A 14-year-old black boy who was executed for the murder of two white girls in America's Deep South could be retried posthumously nearly 70 years after his death.

George Stinney was strapped to an electric chair in South Carolina in 1944 and was the youngest person to be put to death in the US over the past century.

He was accused of killing two girls, aged seven and 11, who were looking for wildflowers in the segregated town of Alcolu. The teenager reportedly confessed and was convicted by an all-white jury in a trial lasting less than a day.

There were no lengthy appeals and he was electrocuted 84 days after the crime took place. According to reports from execution witnesses the straps used to bind him to the electric chair were too big to fit around his frame. He weighed less than 45kg.