Richey judges retire without outcome

No timetable has been set for when the judges may rule on whether or not the 42-year-old, who was imprisoned in 1987 for murder and arson, should be granted a new trial on the basis that he received inadequate legal representation at his original hearing and an unsafe conviction. Richey has always maintained his innocence.

The panel of three judges listened intently yesterday, only posing the occasional question, as prosecution and defence lawyers were each given 30 minutes to put their case at the Sixth Circuit US Court of Appeals in Cincinnati, Ohio.

Richey was not in court for the hearing but was being held about 150 miles away at Mansfield Correctional Institution.

His lawyer in the US, Ken Parsigian, made the point that his client would be free if he had taken a plea bargain and admitted setting a fire that killed a girl of two in July 1986.

Richey was 18 when he left his Scottish mother's home in Edinburgh to live with his American father in Ohio, where he joined the US Marines. He was planning to return to Scotland in July 1986 when he was arrested for the murder of Cynthia Collins, who died in a fire in her mother's apartment in Columbus Grove.

Some 150 MPs have signed a motion supporting him.

Mr Parsigian added: "We're asking the court to reinstate the decision that his Richey's verdict is reversed, and the state has 90 days to release him or retry him."

Source. The Herald.

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