Death row Briton to face retrial

Kenny Richey left Scotland for the US when he was 18

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.

The Sixth Circuit Federal Court of Appeal in Cincinnati overturned Richey's death sentence for a second time on 10 August.

'Dramatically weaker'

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 would 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."

Independent Lothians MSP Margo MacDonald, who has campaigned on Richey's behalf for many years, said she was "nervous" about Ohio's legal process.

She added: "I'm particularly aware of the very suspect nature of the forensic evidence that convicted Kenny.

"If the procedure followed and the tests used at the time are found to have been woefully inadequate, even according to the standards of the time, that would apply to all services from the department of the Ohio justice system that operated that particular part of the process.

"I think that most people could then see how the decisions of that whole era could be called into question, not just Kenny's case. That and the death or disappearance of witnesses does I think make for more uncertainty than I would like."

From our reading of the evidence it is hard to see how they could have a case against him John Watson Amnesty International

John Watson, Amnesty International's programme director for Scotland, said he did not believe the state of Ohio had a case against Richey.

He said: "If the state of Ohio thinks they have evidence against a man they have every right to hold a trial, just as with anyone else.

"But from our reading of the evidence it is hard to see how they could have a case against him.

"The key thing is that last time he was treated shoddily - this time the standards have to be higher."

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.