[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----worldwide

[Rick Halperin]

April 12



SAUDI ARABIA----execution

Saudi beheads drug dealer


Saudi Arabia on Friday beheaded by the sword a man convicted of dealing
drugs, the interior ministry announced.

Abdullah al-Qahtani, a Saudi, was executed in the Riyadh region after he
was found "dealing and possessing drug tablets for the 2nd time," the
ministry said in a statement carried by the official SPA news agency.

The beheading raised to 41 the number of executions announced in the
conservative Muslim kingdom in 2008. In 2007, a record 153 people were
executed in Saudi Arabia, which applies a strict version of Islamic law.

Rape, murder, apostasy, armed robbery and drug trafficking can all carry
the death penalty in the ultra-conservative country, where executions are
usually carried out in public.

(source: IOL)






SCOTLAND:

Life after death row - Kenny Richey interview


Adjusting to life as a free man hasn't been easy for Kenny Richey, with
allegations of cocaine abuse the latest to hit the headlines. Here the man
who survived 21 years on death row talks about his dreams for a future he
thought he'd never have  being reunited with his ex-wife, getting to know
his son  and his constant battle with suicide

IT'S late morning, a little before noon, a little above freezing, and
Kenny Richey is in a little trouble  to put it mildly. The billboard
outside the newsagent's at the end of his street says it all: 'Exclusive:
Death Row Richey's Cocaine Binge'. The front of the tabloid carries a
blurred photograph of Richey apparently inhaling white powder through a
rolled-up banknote. Inside, the report insists he has become a "drugged-up
wreck" within months of returning to his home town, Edinburgh, after 21
years in an American prison, convicted of a murder he did not commit.

With the paper in my bag, I walk round the corner and up to the top-floor
tenement flat in Dalry where Richey has lived, with his mother Eileen,
since his flashbulb-lit arrival in Scotland on January 9. Richey glances
up when I come in. He's hunched over a nervous cigarette in black suit and
shoes, black shirt and tie. It's too smart an outfit for Sunday morning,
unless he's just back from church, which is doubtful. Richey does have
religious faith, and during his years on death row in Ohio he begged God
to grant him freedom, but his gratitude for this answered prayer doesn't
extend to formal worship.

In fact, Richey is dressed this way because it's what he was wearing the
evening before, during a heavy session at the Cavendish club, and he
hasn't changed yet. He has slept for less than an hour, and his round
white face rises above his dark clothes like the moon at midnight. He has
a bad case of booze blues, is angry at the tabloid story and seeks solace
in acronyms  smoking B&H while talking in effs and bees.

He asks for the newspaper. He's heard about it but not seen it yet.
"Cocaine Kenny!" he jeers at the headline. "Killing myself with drugs!
That's ridiculous!"

On the wall behind Richey there's a framed photograph of him as a slender
fresh-faced 20-year-old in the dress uniform of a US Marine. He looks
innocent, a boy soldier. On a table in the middle of the room there's a
full ashtray and a piece of paper on which is written the telephone number
of Max Clifford, the publicist who brokered the deal in which Richey, on
returning to Britain, sold his story to newspapers and television for tens
of thousands of pounds. It is quite a tale.

Richey was born in The Netherlands in 1964, the son of Jim Richey, an
intelligence officer with the US Air Force, but he grew up in Edinburgh.
When he was 18 he left Scotland for America, moving to the state of Ohio,
where his father was working. At a party he met Wendy Amerud, eight years
his senior, and they married in 1984. Looking for steady work, Richey
joined the Marine Corps. In 1985, he and Wendy had a son, Sean, but the
marriage failed, as did Richey's military career. The following year, aged
21, he moved in with his father, who was living in an apartment complex in
Columbus Grove, Ohio. Richey planned to return to Scotland but, in the
meantime, spent his nights partying with the locals, drinking heavily and
abusing prescription drugs.

Richey in his marine corps uniformIn the early hours of the morning of
June 30, 1986, a fire broke out in the apartment of Hope Collins, which
was in the same apartment complex as Richey's; her two-year-old daughter,
Cynthia, died from smoke inhalation. Richey was accused of starting the
fire in order to hurt his ex-girlfriend, Candy Barchet, and her new lover,
who were in bed in the apartment below.

The following January, he was found guilty of aggravated murder and
sentenced to death. Following a series of appeals, and 13 scheduled dates
of execution, Richey was offered a deal, nearly 21 years after his initial
conviction: if he would plead 'no contest' to involuntary manslaughter,
child endangerment and breaking and entering, the charges of murder and
arson would be dropped. Richey was keen to prove his innocence of all
charges at a retrial, but accepted the deal on the strong advice of his
attorney, Ken Parsigian, and on January 7 this year he was freed from
prison. 2 days later he flew into Edinburgh, accompanied by his youngest
brother, Steven, who has since returned to America.

Partly as a result of taking the deal, and thus admitting some
responsibility for the death of Cynthia Collins, Richey has not returned
home as a hero. The press has been vitriolic. According to one columnist,
his personality sticks in the mind "a bit like a freshly squeezed dog turd
that sticks to your shoe".

An editorial in another newspaper described "a truly sad, despicable
creature" who had "landed back in Scotland with the spectre of a child's
death hanging over him". The cocaine scandal is just the latest inky
volley in the media battle against Richey, and the most damaging yet. It
shows him as a wasteful, wanton hedonist, unworthy of the life he has been
given back, squandering money which some people regard as profiting from
criminal activity.

Yet Richey insists the story is nonsense. "The picture's fake," he says.
"It was just a f***in' stupid-ass stunt. That's all it was. I was with a
couple of guys at this house and I had a wee idea of trying to make some
money. I don't have much left, and I thought I might get 20 grand for a
picture like this. You'll notice in the picture that I'm not holding my
nostril. You can't snort cocaine like that."

The drug in the photograph is real, but Richey says he neither bought it
nor took it. For one thing, during his years in prison he developed heart
problems which prevent him from using narcotic stimulants. "If I was to
snort cocaine it would f***ing kill me." In fact, he says, he decided
against going ahead with the scam. "I thought it would be pretty stupid to
go through with it, so I told the guy who took the picture to erase it,
but the bastard obviously didn't. He's turned around and sold it."

Richey is concerned that the photograph might jeopardise his plans to
visit America to see his son, with whom he has had very little contact
over the years; he feels guilty that he wasn't around to be a dad. Now
that he is in a position to get to know Sean, could the US authorities
refuse him entry if they regard him as a drug user?

He's also worried that the drugs story will affect his chances of finding
work. Mostly, though, he's scared of what his mum will say when she gets
home from work. She's been nagging him about going out so much, and about
spending so much money, and is not going to be happy about this.

Even if he is telling the truth about the picture being fake, getting
drunk with drug users and planning to defraud newspapers are not the
smartest ways to spend your precious days of freedom.

Isn't it understandable, though, that he's been spending a lot of time in
the pub? His years of confinement have meant that he now finds it hard to
stay home. At one point he accidentally refers to his bedroom as his cell.

The other thing is that when he goes out, people approach him, say they're
pleased he's back, and often buy him a pint. It may well be that their
motives are not pure. Whatever the reason, it must be a refreshing change
for Richey to have people come up to him and act pally. He doesn't like
himself, so it buoys him up when others make out that they do. After 21
years on death row, a little positive reinforcement goes a long way.

"Everybody's been great," he nods. "It's nice having people saying, 'We
believed in you' and 'Welcome home' and all the rest. That does help me,
actually." He sings 'Honey' by Bobby Goldsboro at the karaoke.

He is struggling, though. During his 19th year on death row he wrote a
letter to his younger brother Tom, who is also in an American prison  he's
serving a 65-year sentence in Washington State Penitentiary for murder  in
which he speculated that, over time, he had lost the capacity to feel joy.
"I still feel the same," he says now. "It's great to be out, I'm glad to
be out, but I should be happier than I am. I just don't feel it. I have
suicidal thoughts all the time. It's even worse than it was when I first
got out."

There is a certain irony, of course, in the fact that he fought for so
long to prevent the state of Ohio from taking his life and now he is
talking about doing it himself. "Yeah, I know. The only thing that's
stopping me is the fact that the Americans would love to see me kill
myself. That would be a win for the authorities over there."

Richey is planning to talk to his GP about getting professional
counselling to help him cope with depression. Why is he suicidal, though?
What's making him feel that way? "I'm unhappy because I've lost so much of
my life and I don't have anything to show for it. I've got no money, no
house, no car. Nothing."

He has attempted suicide in the past and is not afraid to die, "but I am
afraid of not living". Yet, on the other hand, he is frightened and
confused by life. The fags and pints are pleasures, yes, but he is also
being deliberately self-destructive.

"He's not really in his right mind," says Karen Torley, the Scottish woman
who campaigned for Richey's release, and to whom he was, for a time,
engaged. "He's stuck in 1986 and trying to find his way in the world and
not getting anywhere. I've spoken to him over the weekend and I know he's
not coping. He's done everything I warned him not to do  wasting money and
mixing with people he thinks are his friends. He has learned the very
hard, bitter way that these people are not his friends, but he didn't know
any better. He's a 43-year-old man who is still 21 in his head. He's
suffering from post-traumatic stress and trying to create this new life,
but the people he was hanging around with really didn't have his best
interests at heart."

Should we feel sorry for Kenny Richey? That depends on what we believe
happened that night in Ohio. Richey's legal acceptance that he was guilty
of child endangerment and involuntary manslaughter amounts to an admission
that he failed to babysit Cynthia Collins when he was asked to do so by
her mother, Hope. In the early hours of the morning, she left the child at
home and went out.

She claims to have asked Richey to stay in her apartment with the toddler
and says he agreed to do so. Richey had always maintained he was too drunk
to babysit and so had said no. This remains his position, even though he
accepted the plea bargain. In the eyes of the law, the child died as a
result of his failure to do what he had agreed. But he insists that he did
not say he would look after Cynthia and so should not be blamed for her
death.

Even though taking the deal meant that he would not be able to sue Ohio
for compensation, Richey took it because the alternative  a full retrial
would have meant spending at least a further six months in prison, and his
lawyer, Ken Parsigian, was not confident they could prove the point about
the babysitting.

"This is as close as you are ever going to get to an admission by a
prosecutor that they were wrong," says Parsigian, when I phone him in
Boston. "You ask any criminal defence attorney in the United States and
they will tell you that it would have been malpractice for me to let Kenny
go to trial."

So, does Richey feel no responsibility for what happened to Cynthia
Collins? "Well," he replies, lighting another cigarette, "in a way I do
because, although I said no, had I babysat she would still be alive."

Richey on death row at Mansfield Correctional Institution in 2000Does he
think of her often? "Oh, aye. Absolutely." He says he knew her quite well.
"I loved kids. Still do. Back when I was living at those apartments, all
the local kids used to knock on my dad's door and say, 'Is Kenny coming
out to play?' It might be eight o'clock in the morning and I'd go out and
push them on the swings, or play stupid little kid games. They loved it. I
took them camping in the back woods and they loved that too.

"Cynthia was too young for that, though. She played in the play-park at
times. I remember one day she was playing in a muddy puddle. She was a
cute kid. Bonnie wee lassie. I have thought about her all these years.
What goes through my head is the hell she went through. She woke up, her
mum's not there, and she ends up not being able to breathe. I think about
how that must have felt."

Richey is not an easy man to interview. His accent  vacillating between
mumbled Scots and nasal American  makes him hard to follow, and most of
his answers are either "yes" or "no". He's not monosyllabic, though;
sometimes he says "mibbe".

He's like this, in part, because for 21 years he spent 23 hours of each
day locked in his cell, and that isn't going to make a person loquacious.
He's also taciturn, however, because he wants to wind me up. He knows that
short answers drive journalists crazy.

While I'm waiting for him to answer my questions, I have plenty of time to
study his appearance. He's fairly small, which is a surprise, and his
thinning hair is combed back from his face with plenty of gel. It's not
quite a quiff, but on some level it may have been influenced by Richey's
beloved Elvis Presley, the only part of American culture he can stand
these days.

Even though he's just sitting on a couch at home, he keeps his suit jacket
buttoned over his paunch and the top button of his shirt fastened. His tie
is pushed tight to the collar and held in place by a gold Marine Corps
clip. The overall impression is restraint, confinement, a holding back.
It's as if his clothes are the external expression of the way Richey is
suppressing the emotions churning away inside. When he first arrived on
death row he smashed up a wooden footlocker and a toilet, but that was the
last outburst. He learned how to control his rage, but it's still in him.
He's so full of anger and despair he's bursting at the seams.

I ask about Randall Basinger, the prosecutor who was responsible for
Richey's original conviction and who is now a judge. What would he do if
Basinger walked in that door now? For once he's eager to answer the
question. "I'd kill him. No hesitation. Though I'd want him to suffer a
wee bit first for all the suffering he put me through."

Does he really have it in him to do that? "Yeah. I'm a US Marine, for
Christ's sake. All they taught us to do is kill." Being a Marine was
important to him. It was one of the happiest times of his life, and the
period after he was discharged (after a drug overdose) was among the
worst. "Just having the title 'Marine' was enough," he says. "I loved
being a Marine because it had stability and structure, something I'm
missing now. And I got to wear a great-looking uniform. I met a lot of
good friends too."

While he was in the Marine Corps, Richey felt, perhaps for the first time
in his life, that he belonged. Since he left prison he hasn't felt part of
the world, but these feelings of isolation go back much further than that.
At one point I ask what made him such an angry young man. "I don't know,"
he replies. "It's a good question. I guess back then I didn't feel like I
fitted in either." Why? "I don't know why."

"Kenny's always felt a little bit different," says Torley. "A lot of kids
from dysfunctional families feel like that. I know he felt lonely. His
grandmother died when he was 16 and that was the worst thing that could
have happened to him because he adored this old lady. She was the one who
looked after him and did a lot of things with him. When she went, that was
when things got really bad for him."

According to Tom Richey, who wrote about his elder brother in the book
Death Row Scot, Kenny began breaking the law in his mid-teens, smashing a
shop window to get alcohol, breaking open parking meters, getting drunk
and getting into fights. Richey himself says that one big reason he left
for America was that there were outstanding warrants for his arrest.
"Auto-theft and breaking and entry," he says. "I broke into John Menzies."
He seems faintly horrified to learn it's called WH Smith these days.

Tom Richey says his brother was acting up in order to get his parents'
attention; they were preoccupied with financial worries and problems in
their marriage. Richey waves this theory away, though. "Nah, that's just
Tom's opinion. I wasn't doing it to get attention. I enjoyed breaking and
entering. I'd break into stores, never someone's house. That was a bit too
personal. I usually stole cigarettes, records, watches."

According to Wendy Amerud, Richey's ex-wife, however, the end of his
parents' marriage was "a real heartache" for him and the start of a lot of
his problems. "We had an unstable family," he says when pressed. "My mum
and dad would always fight. There was always a lot of tension in the
house, which was why, mostly, I didn't stay in. I'd be out all night and
all day long."

Do his parents blame themselves for the way things turned out? "I think my
mum does. But I tell her it was nothing to do with her. She didn't put me
behind bars." When I speak to his mother on the phone she confirms that
the split was hard on the kids. She also says she's been surprised at how
well she and Kenny have been getting on since his return. He's very
affectionate and loves to have her tea ready when she gets home from work.

His relationship with his father growing up appears to have been more
difficult. He says he and Jim Richey are very similar  stubborn and
hard-headed  and that they often clashed. Jim would punish his son by
hitting him with a wooden clothes brush. "It was about that long," says
Richey, holding his hands two feet apart, "and the end he hit us with was
about that thick." An inch. "That shit hurt." He thinks his father was
right to do it, though; kids need discipline.

Now, Jim Richey is dying of cancer. If Richey's forthcoming trip to
America goes ahead, it will involve a farewell to his father. "I feel as
if I've had all these years with my dad stolen from me," he says. "They
took that from me too."

Richey arrives back in Edinburgh earlier this yearMUCH AS HE hated the
loss of freedom, there are things about prison that Richey misses. His
best friend on death row was a man called Donald Palmer, a convicted
murderer  "I miss the hell out of him." Another close friend, James
Filiaggi, who was on death row because he shot his ex-wife, was executed
last year. "That was like losing a family member. He was like a brother.
He had a great personality, and he loved kids too."

Richey doesn't dream about death row, but "I actually wake up sometimes
and think I'm still in prison. Then, when I realise I'm not, it's only
partly a relief. There is part of me that wishes I was still in there. I
knew where I was, I knew where I was going, there was structure.
Stability. I could have done without all the bloody head games from the
guards, but it was a world I understood and I don't understand this one at
all."

On death row it always seemed possible, if not likely, that he would be
executed. But now there are all these years stretching out in front of
him. The big question facing Richey is how to fill his time.

"I remember I told Kenny, 'Well, you go get a regular job. You work 40
hours a week and you enjoy your weekends and you start building a life,'"
says Parsigian. "But that seems rather mundane compared with the celebrity
nature of what he has gone through, and the long-shot nature of it. It was
a million-to-one shot that we were going to get him out. And now it's not
like that any more. He's no longer living on the edge."

A million-to-one shot. Fascinating language. Could that be why Richey has
been gambling so much since his release? He lost 1,000 in the casino one
night. Is he replacing the thrill of fighting the death-row odds with high
stakes of another kind? "I'm not going to play armchair psychologist,"
says Parsigian, "but that's an interesting observation and I suspect there
may be something to it."

The truth is that the best thing for Richey is to lie low, save what cash
he has left, and learn how to be a private individual rather than a public
figure. Can he do it, though? His ex-wife is planning to move to Scotland
to be with him. They are going to try to make a go of it again. "Mibbe I
just need to be loved," he says, "and I love Wendy, so what the hell."
Keen to live away from Edinburgh and its temptations, he'd like a small
house in the country with Amerud and a couple of dogs.

I ask him, finally, to tell me his greatest dream. Now that he has a
future, how would he like it to be? He blows smoke rings and mulls this
over. "Shit, I'd like to find some happiness," he says at last, "and I'd
better find some soon. I may be free, but I'm still locked up in prison."

>From Edinburgh to death row

August 3, 1964

Kenny Richey is born in Holland to an American father and a Scottish
mother. They move to Edinburgh and he grows up in Scotland, although he
retains his US citizenship.

December 24, 1982

At 18, Richey moves to Ohio where he joins his father, Jim, who had left
Scotland the year before, ending his marriage to Richey's mother.

March, 1983

Richey is sentenced to 2 months in prison, having brandished a knife and
fought a group of men.

May 26, 1984

Richey, now living in Minnesota, marries Wendy Amerud, whom he met at a
party. He enlists in the Marine Corps, and they move to California.

Spring, 1985

Following clashes with a superior officer and a drug overdose, which was
regarded officially as a suicide attempt, Richey is given an honourable
discharge from the Marine Corps.

October 18, 1985

Back in Minnesota, Wendy gives birth to a baby boy, Sean.

January, 1986 After a series of fights, Richey and Wendy end their
marriage. He moves back in with his father in the Old Farm Village
Apartment Complex, Columbus Grove, Ohio. He starts drinking a lot and
abusing prescription drugs, and attempts suicide with a razor blade.

June 16, 1986

Richey begins a relationship with Candy Barchet, a single mother newly
moved into the apartment complex, but they split up before long.

June 30, 1986

A fire breaks out in the apartment of Hope Collins,who lives directly
upstairs from Barchet. Collins's 2-year-old daughter, Cynthia, dies from
smoke inhalation. Despite his denials, Richey is accused of 'aggravated
murder', the prosecution theory being that he set fire to the Collins
apartment in order to harm Barchet and her new lover, Mike Nichols, who
were in the apartment below.

January 7, 1987

Richey is found guilty. A week after the trial he attempts suicide in
prison. On January 26 he is sentenced to die in the electric chair on June
30, 1987, the first anniversary of Cynthia Collins' death. The lengthy
appeals process begins.

January 7, 2008

After 21 years on death row Richey is released from prison following his
decision to plead 'no contest' to lesser charges, murder and arson charges
having been dropped.

January 9, 2008

He arrives back in Edinburgh.

(source: ScotlandonSunday)