Richey has always opposed death penalty

"If he was 100 percent guilty and there was no denying it, he couldn't get out of it, I still wouldn't want him to get the death penalty. I would want him to spend the rest of his life in prison suffering every single day," Richey said in a telephone interview with The Lima News. "It's not a pleasant place, believe me."

Richey, who was just released from Ohio's death row after a federal court overturned his 1987 conviction for the fire death of 2-year-old Cynthia Collins in a Columbus Grove apartment complex, is awaiting a new trial that could send him back to death row. He remains in the Putnam County jail on a $10 million bond.

After spending more than 20 years waiting to be executed, Richey described prison as slow torturer where boredom and the lack of freedom works on a person's mind and soul.

"You're told what to do every single bloody day," he said as his thick Scottish brogue slowed to emphasize his words.

Day after day locked in a cell with nothing to look forward to can rip anyone apart, he said.

"It destroys them," he said.

The death penalty, he said, is the quick and easy way out.

"When you're executed the misery and suffering will end," he said.

Richey's opposition to the death penalty did not start once he arrived on death row.

"I've always been against the death penalty back as far as I can remember," he said.

Richey, a former U.S. Marine, would rather see someone who kills get life without parole over the death penalty. The option also gives the person a chance to prove his or her innocence, he said.

"If you execute him, he's not got that chance," Richey said