death penalty news February 2, 2005
OHIO: Freedom call from death row Scot A Scot whose murder conviction was quashed after 18 years on death row has urged US authorities to set him free. Prosecutors are deciding whether to fight the appeal court ruling that Kenny Richey's trial was flawed. The 40-year-old Scot, who remains in an Ohio jail, is convinced that the authorities will try to prolong his case as long as possible. Richey said he believed the state could drag out proceedings for up to five years and insisted on his innocence. During a television interview screened on Wednesday, Richey was shown a photograph of the son he last saw when the boy was four months old. He broke down on GMTV as he saw the image of 19-year-old Sean. And he told BBC Radio 4's Today programme: "There's no way to describe what I've been through, all I can say is I've been through a living hell. "Nobody could comprehend what I've been through, nobody could. "It makes me feel angry, I'm an extremely anger and bitter individual, I've lost 18 years of my life and that's 18 years I'll never be able to get back. "My son is 19 now and I also have a granddaughter - I'm a 40-year-old grandpa." Richey has always denied murdering his former girlfriend's two-year-old daughter, Cynthia Collins. Appeal fear He was found guilty of starting a fire at the toddler's mother's apartment in the town of Columbus Grove in 1986. Last month the 6th US Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that there had been flaws in the original trial. After the ruling a spokeswoman for the state Attorney General's Office voiced disappointment and said four separate courts had found that there was sufficient evidence to convict Richey of the "terrible crime". Richey has received the support of UK MPs and top human rights campaigners in his fight to prove his innocence. He told the Today programme he was certain that the US authorities would appeal against the latest judgement. 'Anger and hatred' He said: "The state will appeal it all and it depends on how long they take, they could drag it out for three, four, five years if they want. That's the way the judicial system works in this country, it's very slow." Richey - who was at one point only an hour away from being executed - said he was looking forward to freedom, but that he was unsure about his future. He said: "Take all the anger and hatred in the world and all the bitterness and put it into one person and that's me. "It might be difficult trying to readjust to society again, I'm hoping and praying that I don't lose it on somebody, the first person that gives me a hard time or something." (source: BBC News) COLORADO: Jurors' Bible use at issue in death-penalty challenge Jurors who sentenced a convicted killer to die did nothing wrong when they studied the Bible during deliberations - including the verse that commands "eye for eye, tooth for tooth," prosecutors told the Colorado Supreme Court on Tuesday as they sought to have the man put back on death row. A lower court threw out the death penalty given to Robert Harlan for raping and murdering a 25-year-old cocktail waitress in 1994. Defense attorneys challenged the sentence after discovering five jurors had looked up Bible verses, copied some of them down and then talked about them behind closed doors. Adams County prosecutor Steven Bernard asked the justices to restore the death sentence, saying jurors should be allowed to refer to the Bible or other religious texts. He said a juror's religious beliefs aren't prejudicial or extraneous to a trial, prompting sharp questions from some of the justices. "Don't we have a duty to make sure the death penalty isn't imposed under religious passion or prejudice?" Justice Gregory Hobbs asked. Hobbs also asked whether the verses the jurors referred to were part of Colorado law. "Passion and prejudice is not, but morality is," Bernard responded. Defense attorney Kathleen Lord said jurors had gone outside the law: "They went to the Bible to find out God's position on capital punishment." Lord sparred briefly with Chief Justice Mary Mullarkey, who asked whether the trial judge had specifically barred jurors from consulting the Bible. Lord said she didn't know but argued that the answer didn't matter. "It doesn't require a violation of a court order; there just has to be exposure" to extraneous or prejudicial information to declare the sentence invalid, she said. Harlan was convicted in 1995 of kidnapping casino worker Rhonda Maloney and raping her at gunpoint for two hours before killing her. Maloney was shot to death after almost escaping. She slipped away from Harlan and flagged down Jacquie Creazzo, a passing motorist. Creazzo was taking Maloney to a police station when the pursuing gunman fired at her vehicle, hitting her in the back. When the car came to a stop, the gunman pulled Maloney from the car and left. Her body was found a week later under a bridge. Creazzo was paralyzed from the chest down. (source: AP / Denver Post)
