On June 8, 1931, Alexander McClay Williams, a 16-year-old Black student, was executed by electric chair, the youngest person to be put to death in Pennsylvania history. Months earlier, Alexander had been convicted of murdering a 34-year-old white woman, Vida Robare, a matron at the reform school outside Philadelphia that Williams attended. There were no witnesses to the murder, and evidence that might have cleared Alexander was kept from the jury by prosecutors. For almost four decades, Sam Lemon, a great-grandson of William Ridley, Alexander’s lawyer, worked to reveal that Williams had not committed the crime, and was the victim of gross prosecutorial misconduct by Delaware County, Pa.A judge overturned the conviction in 2022 and granted a motion for a retrial. Jack Stollsteimer, the Delaware County district attorney, moved to dismiss the charges posthumously, acknowledging yet another example of a Black person being wrongfully convicted of a crime they hadn’t committed.

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Persons: Alexander McClay Williams, Alexander, Vida Robare, Williams, Sam Lemon, William Ridley, Jack Stollsteimer Locations: Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Delaware County, Pa