Death row Scot continues fight

Kenny Richey has been on death row for almost two decades

A Briton is about to begin his 18th year on death row despite having a "compelling" case of innocence, human rights campaigners have said.

Kenny Richey said he was being driven "crazy" by the tortuous wait to be put to death in the US.

Richey could have escaped the death sentence, and may even now be free if he had confessed to killing a two-year-old girl in an arson attack in 1986.

But the 39-year-old continues to go through the lengthy appeals system.

His case has won support from the European Parliament, a host of celebrities and the Pope.

Speaking from prison by telephone, Richey said: "I'm on my last appeal. The decision will come through any day.

"I have been waiting eight months.

"It drives me nuts. It's driving me crazy. I want the decision now. I don't want to wait. They've had me waiting eight months already.

Quite simply, Kenny's case is one of the most compelling cases of apparent innocence that human rights campaigners have ever come across Kate Allen Amnesty International

"They can take months or even years on end and there's no sense to it.

"It's constantly on my mind. Every morning I think 'maybe today I'll hear something'."

He said he was "hopeful" that a forthcoming visit by Amnesty could help.

"We have enough evidence that proves my innocence. But the courts don't care. Once you're convicted, that's it.

"You could have someone come forward and admit that they set the place on fire, but you've already been convicted, so that's it."

Richey, who is on death row in Ohio, has already had a string of appeals rejected.

Nine years ago he came within an hour of going to the electric chair before he was granted a stay.

He had said his last goodbyes to his mother and family and his head had been shaved, ready for electrocution.

Trapped in bedroom

During his time in jail, Richey married a Scottish woman, Karen, who has become a leading campaigner.

She said: "Without doubt Kenny Richey's conviction and death sentence are a travesty of justice.

"The fact that after 17 years on death row awaiting execution he is prepared to die an innocent man rather than live as a convicted killer, surely emphasises the principled nature of his earlier decision to refuse a plea-bargain to save his life."

Richey, who grew up in Edinburgh, went to Ohio in the 1980s to stay with his father.

On the evening of 29 June, 1986, he had been at a neighbourhood party, celebrating the fact that he was about to return home and take up a job as a nightclub doorman.

Kenny Richey faces death by lethal injection

Richey got drunk and stumbled off. Some time later a fire broke out at a nearby apartment block.

Two-year-old Cynthia Collins was trapped in her bedroom and died from smoke inhalation.

Richey was arrested and convicted of using petrol and paint thinner to start the fire.

The court was told that Richey started the fire out of jealousy, in a bid to kill a former girlfriend, who was asleep with her new boyfriend in the apartment below the one that burned.

During the three-day trial Richey twice rejected plea-bargain deals which would have spared his life if he had admitted to starting the fire.

One of the deals would have allowed him to serve just 10 years, with the possibility of parole after six.

In 1997 two witnesses who had claimed that Richey had previously threatened to burn down the apartment retracted their statements.

And new forensic evidence, the subject of the latest appeal, casts doubt on whether the fire was started deliberately at all.

By his own admission Richey was violent, often drunk and suffered from bouts of depression as a young man.

He had convictions for minor offences and served a jail term for assault.

But he denied that his errant ways made him a killer.

Issuing a "fresh call for justice", Amnesty International's UK Director, Kate Allen, said: "We don't believe that anyone should be sent to the living hell of death row, but Kenny Richey's 17 year ordeal comes after a flawed trial and serious concerns about the Ohio justice system.

"Quite simply, Kenny's case is one of the most compelling cases of apparent innocence that human rights campaigners have ever come across."