It’s been a year and a half since The State re-examined a 135-year-old crime that left a Lexington County teenager dead. But that look at the 1890 lynching of Willie Leaphart — broken down in a series of articles and a multi-part podcast — left the injustice of Leaphart’s death, and his criminal conviction for raping a young white woman, unresolved.
Now, the push to get Leaphart’s conviction overturned has gotten a boost.
Living relatives of the lynching victim have been identified, paving the way for his conviction to be challenged. Meanwhile, attorneys who took up the young man’s case have worked to determine if, by the standards of the time, his conviction has already been tossed out…