Kenny wants contact with son

Article on Kenny Richey Day One.

Copyright 2003 Associated Newspapers Ltd.
DAILY MAIL (London) August 5, 2003

SECTION: ED_SC1; Pg. 4; Pg. 5; Pg. 6

LENGTH: 3036 words

HEADLINE: If I'd taken a deal, I'd have been out seven years ago. But I won't admit to something I didn't do. Not in a million years. I'll die first...

BYLINE: KATE GINN

SHUFFLING out of his cell, his hands and ankles red raw from the chains he can never take off, Kenny Richey cuts a rather pathetic figure.

Sixteen long years on death row have taken their toll. He is overweight and pale from the 23 hours of every day he spends locked up in solitary confinement.

The punishing regime and unremitting prospect of death would have long ago compelled a weaker man to give up hope.

But Richey, who marked his 39th birthday in his tiny prison cell on Sunday, is determined to prove he is innocent of the murder of two-year-old Cynthia Collins. In an astonishingly frank interview with the Scottish Daily Mail, he reveals he will never admit guilt for a crime he didn't commit and will fight on, literally until the end.

He says: 'Death is not scary to me now. There is life after death, this is just a stopping over. I'm not scared of dying. I used to be when I was a kid; it used to terrify the hell out of me. Not any more.

'I've spent 17 years thinking about it. I've faced the reality. I've had 13 execution dates. Nine years ago, I came within an hour of going to the electric chair. My head was shaved and I'd said a final goodbye to my mum and family, and then a stay came through.

'People wonder how it feels to come that close to death. It was nerve-wracking but at the same time, I felt at peace, nothing was going through my mind.' He adds: 'I'm going to make these people admit they were wrong.

They did me wrong, they did my family wrong and I'm not going to let them get away with it.

'Come Hell or high water, they will suffer the consequences of their actions.

'They have taken my life away from me. But I'll never admit to something I didn't do. Never in a million years. I'll die first.' The early summer night was sticky-hot and the neighbourhood party was in full swing in and around the dusty backstreets of Columbus Grove.

Chatting and drinking beer, the group of neighbours in this closeknit Ohio small town had gathered hours earlier in the June sunshine.

Among them was a young Scot called Kenny Richey.

Richey was a familiar figure in the neighbourhood. Unemployed and living with his former Marine father, he was often to be seen idling away the day with locals, regaling them with fond memories of his childhood growing up in the shadow of Edinburgh Castle and skimming stones on the banks of the River Almond.

As the day slipped into evening, the crowd which had collected in the lane between two rundown apartment blocks had grown and, as the alcohol flowed, the festivities began to take a raucous turn.

That evening Richey had particular cause to celebrate. After five years living in the U.S., he was due to return to Scotland within the week, going home at last to his mother and a much-needed job as a nightclub doorman.

As the chatter grew louder and music boomed out of one of the nearby buildings, Richey realised he was very drunk. He told his neighbours he was going to his father's apartment close by to sleep.

As he left the party, he was seen stumbling on the edge of the pavement, barely able to stand. He collapsed headfirst into some bushes, where he lay for ten minutes before coming round and staggering off into the darkness.

What exactly happened next on that fateful day Saturday, June 29 1986 may forever remain a mystery. Yet 17 years after those hours spent drinking and laughing in the sunshine with his friends, Kenny Richey finds himself the only Briton on death row.

Soon after Richey was seen leaving the party, a blaze broke out in a nearby apartment. The flames spread rapidly, engulfing the living room and hallway.

Minutes later partygoers brought out the body of a child. Twoyearold Cynthia Collins never stood a chance as the flames tore through the apartment.

Trapped in her bedroom, the little girl died of smoke inhalation.

Richey was sentenced to the electric chair for Cynthia's murder, the judge at his trial believing the prosecution's assertion that he broke into a greenhouse and stole cans of petrol and paint thinner before setting fire to the apartment in which the toddler lay sleeping.

On Block DR2 of the Mansfield Correctional Institution in Ohio, Kenny Richey is simply a number prisoner A194764.

His standard issue blue trousers have bright orange piping down the side, denoting his status as a prisoner awaiting execution.

Locked away for 23 hours a day, he leads a forlorn existence in this isolated prison in a state where politicians have been elected on a capital punishment ticket. This pale, paunchy man cuts a pathetic figure.

His wrists handcuffed there are huge red welts where the skin has been rubbed raw and legs shackled by heavy chains, his Americanised Scottish accent breaks through the sanitised atmosphere of the room leading to his cell.

He says simply: 'I'm innocent, I didn't do it.

'I understand a wee lassie was killed and it's a very sad thing. But what about the life of a 39-year- old man?

Doesn't that count for anything? I was six days away from going home.' In the time he has spent on death row, Richey has repeatedly protested his innocence, twice rejecting plea-bargaining deals that would have spared his life if he had admitted to starting the fire.

One such deal would have allowed him to serve just ten years, with the possibility of parole after six.

'If I'd been guilty, I would have jumped on it,' says Richey. 'Ten years is a good deal. I would have been out seven years ago. But I didn't do it, so I wouldn't take it. It's a matter of honour.

'I've had a long time to think about it but I still wouldn't change my mind.

'Three years ago, I was offered another deal. They were going to send me back home to a Scottish prison and the Scottish authorities could have released me the same day if they'd wanted to.

'I turned that down too. I don't regret it. Part of me regrets it because it's time I've missed with my mum and family.

'But the other part of me doesn't regret it because I'm never going to admit to it because I didn't do it.' Time is running out for Richey. If he loses his current appeal, the only option left is a direct plea to the Supreme Court but that would almost certainly fail, condemning him to die by lethal injection in a matter of months.

So is he a victim of a miscarriage of justice or, as the state of Ohio steadfastly claims, a murderer rightly placed behind bars? Is his refusal to accept a deal in return for avoiding the death sentence proof of his innocence or the desperate ploy of a guilty man?

Close examination of his case does raise some disturbing questions about his trial and the basis on which he was convicted.

Alarming inconsistencies and questionable findings, along with a series of glaring errors by his defence team appear to expose severe flaws.

As far back as 1997, information emerged that appeared to establish Richey's innocence. Crucially, two witnesses who testified in court that he had, at the party, made threats to burn the flat the most damning evidence against him have since retracted their statements.

New forensic evidence, presented in May at the latest appeal hearing to the 6th Circuit Court in Cincinnati, apparently casts doubt on the arson theory and, instead, suggests the fire was accidental.

His original trial never heard evidence that Cynthia had a 'fascination' with matches and had started two fires in the flat.

A leading U.S. fire expert hired by Richey's lawyers recently reinvestigated the arson theory and tore it apart, saying the original investigation was 'scientifically flawed'.

Yet, while this overwhelming new evidence appears to have been accepted by the state, it nevertheless appears set on pressing ahead with the execution.

By his own admission, Richey has not led an unblemished life. Growing up in Edinburgh, he was a difficult teenager and often in trouble with the police.

Indeed, his own father Jim remembers him as a 'rebellious child and an often irresponsible adult'.

Following his parents' divorce in 1982, Richey, then 18, moved to the U.S., where his American father had returned in a bid to start a new life. He joined the Marines and married. But it was not long before things began to go wrong.

Thrown out of the Marines for violent behaviour, his marriage disintegrated and he wound up, unemployed and suffering from bouts of depression, in Columbus Grove staying at his father's apartment in the government- subsidised Old Village Farm housing complex on the edge of town.

Richey admits he was a 'wild man' and a 'crazy head' in those days, prone to rages, regularly drunk and getting into fights.

There were convictions for minor offences and a jail term for assault.

'I had a temper but it doesn't mean I'm guilty of murder,' he insists.

Richey maintains he was asleep when the blaze started and was woken by the sound of the fire engines.

No one saw him start the fire, though plenty of witnesses saw him desperately trying to get into the burning building to save Cynthia. Richey knew her mother and was fond of the blonde-haired, blue-eyed toddler, dropping by to read to her or play.

'I knew Cynthia was in there and I tried to get in four times,' says Richey.

'I called out for her, I almost choked to death. My lungs felt like they were on fire. I couldn't breathe, I was forced out.

'I can remember the smoke, the fire and the heat, so intense. The fourth time, they had to hold me back.

'I felt so bad, knowing that I was so close but couldn't help her. That's a hard thing to live with. Even now, after all this time, I think about that, how I couldn't save her.'

Officials from the state Fire Marshall's office blamed an electrical fault for the blaze and declared it an accident. No attempt was made to seal off the scene and within hours the apartment had been cleared and the charred furnishings taken to the dump.

These included a crucial piece of evidence, the living room carpet, which was removed and stored, rolled up, next to a petrol pump.

When local police heard about the party, however, their suspicions were aroused. Fire investigators sifting through the blackened shell of the apartment discovered that the smoke detector had been disconnected.

Cynthia's mother, Hope Collins, told officers Richey had agreed to babysit that night so she could stay with her boyfriend giving him, the prosecution would later claim, an opportunity to disable the detector.

Richey disputes this, saying he refused to babysit because he was too drunk.

A friend of Collins would later claim that she regularly switched the detector off while cooking and had done so on the evening before the fire. It also emerged that Collins had previously left her daughter alone in the flat and Child Welfare Services had twice investigated complaints from neighbours but never took any action.

In court, Collins admitted to occasionally drugging the little girl with an adult dose of sleeping pills.

When traces of petrol were found on the carpet that had been retrieved from the dump and on the balcony outside the apartment, Richey became the police's prime suspect.

On July 1 he was arrested and charged with murder.

Feelings in Columbus Grove were running high. A child had died and angry residents wanted someone to pay.

Randall Basinger, an ambitious young prosecutor up for promotion to judge, was hungry to convict the killer and pushed for the first death penalty in Putnam County since 1874.

In contrast, Richey's court-appointed lawyer, William Kluge, was inexperienced. He had practised for just two years and was dealing with his first capital case.

It was Kluge who persuaded Richey to dispense with his right to trial by jury, saying that, in the emotive case of child murder, public sentiment would not be in his favour a call Kluge later admitted was a grave mistake.

Astonishingly, Kluge also chose not to put Richey on the stand, a decision which may have gone against him.

It was claimed in court that Richey had started the fire in a jealous rage to kill his former girlfriend, Kandy Barchet who was asleep with her new boyfriend, Mike Nicols, in the apartment below.

Richey, however, told the Mail his relationship with Barchet was not serious, no more than a casual fling, and certainly not enough to trigger such a crime of passion.

The prosecution's theory was that he had climbed onto a small storage shed below the balcony and entered the apartment through an unlocked sliding door.

Visiting the scene Hope Collins' flat was refurbished and is now rented by a family it is hard to imagine a sober person being able to climb the shed's sharp-angled and slanted roof while carrying a heavy petrol can and to then jump across the five- foot space onto the balcony without making a sound.

On the night of the fire, Richey was very drunk and had his left hand in a cast and sling following an accident a few days earlier.

'I was supposed to have done all this without spilling a drop of petrol on me?' he says. 'It didn't happen. It's ludicrous to even suggest I could do that.' No trace of petrol was ever found on him or his clothes.

The greenhouse owner maintains no petrol cans were missing and the police never recovered any cans or paint thinner from the remains of the scene.

There was also evidence that petrol had been innocently spilled on the carpet some weeks before but, inexplicably, this was never presented to court.

Nor, more crucially, was the revelation that Cynthia had a 'fascination' with matches and had previously started two fires in the apartment because, astonishingly, the defence lawyers did not want to appear to be 'blaming' the little girl.

The fire expert employed by Richey's lawyers came to the conclusion that the fire investigation was ' scientifically flawed' because the blaze in all probability started with a sofa, possibly set alight by a cigarette or dropped match.

However, the U. S. legal system makes it almost impossible to introduce new evidence challenging original trial findings.

So, while Ohio state prosecutor Dan Gershutz admits there may be evidence which proves Richey's innocence, he says the U.S. constitution allows the execution to go ahead because the prosecution did not know the scientific testimony offered at the trial was 'false and unreliable'.

There are other puzzling aspects to the case. All the floors in the Collins apartment were concrete. For anyone who knew that which Richey certainly did starting a fire on a floor above that of the intended target would make no sense.

Why did the defence call only six witnesses against the prosecution's 34?

Incredibly, the defence's arson expert actually ended up testifying for the prosecution.

Under oath, two female witnesses claimed to have heard Richey on the night of the fire saying the building 'would burn'. Both have since withdrawn their statements, saying they had been pressurised by the prosecution.

These claims have never been officially investigated.

Just weeks before the trial in January 1987, the panel of three judges were also told Richey's eldest brother, Tom, had been convicted of murdering a shop assistant in a drug-fuelled shooting a fact which, Richey's supporters claim, influenced their ruling.

Tom Richey is currently serving a 65-year sentence in Washington.

In open court, the prosecution conceded there was no evidence Richey intended to kill Cynthia Collins. But lawyers contended that he was still guilty on the grounds of 'transferred intent' that while Cynthia had not been his intended victim, it had been his intent to kill.

After a trial lasting just three days, the judges convicted Kenny Richey and sentenced him to death.

' I wasn' t surprised or shocked when the verdict was announced,' says Richey. 'I knew I was going to be convicted. They wanted somebody and they picked me.' Lawyer William Kluge has admitted making mistakes in his handling of the case.

On August 15, 1986, Hope Collins pleaded guilty to involuntary manslaughter and child endangerment for her role in Cynthia's death and was released the same day, having spent just 45 days in prison. She has since married and given birth to two more children.

Prosecutor Randall Basinger was rewarded with a promotion to county court judge.

Ohio's appeal courts have among the lowest case reversal rates in the U.S.

and have only ever overturned a death sentence once last month when another inmate of Mansfield Correctional Institution had his sentence commuted to life imprisonment.

'At least six courts over 17 years have examined the Kenny Richey case and agreed he set the fire,' says state attorney Michael Collyer. 'The state continues to stand behind the valid and fair conviction of Mr Richey.'

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The secret son I've never spoken about...and why I long to hold him one more time before they kill me ONLY IN YOUR SCOTTISH DAILY MAIL TOMORROW

Hardline state where condemned prisoners are rarely shown mercy

OHIO, one of 38 U.S. states to impose the death penalty, is notoriously hardline and its appeal courts have one of the lowest conviction reversal rates in the United States.

Only once has the state overturned the death penalty last month, when 42-year-old Jerome Campbell, who stabbed to death a 78-year-old man, had his sentence commuted to life imprisonment hours before he was due to die.

The electric chair became the method of choice to execute prisoners in Ohio in 1897, replacing public hangings. Lethal injection was authorised as an optional method in July 1993 and in November 2001, new legislation blocked the use of the electric chair making injections the state's only form of execution.

Despite changing attitudes towards the morality of the death penalty, public support in Ohio for executions remains overwhelming. There are currently an estimated 206 men and one woman Donna Roberts, who was convicted in June under sentence of death in the state. To date, 352 people have been executed in Ohio.

END

GRAPHIC: WAITING: KENNY RICHEY IS IN SOLITARY CONFINEMENT IN MANSFIELD CORRECTIONAL INSTITUTION; INCAPACITATED: KENNY RICHEY'S HAND WAS IN A PLASTER CAST

LOAD-DATE: August 7, 2003

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I Just want to see my son before I die...

Copyright 2003 Associated Newspapers Ltd.
DAILY MAIL (London) August 6, 2003

SECTION: ED_SC1; Pg. 26

LENGTH: 3462 words

HEADLINE: I've spent years hoping I'd be freed. Now, I just want to see my son again before I die

BYLINE: KATE GINN

After 17 years with no contact, Kenny Richey fears IN a voice that barely rises above a whisper, Kenny Richey is talking about the last time he saw his son. His recollection is one of an overwhelming feeling of pride as he held his tiny baby in his arms; a fragile bundle wrapped in a white blanket. The boy's cute smile is still etched on his father's memory.

That was 17 years ago, shortly before Richey began his long wait on America's death row convicted of the murder of a little girl just months older than his own child.

He has not even seen his son, Sean, since the day he was convicted. Now, as he sits in prison aware that if his latest appeal fails, he will almost certainly face execution his final wish is to see his son again. Sean is grown up now, on the verge of becoming a man himself. In a few months, he turns 18 the same age his father was when he left Scotland for a new life in America.

'I haven't seen him since he was four months old,' says Richey, in an exclusive interview with the Scottish Daily Mail on death row. 'I don't have any pictures of him. I'd love to see him again, I'd do anything to see him.'

His voice trembling as he fights to stem the tears, he concedes: 'I'll probably never get to meet him again. I'll probably end up being executed before I even get a chance to see him.' In the 16 years since his conviction, not a day has passed when Richey hasn't thought about his son.

With the outcome of his final appeal expected next month, time is running out and the anger and sadness at the prospect of dying without seeing his son again is more real than ever.

'I would love to hold him again, just one more time,' says Richey 'I think about him all the time. I wonder whether he looks like me and how his life is going. I've missed my son growing up and that hurts.

'I can remember holding him he was so small. I used to put him in the "daddy chair". I'd put my left leg up and my ankle over my right knee and rest him in there on my leg and just rock back and forth gently. He used to love it. He used to go out like a light.' For a moment, he's completely lost in his own memories; back rocking his baby son to sleep.

Richey says Sean named after his favourite actor, Sean Connery was the best thing that ever happened to him.

Unfortunately, his marriage to the boy's American mother, Wendy, ended in divorce finalised just two months before he was arrested and charged with murdering two-year-old Cynthia Collins in an arson attack.

In all the time since, Richey has never given up hope that his son would get in touch, but there has been no word from Sean or his mother.

EVEN more heartbreaking is the thought that his son may not even be aware of his existence.

Or that perhaps his mother is shielding her son from the awful truth that his father is on death row, condemned to die for one of the most reviled of crimes child murder.

'Sean's mother refuses to allow me or my family any contact with him,' says Richey. 'If I try to get in touch with him, she'll disappear with him and I'll never see him. He'll never know me.

'He's never tried to contact me and I doubt if he will. His mother might have told him I'm dead for all I know.

'It's not hard to find me. One click on the computer is all it would take.

My name is all over the Internet.

'What hurts most is the thought that he knows who I am but doesn't want to get in touch. I'd do anything to be able to see him or just talk to him.'

Talking about his son is the only time during the interview that Richey displays such intensity of emotion.

Speaking about his own predicament, he exudes calm and an unnerving air of indifference.

'Death happens to us all,' he says. 'I couldn't care less any more, I really couldn't. I'd rather live as long as I can but if it's going to happen, I can't stop it. I don't think about it now, I don't dwell on it.

'I've spent all these years building up my hopes that one day I would prove my innocence and be free.

'If they overturn my conviction I'll be happy, but if they don't, I've resigned myself to that fate. I'm prepared. I'm ready to die.' In recent years, Richey has lost several of the friends he made on death row to the executioner.

An inmate from the Mansfield Correctional Institution has been executed every month for the past four months. When I visited two weeks ago, another death row prisoner was due to die in two days time and the man's family were visiting him that day.

Unless a last-ditch appeal to save him succeeds, Richey could well be next.

This interview could be his last.

As I arrive in the prison visiting room, Richey makes the short walk from his cell to meet me. It is a slow, painful shuffle for him with his ankles bound by chains.

I had earlier been driven the short distance from the main prison to the death row block by a guard in a motorised buggy, passing 12ft-high wire fences topped with barbed wire.

At night, armed guards patrol the perimeter. Only one prisoner has ever tried to escape and he failed.

A grey door with the words Death Row stencilled on it in black marks the entrance, behind which a white, dimly lit corridor leading to the cells seems to stretch forever.

UNLESS things go Kenny Richey's way over the next few weeks he will make his way along this same corridor at the start of his final journey.

I am ushered into a windowless room, empty except for a table and four plastic chairs. A prison employee sits in on the interview and a guard stands outside.

Richey looks desperately tired, eyes puffy and red from lack of sleep. He doesn't sleep much these days, he says, which suggests that his claims of being resigned to his fate are perhaps a front. For all his talk of not fearing death, it obviously weighs heavily on his mind in the quiet darkness of the night.

There is a wariness at first, questions answered in a monosyllabic mumble.

But gradually, he begins to visibly relax and open up, talking candidly about the crime and his life on death row.

From the outset, Richey has consistently maintained his innocence, turning down plea-bargain deals which would have saved his life and made him a free man by now.

Leaning forward, he stares right into my eyes and, uttering each word very slowly, states: 'I didn't start the fire.

I'm innocent.' His blue eyes do not once waver. When a strand of hair falls over his eyes, he sweeps it away with a rattle of the chains around his hands.

The shapeless white T- shirt only partly hides the weight he has put on recently and he self-consciously jokes about only taking his photograph from the neck up.

Richey was only 22 when he was convicted. Most of his adult life has been spent on death row and on Sunday, he celebrated his 39th birthday, aware it could well be his last.

In May this year, Richey who was born in the Netherlands but raised in Scotland from a baby became a British citizen after taking the oath of allegiance to the Queen from his prison cell, a move which will allow the Government to campaign for his release.

But death row is not an easy place to escape from and certainly not in Ohio.

Public opinion strongly backs the death penalty, and the state has one of the worst conviction reversal rates in the United States.

If his latest and last appeal to force a retrial or completely overturn his conviction fails, he could be given an execution date as early as the end of this year.

Last month, he was given a glimmer of hope when fellow inmate Jerome Campbell, 42, had his sentence commuted to life imprisonment the first time a death penalty has been overturned in Ohio. Now his supporters are praying state governor Bob Taft will show similar mercy to Richey.

Is he confident about his chances, I ask?

HE sighs. 'I've got a strong case but you never know with the courts, they tend to surprise you. Just when you think they're going to do one thing, they do another.

'If it goes to the Supreme Court, which is next, then I'm hit, because they're not going to overturn it.' He adds: 'I want it to work, I want to get out of here and go back home to Scotland where I belong, with my mum and my family. I want to go camping, drive a car down the motorway, go for a walk, take a bath, go fishing and swimming, see Edinburgh Castle again.

'I want to do all those kinds of things, normal everyday things that people take for granted. I miss affection and touching people, I miss that so much.'

When he was arrested, Richey was just six days away from returning to Edinburgh, where his mother, Eileen, still lives. He was excited about going home, had already lined up a job as a nightclub bouncer.

Now he is one of 180 inmates on death row awaiting their fate at the prison, a sprawling 1,124-acre complex of low, redbrick buildings, on the edge of Mansfield.

The small midwestern town is deeply religious with more than 80 different denominations. Among locals, most of whom support capital punishment, there is little sympathy for Kenny Richey's predicament.

In court, Richey was portrayed as a jilted lover who took drunken revenge against his ex-girlfriend, Kandy Barchet, by deliberately setting fire to the apartment block where she was asleep with her new boyfriend.

They escaped but little Cynthia, trapped in the flat above, died.

Unsurprisingly, her death aroused strong feelings in the community of Columbus Grove, where Richey had moved to live with his father, Jim.

People wanted the killer to be brought to justice but Richey claims they simply got the wrong man.

Though the prosecution conceded that his intended victim was not the toddler, he was found guilty of murder by a panel of three judges.

If they are to be believed, then the man sitting before me is a cold, calculating killer whose crime was meticulously planned.

Undoubtedly, his has been a troubled life. Rebellious as a teenager, his parents broke up when he was 17.

He would later battle bouts of depression and heavy drinking, leading to run-ins with the law and a discharge from the U.S. Marines for violent behaviour.

Even his own father, with whom he has a strained relationship, believed he was guilty at first, though he is now supporting the fight to free him.

Richey himself admits that he was not a man to shy away from a fight.

But he is also clearly intelligent with a sensitive side, and an almost childlike joy at entertaining visitors with his impersonation of Sean Connery.

Certainly a growing number of supporters in the UK and America believe in his innocence and claim that, while he may be guilty of many things, Kenny Richey is not a murderer.

'Before we even went to trial I knew they were going to get me,' he says. 'I know there's loads of people who think I'm guilty. I couldn't tell my mum about the verdict. My dad had to do it in a phone call.

'When I was first convicted, she continued to tell everybody I was in the Marines for a long time because she just didn't know how to tell everybody.

Most people are kind and supportive but my mum still gets hassle from people because I'm on death row.' Life on death row is unremittingly grim. Richey spends 23 hours a day in solitary confinement in a tiny cell measuring less than 10ft by 8ft.

THERE is one small window, from which he can glimpse the original Mansfield Prison an imposing Gothic structure where Hollywood movie crews filmed Stephen King hit The Shawshank Redemption.

The cell has a single bunk, a toilet and shower he hasn't had a bath for 17 years and a table and chair bolted to the wall. He is not allowed any pictures on the walls. Meals are passed in and out through a slot in the door.

To pass the time, he watches television his favourite is the BBC show Coupling and reads Scottish history books. At 7am every morning, he is allowed out for one hour in the exercise area, a small concrete enclosure, where he walks round in a circle with five other inmates.

'The first night on death row was hell,' says Richey. 'I was climbing the walls, crying, I couldn't sleep, I couldn't do anything. The first five years are the worst but you get used to it, the routine of it. It just becomes your life. Once in a while, I still feel angry, terrible rages at the injustice of what has happened to me but I've learnt to control all that.

'But I'm depressed all the time. It's a hard thing to deal with. Every day, you've got to face the fact that you've lost 17 years of your life for nothing and things are never going to be the same whether you get out or not and that you may die.

'What have I accomplished in life?

I've never had the opportunity because it was stolen from me. I've thought about suicide, all the time I think about it.

'Sometimes, you come close but something holds you back. At this point, I really don't give a damn. I just want it to be over with.' He claims to have been beaten up by guards in the past and refused medical treatment.

'It's how I got this,' he says, smiling to show off the crude false tooth he fashioned himself from a plastic fork after the original was knocked out during a run-in with a guard following an inmate disturbance.

That was six years ago and he's still waiting for a proper false tooth. The ill-fitting wire which he uses to hold his home-made replacement in place scrapes against his bloody gums.

WHAT keeps him going through the dark times is the support of his family and fiance back in Scotland. He is particularly close to his mother and it has been heartbreaking for her to be separated from him. She suffers from a heart condition and longs for her son to be home again.

'I think about mum all the time,' says Richey. 'It's incredibly difficult for her.

'I haven't seen her for three years, she can't cope with seeing me in here and like this, with the handcuffs and chains. It's too upsetting but I speak to her on the phone when I can, every couple of weeks.' Thousands of miles away, Richey's fiance Karen Torley has been orchestrating the Kenny Richey Campaign from her home in Glasgow.

The mother of four wrote to him in 1995 after reading about his case and their relationship deepened over telephone calls. Although they have never kissed or even touched during visits, they are separated by a glass window and speak on intercom phones Richey refers to Miss Torley as his 'wife'.

'I love her very much and one of the first things I'll do when I get out of here, is to marry her,' he says. 'She's very important to me, she provides a lot of the strength that I have.

'It's very difficult to have a relationship in here, it's different, but it's a lot stronger than it would normally be because it's based on something more than physical.

'Without Karen, there would be no campaign. I hear about the support for me and it gives me strength to hear that thousands of people out there believe in my innocence.' If his appeals fail and Richey is executed, he wants to be buried next to his grandmother at the Mortonhall cemetery in Edinburgh.

But if his family cannot raise the money to bring the body back or bury him in America, his remains will be taken to the Chillicothe Correctional Institution state graveyard.

Known as Boot Hill the cemetery, which sits on top of a hill above a busy interstate road, is a desolate final resting place.

Neglected and unkept, the site is overgrown with weeds and the rusting metal fences are falling down.

Inmates from the prison will dig his grave and act as a burial party for the ten-minute service. Richey will be dressed in a cheap suit and buried in a 130 blue prison-made coffin.

A simple granite headstone will mark his grave among the other 93 men already buried there.

However, Richey occasionally allows himself to dream about a future.

'I spend most of my time daydreaming,' he says. 'I dream about getting out and what I'd do. I'd go home to Scotland and open up my own club or pub in Edinburgh.

'I love Scotland, it's the greatest country in the world, the beauty of it.

'There's a place we used to go near Edinburgh when I was small, we'd be there all day playing in this little burn, building dams and things. I'd like to see it again.' Our interview time is almost up and I ask him what he feels is most important to him.

'All I want is to have the opportunity to prove my innocence,' he replies.

'That's the most important thing to me. Everything else is secondary.'

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24 hours in the last day of a prisoner's life

FOR his last meal before his execution, Kenny Richey will dine alone on haggis with all the trimmings.

Custom has it that condemned prisoners are allowed to choose their final dinner and Richey has decided to have his favourite dish, which he has not tasted for more than 17 years.

On the night before he faces death by lethal injection, guards will serve him the dinner in a room known as the 'condemned cell', where prisoners are kept for the hours leading up to their last moments.

This will be just part of a timetable to execution that will count down the last 24 hours of Richey's life.

The day before he dies, Richey will swap his prison-issue clothes for a new pair of dark blue trousers, a white shirt and blue slip-on shoes.

Following a brief goodbye to his fellow inmates on death row at the Mansfield Correctional Institution, his wrists and ankles will be shackled in preparation for the three-hour journey to the state death chamber at Lucasville, Ohio. A team of prison guards will accompany him the whole way.

On arrival, Richey will go to the detached building which formerly housed Ohio's electric chair, Old Sparky, until it was removed and placed in a museum earlier this year.

He will be taken to the 'condemned cell', a simple room with a bed and desk, watched over constantly by three guards.

A doctor and psychiatrist will then examine him to ensure that he is fit to face the execution.

At 2pm that day, family and friends will arrive for a visit and, for the first time since he was sent to death row, he will be allowed to hug and kiss them. Later, the defence lawyers will take final instructions, followed by a minister.

At about 4pm, he will be served his last meal before settling down to an evening alone, where he may watch television, listen to music or read.

After writing his final letters, he will go to bed for the last time.

On the morning of the execution, guards will wake him at 6am for a shower.

Loved ones will return for a final visit and a chance to say goodbye.

He will then be left to spend his last hour, alone in quiet contemplation or with a spiritual adviser if requested.

At 9.50am, the death warrant confirming that he is to die will be read to him.

Escorted by guards, Richey will then be led away to the execution chamber and strapped to a speciallybuilt deathbed.

At this point, a heart monitor is connected to the condemned prisoner, linked up to an electrocardiogram machine which will signal when the heart stops and death has occurred.

The intravenous tubes which will carry the lethal injection will be inserted into each of his arms and threaded through an opening in the wall that leads to the anteroom where the executioner sits.

A prison employee, the executioner cannot be seen by the condemned man or the witnesses.

Once the tubes are in place, the curtain in the chamber is drawn back from the window to allow the witnesses to view the execution.

Richey's family may, if they wish, choose to watch his last moments through two windows along with an invited audience including prison officials, journalists and clergy.

With just minutes to live, Richey will have a chance to make a final statement, either written or verbal.

At the warden's signal, the executioner will begin injecting lethal doses of three drugs.

Given in strict order, the first is Sodium thiopental ( pentothal), which will send the condemned prisoner into a deep sleep.

This is followed by Pancuronium bromide, which stops him breathing by paralysing the diaphragm and lungs.

Potassium chloride then flows through the tubes, at a high enough dose to stop the electric signals essential to heart function and induce cardiac arrest.

It can take up to 18 minutes for the drugs to do their work, after which a doctor will declare Richey dead.

The whole process, from leaving the holding cell to death, may take only 30 minutes.

Afterwards, Richey's body will be taken to a medical examiner, who may perform a post-mortem.

The body can be either claimed by his family or interred by the state.

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