”This is my day,” said Kenny Richey. ”My day is nothing. My cell is 10ft by 7ft, and I’m in it 23 hours a day. It does have a TV, but right now it’s bust, and they don’t seem in much of a hurry to get it fixed. The window is three inches wide, but I keep it covered. I can’t bear to see the outside and not be part of it. I can’t walk on grass or breathe fresh air, so I block the view with wet toilet paper. I can’t tell you when I last looked at a tree: it was so long ago.
”I get an hour of exercise in a concrete yard, 12ft by 12ft. The walls and floor are concrete and it’s covered with a steel wire mesh. That’s my only contact with the outside atmosphere.”
Richey (41) was speaking from death row at the Mansfield Correctional Institution in Ohio, where he has spent nearly 20 years. Until last week, it had looked as if he would shortly be on his way home to Edinburgh, after he won a critical appeal last April against his conviction for killing a toddler in an arson attack.
But the prosecution appealed in turn against that ruling, and last week the US Supreme Court decided in its favour. On Saturday, in Richey’s first media interview since it issued its decision, he was able to phone The Observer.
”Of course I’m shocked and bitterly disappointed,” Richey said. ”But beyond that, I’m angry. There’s compelling evidence that I’m innocent, as I’ve always said, and what this ruling means is that the courts won’t even look at it. I’m being cheated of my life. I’m being robbed. It’s unfair, completely unjust. But there’s absolutely nothing I can do. I’m at their mercy.”
At one stage, it had even seemed that he might be home for Christmas. That is now a distant dream. ”Christmas will be the same as every other day,” Richey said. ”I’ll get a slice of turkey. Yes, they do give you that. Maybe some pumpkin pie. But that’s it.”
Richey, a former marine, was 18 when he left his mother’s home in Scotland to live with his father in Ohio, and he still speaks in a broad, east coast accent, tinged just occasionally with the US Midwest. In July 1986, he had been only days from returning home when he was arrested for the murder of two-year-old Cynthia Williams, who died from smoke inhalation in her mother’s apartment.
The prosecution claimed that Richey started the fire by pouring paint thinner and petrol on to the apartment carpet; his estranged former girlfriend, Candy Barchet, lived in the flat beneath, and was, the prosecution claimed, the intended target.
There were no witnesses, and no trace of flammable liquid on Richey’s clothing; he would have had to climb on to a high, sloping roof in order to enter the apartment, but his hand was in plaster. The prosecution offered him a deal: an 11-year jail sentence if he pleaded guilty. Intent on proving his innocence, he declined — and was sentenced to death.
Richey’s lawyers have been trying to get a court to hear evidence of his innocence since 1997. It includes affidavits by forensic scientists, who say the fire was accidental — and evidence that the toddler started three accidental fires in the weeks before her death.
Eighteen months ago, the Sixth Circuit Federal Appeals Court in Ohio found in his favour, adding that the prosecution should never have charged him with capital murder, because he had no intent to kill Cynthia. Either he should be freed, or the prosecution would have to give him a new trial, the judges said. Instead, the prosecution appealed and won.
”They have no confidence in their own case: that’s why they can’t let the new evidence be heard,” Richey said. ”They know I’m innocent, that’s why they’re fighting so hard, because for me to win would undermine the judicial system, and make them look bad. They keep fighting because they think that if they go on long enough, people will believe them.”
For a moment, the line went silent, and when Richey spoke again, his voice was cracked. ”They’re just … such crooked bastards.”
Richey’s lawyers, led by Ken Persigian in Boston, are also still fighting. They plan to apply to the Supreme Court for the case to be re-heard, on the grounds that its decision on the question of intent was wrong in law. ”They messed up their decision,” said Richey, ”and not a single one of the judges even signed their opinion, so nobody knows which idiot came up with it.”
They also have another chance to argue for the fresh evidence to be heard back in the Sixth Circuit, the Supreme Court having said that this issue is not yet fully explored.
Even if Richey wins, it will not be for many months. If he loses, he will be dead in little more than a year. ”I’d like to thank all the people in Britain who’ve supported me,” he said. ”At times like this, I wouldn’t get through without them. And I’d like to ask them to show their feelings in another way: stop buying American goods, in protest at this injustice.” – Guardian Unlimited Â