Alexander McClay Williams was only 16 when the Black student was put to death in the electric chair after being convicted in Delaware County of murdering a 34-year-old white woman.
His conviction was overturned in 2022, writes Sopan Deb for The New York Times.
On Friday, Alexander’s family filed a federal lawsuit in the District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, naming Delaware County and the estates of the detectives and prosecutors in the original case.
The suit calls their conduct “outrageous, malicious, wanton, willful, reckless and intentionally designed to inflict harm.”
“They murdered my brother. That’s what they did,” Susie Carter, Alexander’s 94-year-old sister, said in a Monday interview..
Carter and two of Alexander’s nieces, Osceola Carter and Osceola Perdue, are listed as plaintiffs in the lawsuit.
Williams had been convicted of murdering Vida Robare, a matron at the Glen Mills School, a reform school Williams attended.
There were no witnesses to the murder, and evidence that could have cleared Williams was kept from the jury by prosecutors.
A judge overturned the conviction in 2022 and granted a retrial. Delaware County District Attorney Jack Stollsteimer opted to dismiss the charges posthumously, indicating it was another example of a Black person being wrongfully convicted.
Read more about the history of the Alexander McClay Williams conviction in The New York Times.
