Alexander McClay Williams

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Alexander McClay Williams (July 23, 1914 – June 8, 1931) was an African-American teenager wrongfully convicted and executed for the 1930 murder of 33-year-old Vida Robare, a matron of the Glen Mills reform school he attended, in Pennsylvania. Williams confessed to the murder during an interrogation in which neither a parent nor an attorney was present. The Commonwealth of Pennsylvania wrongfully executed Williams for Robare's murder in 1931 at age 16, making Williams the youngest person executed in Pennsylvania in the 20th century. Efforts to posthumously exonerate Williams began in 2015 when his attorney's grandson researched the case, generating renewed interest in its details, particularly in the fact that Williams' confession was likely coerced, that Williams' implication in the murder was likely racially motivated and inconsistent with the crime scene details, and that the real perpetrator of the murder may have been Robare's abusive ex-husband. In 2022, following a posthumous review...

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