Alexander McLean Williams, 16, who was soon convicted, was serving a prison sentence, signing three confessions “without the presence of witnesses or direct evidence” during the five hearings without the presence of a lawyer or relative. , Adds the same source.

His successor, William Ridley, County Barr’s first African-American, had no evidence to prepare for the trial and “the defendant faced a full white jury, which convicted him within four hours,” the prosecutor’s office continued.

Jack Stolsteimer pays tribute to the boy’s sister and the lawyer’s great-grandson for pointing out the “inconsistencies,” elements of the file that could have been ignored by the accused.

Prosecutors say the “bloody fingerprint of an adult male found near the door of the crime scene was photographed by police” but “not mentioned in the investigation”. Or the presence of another suspect, Vita Roberge’s ex-husband, who divorced her for “more cruelty”.