In 1931, an all-white jury took simply 4 hours to convict Alexander McClay Williams, a Black teenager, within the stabbing dying of a matron on the Glen Mills Faculty for Boys in Delaware County.

5 months later, Williams, 16, was executed, turning into the youngest particular person in Pennsylvania historical past to be put to dying. His household spent a long time making an attempt to show his innocence, and this week — with assist from the great-grandson of the lawyer who represented him at trial — Williams was posthumously vindicated.

A Delaware County decide overturned his conviction for against the law prosecutors now say he didn’t commit.

The ruling, handed down Monday in the identical courtroom the place Williams had been convicted 91 years in the past, was met with thunderous applause from his relations, together with his solely surviving sibling, Susie Williams-Carter.

“I’m simply blissful that it lastly turned out the way in which it ought to have to start with,” Williams-Carter, 92, advised The Inquirer. “We simply needed it overturned, as a result of we knew he was harmless, and now we would like everybody else to understand it, too.”

For Sam Lemon, it was a victory that additionally honored his great-grandfather, William Ridley, the county’s first Black legal professional, who was given simply $10 and some weeks to make a case that Williams didn’t kill Vida Robare, a white matron at Glen Mills who was discovered useless inside a cabin on the faculty. She had been stabbed 47 occasions with an ice decide, two of her ribs had been damaged, and her eye was fractured.

Robare’s ex-husband, who had a historical past of home violence towards her, referred to as police to report discovering her useless. He was the final particular person to be seen along with her, court docket data present, however was rapidly dominated out because the killer. Suspicion fell on Williams, a teen who had been despatched to Glen Mills after committing crimes that included setting a fireplace that destroyed a barn and prompted $25,000 in injury, and burglarizing a put up workplace on the age of 12.

Choose W. Roger Fronefield had sentenced Williams to an indeterminate keep at Glen Mills, a facility that Lemon mentioned was little greater than a jail for youngsters on the time. 4 years later, the identical decide would sentence Williams to dying in Robare’s homicide.

Lemon, now 70, spent many childhood summer time afternoons together with his grandmother, listening to tales about her father, Ridley, the lawyer. He turned fascinated by Williams’ case, a uncommon and troubling loss in his great-grandfather’s authorized profession.

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So about 30 years in the past, Lemon, a university administrator who lives in Media, started digging into the case and found proof that satisfied him Williams was not responsible. For one factor, he mentioned, prosecutors didn’t introduce key proof at trial, together with a person’s bloody handprint that was discovered on the scene. And Williams had been busy working elsewhere on the grounds on the time of Robare’s dying. To have dedicated the crime, Lemon mentioned, the teenager would have wanted “the supernatural capability to cease time,” assault the matron ,and return to his worksite.

Lemon found this and different particulars as he pored over historic data, together with a transcript of Williams’ quick trial in 1931. And he couldn’t assist however wonder if race performed an element within the jury’s resolution to convict Williams in just some hours.

“This was a stain on the court docket, a authorized lynching in a way, which is harsh factor to say, however that’s what it was,” Lemon mentioned. “Individuals are wanting no longer simply at traditional civil rights instances from the South, but in addition instances within the North the place race performed a consider these unjust sentences.”

About seven years in the past, he employed legal professional Robert Keller to assist him attempt to get the case overturned.

Final summer time, Keller and Lemon met with District Lawyer Jack Stollsteimer, hoping that he would possibly take an curiosity within the case. Stollsteimer agreed to have a look and browse the trial transcript throughout his summer time trip in Cape Might.

“It was simply an alignment of the celebs,” Lemon mentioned. “The correct time, proper place, and the correct change in politics in our county.” (Stollsteimer was the primary Democrat to be elected district legal professional in county historical past.)

Stollsteimer introduced the case to President Choose Kevin F. Kelly, who agreed to listen to a joint movement from Stollsteimer and Keller to have the case reopened.

In an interview Tuesday, Stollsteimer mentioned a number of facets of the prosecution troubled him. He cited “subversions of due course of rights,” together with what he referred to as a “browbeaten confession” that the teenager gave police after repeated interrogations with no lawyer or an grownup current.

It shocked Stollsteimer, he mentioned, that Williams was despatched to the electrical chair just some months after his conviction, with none enchantment filed by his legal professional.

“Within the prison justice system, we’re within the enterprise of creating individuals’s lives higher. That’s what we consider day by day after we come to work,” Stollsteimer mentioned. “However so long as people are concerned on this course of, there will likely be errors, so if we will establish points and proper these wrongs, it’s in our curiosity to try this.”

Throughout a listening to Monday, the legal professionals laid out three a long time of analysis and requested that the decide overturn Williams’ conviction.

They had been joined in that effort by Robare’s great-grandniece, Theresa Smithers, who had accomplished her personal analysis and who testified from her dwelling in Michigan that she believed Williams was not responsible.

“I do know that Alexander didn’t commit the homicide,” Smithers mentioned, calling the teenager a “useful scapegoat” for prosecutors on the time.

Kelly, on his last day as Delaware County’s president decide, concluded that proof withheld by prosecutors may have modified the result of the trial. He appeared notably troubled by the bloody handprint.

“Briefly, it seems with the imposition of his dying sentence, Mr. Williams was legally deserted by the court docket system and left to die by the hands of the state,” Kelly mentioned.

He granted the request for a retrial, and Stollsteimer instantly withdrew the costs.

In so doing, Lemon mentioned, the decide and prosecutor righted a mistaken that had wounded many individuals throughout a number of generations.

“It feels astonishing,” he mentioned. “It looks like an excellent weight has been lifted off my shoulders. I’m not resentful in any approach, however that was an enormous burden to hold for thus a few years.”