Prosecutor may decide within weeks whether to retry Richey case.

Putnam County Prosecutor Gary Lammers said he plans to sit down in the next few weeks with attorneys from the Ohio Attorney General?s Office and investigators who handled the case in 1986 to review the remaining evidence. 

Once that is completed, Lammers will weigh his options and decide whether there is enough evidence to retry the case. 

?We?ll put our heads together and hopefully be able to make a more clear-cut decision on what charges, if any, we will file,? he said. 

Lammers said he reviewed some of the evidence but will reserve comment until he has seen or heard all the evidence, which includes talking to people involved in the original trial. 

?It?s hard for me to make a determination without everything in front of me,? he said. 

Richey was sent to death row in 1987 for the 1986 death of 2-year-old Cynthia Collins. Collins was killed in an apartment fire in Columbus Grove. Richey has maintained his innocence. 

The 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals overturned Richey?s conviction in January saying his trial attorneys inadequately represented him and that the charge of aggravated murder against Richey, as the law read in 1986, would only have applied if Richey had killed the person he allegedly intended to kill and not the young girl. 

Lammers talked to the father of the young girl since the conviction was overturned, but only to explain the ruling and potential routes the case may go, he said. 

One of those routes is seeking an appeal with the U.S. Supreme Court. The Ohio Attorney General?s Office plans to ask that court to consider the case but has yet to do so. The deadline to file its request is in July. 

In the meantime, the next legal fight may be over when a retrial begins. Richey?s attorney, Ken Parsigian, of Boston, said the 6th Circuit was clear in its ruling saying Richey must be retried or released within 90 days. 

The Ohio Attorney General?s Office, however, interprets the ruling as saying the process must start within that time, said Kim Norris, a spokeswoman for that office. 

Parsigian said any delays would start an all-out court fight. He wants the case tried immediately. Parsigian also wants Richey moved off death row, saying without a conviction the state has no reason to hold an innocent man on death row. 

Norris said the state has no immediate plans to move Richey from death row. The current plans are to keep Richey on death row as long as the case is being challenged to the U.S. Supreme Court, she said.