Death Row Briton hopes for freedom

Death Row Briton hopes for freedom

Press Association
Saturday January 27, 2007 7:23 AM

Kenny Richey has started his 21st year on Death Row, with the belief that he will either be executed or back home a free man by the summer.

The 42-year-old from Edinburgh has always protested his innocence over his conviction in Ohio two decades ago for an arson attack which claimed the life of a toddler.

Judges in Cincinnati have been considering this week whether evidence that emerged after his murder trial should be re-examined.

Speaking from jail at Mansfield, Ohio, Richey told Scottish TV's Scotland Today: "I believe I'll be home this year. Hoping by August.

"I miss just walking around the streets. That's one of the things I think I'll do when I get out. Go on a long walk around Edinburgh."

Richey was 18 when he left his mother's home in the Scottish capital to live with his American father in Ohio, where he joined the US Marines.

In July 1986 he was arrested for the murder of two-year-old Cynthia Collins, who died in a fire at her mother's apartment.

The prosecution claims he started the fire because his estranged former girlfriend and her new lover - supposedly the intended targets - lived in the flat beneath.

Protesting his innocence, Richey refused a plea bargain which would have led to an 11-year sentence for arson and manslaughter.

He was philosophical about starting his third decade on death row. "It's just another day," he said. "Every day is just another day. It shouldn't have gone on this long but it has. It's the American way of life, I guess."

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