Prosecutor to decide June 30 whether to retry Richey

Lammers met Wednesday with seven state and local officials at his office to discuss the case against Kenneth Richey. Lammers said he will announce June 30 whether he will retry Richey or allow him to be released.

"I just want to give my officers, and detectives and investigators an opportunity to make a little further investigation on a couple issues," he said.

A decision may hinge on the answers he receives from his investigator, he said.

"It may. Obviously I think it will have some bearing," he said.

Lammers would not discuss what he was having his investigators check.

If Lammers chooses to retry the case he likely will present it to a Putnam County grand jury to obtain an indictment on new charges, he said.

"There could be new charges. If we can't try a death case under the current statute we may look at other alternatives under the law that still permits us," he said.

Lammers said the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruling in January that overturned the conviction has taken away a section of law that was used to obtain a death sentence at a 1987 trial where Richey was convicted of setting a 1986 fire at a Columbus Grove apartment com-plex that killed 2-year-old Cynthia Collins.

"That doesn't mean under the law, as it was in effect at the time, didn't permit an alternative statute or section of law to be used," he said. "That's a possibility. That may be a stretch, I don't know. It depends on what my investigator tells me."

Lammers inherited the Richey case just weeks after he took office when the 6th Circuit over-turned Richey's conviction. The 6th Circuit ruled that Richey's trial attorneys provided inadequate representation and that the charge of aggravated murder, as the law read in 1986, did not apply. The court said prosecutors needed to show Richey killed the person he intended to kill in order to be convicted of capital murder.

Part of the Wednesday meeting was spent discussing what evidence was available, he said.

"We focused on what evidence we do have and where some of the weaknesses lie. How the weak portions of the case affect the potential likely outcome," he said.

Some witnesses are no longer around but there may be one or two witnesses who were not used at the original trial that he could use, he said.

Lammers said the meeting lasted several hours.

"It was an open exchange of information, ideas and opinions," he said.

In the meeting with Lammers was at least one Ohio assistant attorney general who handled the federal appeals, Putnam County Sheriff Jim Beutler, and at least one person from the State Fire Marshal's Office.

Lammers said he listened to everyone, especially those with the Ohio Attorney General's Office who have lived with the case for the last 18 years. But he said he will be the one who makes the decision on where to go with the case.

"The ultimate decision rests in my lap whether or not we recharge," he said.

Lammers has been on the clock since June 2 to either retry or release Richey within 90 days. Although the circuit court issued its decision in January, procedural issues delayed the start of the time.

Richey's attorney, Ken Parsigian, of Boston, said he will be sending a letter to the warden of Mansfield Correctional Institution asking that Richey be moved from death row to the Putnam County jail. Ohio law is clear that if an inmate is awarded a new trial the warden must release the inmate to the county jail, he said.

If the state does not release Richey to the jail, Parsigian said he would ask the Ohio Supreme Court to order Richey's release.