THE KENNY RICHEY CASE

Still in jail after he won his appeal!

Kenny, the son of an US serviceman and a Scottish mother, was accused of starting a fire which killed a two-year-old girl, Cynthia Collins, in Columbus Grove, Ohio, on June 30, 1986. After his trial in January 1987, Kenny was sentenced to death. As far as the US authorities, and even the Scottish public, were concerned, that should have been the end of the story. Certainly, Kenny would have been expected to appeal against the conviction, or at least the death sentence, and to plead for his life. But few Death Row inmates - and there are hundreds of them in Ohio alone - serenely accept their fate.

But thanks to campaigners who took up Kenny's cause, flaws in the case began to appear which have slowly unravelled the prosecution's arguments to the point where their theory of what happened that night in Ohio seems so far-fetched as to be ridiculous. Their story goes something like this: after a drunken party, Kenny was supposed to have decided he wanted to kill an ex-girlfriend and her new lover, who were asleep in the apartment below Cynthia. In order to do this, Kenny, who had his arm in plaster, is supposed to have broken into a nearby greenhouse, stolen some paint thinners, and climbed on top of a shed to get into Cynthia's home. Once inside, he is said to have splashed the paint thinners around, set fire to the apartment and disconnected the smoke detector, with the intention of killing the sleeping couple.

Yet no traces of paint thinners were found on his clothing and arson experts say the burn patterns were more consistent with an accidental fire, such as a discarded cigarette. Indeed, Cynthia had a history of starting fires, as a firefighter at the scene that night told me. Several witnesses also saw Kenny trying to get into the blazing apartment to rescue Cynthia, and he had to be restrained.

All this and much, much more convinced me that a serious miscarriage of justice had taken place in Putnam County, Ohio. The question was, why was it taking so long for the authorities to admit they had got it wrong? There are some vested interests, not least because the assistant prosecutor of the case, Randall Basinger, was running for judge at the time. On top of this, the appeals system for death penalty cases is notoriously slow, and this of course favours the guilty who can string out their existence for as long as possible before the needle of lethal injection pierces their veins. For the innocent, it prolongs the agony of waiting for justice, if indeed justice ever comes.

In January, it appeared that justice had finally arrived for Kenny. The 6th Circuit Court of Appeals overturned the conviction and ordered the state to set him free or retry him. His campaigners were jubilant: the evidence was so compelling that a retrial would be fruitless, they said. Unfortunately, it has been confirmed that the state will not free him without a fight, and a retrial has been ordered which may not take place until next year - 20 years after the "crime" which was no more than a tragic accident. There is no doubt in my mind that if Kenny finally gets a fair trial, and the evidence is heard, he will be freed. But it is clear now that there will never be any admission of culpability from the US authorities responsible for this miscarriage of justice.

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