Kenny Richey is Free!

by Rebecca Doran

In January, the horrors of the death penalty were exposed when the state of Ohio copped a plea bargain with death-row inmate Kenny Richey. Richey was sentenced in 1987 to Ohio’s death row after being convicted for deliberately starting a 1986 fire that left two-year old Cynthia Collins dead.

The plea deal reduced the trumped-up murder charges to involuntary manslaughter and child endangerment. After pleading no contest to the lesser charges, Richey was released with time served.

During his time in the Mansfield, Ohio, state penitentiary, Richey was known worldwide as the innocent Scot on death row. A native of Edinburgh, Scotland, he spent nearly 21 years as a condemned inmate for what human rights groups have called the crime that never was.

The prosecution’s story was that Richey had committed arson to seek revenge on his ex-girlfriend who was sleeping with a new lover in the apartment directly downstairs from the unit where the child slept.

Two-year-old Cynthia had been left alone that night in June 1986 while her mother partied. According to friends and the local Child Welfare Services, this was something that happened regularly. But the prosecution claimed that Richey had agreed to babysit the child that night so he could gain access to the apartment and carry out his plan to kill his former lover.

Richey was tried and sentenced to death in the midst of a disturbing media circus that was carefully fuelled by a crooked prosecutor named Randall Basinger. During the trial, Basinger withheld critical exculpatory evidence and coerced witnesses to give false testimony against Richey. The prosecutor turned himself into a darling of the media, and the spotlight boosted his career and carried him on to victory in his bid for a position as an elected Ohio judge.

Like most people caught up in the criminal justice system, Kenny Richey’s poor financial situation sealed his fate when he was assigned an incompetent defense attorney. In this case, however, his trial attorney was so incompetent that he waved Richey‘s right to a trial by jury and sat in pitiful silence while Prosecutor Basinger buried Richey in front of a three-judge panel.

Kenny’s nightmare on death row now seems almost unreal. He was once forced into a chair by prison guards, who shaved his head in preparation for his horrifying death in Ohio’s electric chair. He came within one short hour of execution that day, but a court-ordered stay saved his life. Over the years Kenny would be placed under several other death warrants, but all of them would be stayed by the courts.

Nearly two decades after the trial, two of the three witnesses for the prosecution recanted their stories and claimed that they were coerced by Basinger to lie under oath. Trial testimony given by the prosecution’s arson expert was dismissed as junk science. And it was discovered that the major piece of evidence used against Richey, a swatch of carpet recovered from the burned apartment, which tested positive for accelerants, was only tested after it had been stored directly under a gas pump outside of the police station.

An even more shocking piece of evidence that Basinger withheld from the trial was that little Cynthia Collins was fascinated by fire. In the months leading up to her death, she had started at least three fires that were put out by the local fire department.

In 2005, the Sixth Circuit court of appeals overturned the conviction and ordered the state of Ohio to retry Richey or set him free. The state chose to retry him. It is no doubt that a new trial with Kenny’s new, competent defense attorneys, along with a worldwide mobilization of supporters, could have exposed this case as a frame-up. But Richey’s failing health and severe heart problems led family members and supporters to fear the stress that a new trial would put on Kenny.

Richey has survived multiple heart attacks and suffers from 60 percent blockage of his arteries. His two-decades-long nightmare has also left him with diabetes. It was under these circumstances that Richey agreed to the plea bargain, which essentially charged him with being a bad babysitter. But it should be noted that witnesses were available to testify in a new trial that Richey never agreed to babysit the child that night.

Kenny Richey’s long-awaited release is being celebrated by anti-death-penalty campaigners. But in the battle for abolition, the rare victory is won only after the hammer of the unjust court system crushes the lives of its victims. Richey is no exception; not only has he walked away from death row in devastatingly poor health but he has reentered a world that he does not recognize.

Kenny is now back in his beloved Scotland. He has told that press that since his release he has considered suicide more than ever. He’s struggling to cope with the fast-paced high-tech world and with rebuilding relationships. He’s facing surgery to deal with his heart problems while searching for a job to support himself.

The bargain Kenny made with the state of Ohio left him unable to sue or receive any money for damages. Prosecutor Basinger—now Judge Basinger, whose career was built on this frame-up trial—is still benefiting from the conviction.

Socialist Action covered Kenny Richey’s case and participated in the struggle to free him from him from death row. We are celebrating his release, but it would be impossible for us to not taste the bittersweetness in this hard-won victory.

The struggle to end the death penalty is one of the most important battles of our time. We must fight for full abolition and mobilize in the streets in defense of the countless victims like Kenny Richey. Down with the death penalty! Abolition now!