Paul Finkelman, of the Albany School of Law, with Henry Lewis Gates, Jr., have done research that has resulted in the posthumous pardon of two black men, brothers, electrocuted for murder in South Carolina in 1913. The execution took place despite substantial white support for the two men, the kind of support which might have saved their lives (and often did save the lives of capital criminals in the Carolinas), were it not for scandalous details in the life of the victim, a Civil War veteran, local authorities wished to conceal.
The route to exoneration began with Gates’s revelation to talk radio host Tom Joyner that the executed men were Joyner’s great uncles. CNN has the story.
UPDATE. News coverage is exploding here and around the world:
The Independent (Dublin)
NBC Nightly News (video)
The Telegraph (UK)
MSNBC
Yahoo