Family of Black teen wrongly executed in 1931 seeks damages after 2022 exoneration

PHILADELPHIA — The family of the youngest person ever executed in the state of Pennsylvania — a Black 16-year-old sent to the electric chair in 1931 and exonerated by the governor in 2022 — is suing the county that prosecuted him. “They murdered him,” Susie Williams Carter, 94, of Chester, the last surviving sibling in the family of 13 children, said at a press conference Monday. “This tragedy haunted the family, haunted the parents, haunted Susie, haunted William Ridley and his family,” said Philadelphia lawyer Joseph Marrone, who filed the federal lawsuit on Friday against Delaware County and the estates of two detectives and a prosecutor who had pursued the case. Tom Wolf apologized on behalf of Pennsylvania when he exonerated Williams, and called his execution “an egregious miscarriage of justice.” District Attorney Jack Stollsteimer said the teen’s constitutional rights had been violated, and a Delaware County judge vacated the conviction. It doesn’t stop.” The Williams family, Marrone said, has the same right to pursue damages as more recent exonerees, nine of whom, all Black men, joined the family at the podium Monday.