Death row Briton to face retrial
A Briton who has spent more than 20 years on death row in the US is to face a retrial.
Kenny Richey's conviction for murder over a fire which killed a two-year-old girl in Ohio was overturned last month.
The 43-year-old former US marine, who is originally from Edinburgh, has always protested his innocence.
A local prosecutor discussed the case with relatives of the victim before deciding that Richey should stand trial again, rather than be released.
'Dramatically weaker'
The Sixth Circuit Federal Court of Appeal in Cincinnati overturned Richey's death sentence for a second time on 10 August.
The Ohio attorney general had already indicated it would seek to retry Richey instead of challenging the decision in the US Supreme Court.
Ken Parsigian, Richey's lawyer, said the state will find it difficult to prove its case 21 years after the blaze in Columbus Grove, Ohio, which killed Cynthia Collins.
He added: "Their case has gotten dramatically weaker and ours has gotten dramatically stronger."
Richey was 18 when he left his mother's home in Edinburgh to live with his American father in Ohio.
In July 1986 he was arrested for the murder of Cynthia Collins, who died in a fire at her mother's apartment.
The prosecution claimed Richey started the blaze because his estranged former girlfriend and her new lover - supposedly the intended targets - lived in the flat beneath.
4 comments:
Wouldn't that be manslaughter?
James: I posted on this when it was announced that he had won his appeal.
"Protesting his innocence, Richey refused a plea bargain that would have led to an 11-year sentence for arson and manslaughter. Tried by a court that sat without a jury, he was found guilty and sentenced to death".
Link
Sent in a few postcards on this one over the years. If he had plea bargained he'd have been out in five or so. Seems very odd indeed to go from that to years and years on death row with little or no proof of anything whatsoever. Arson perhaps.
Chris: I think it is an injustice to put him on trial again. One of the dangers of the prosecution visiting the victims relatives to ask for their opinions as to his fate.
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