A federal appeals court has ruled that Ohio must either retry British foreign national Kenny Richey within 90 days or free him from death row. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit threw out Richey’s 1987 conviction and death sentence in the arson death of 2-year-old Cynthia Collins, ruling that prosecutors failed to offer sufficient evidence of Richey’s guilt. The court also found that his court-appointed attorney was “outside the wide range of professionally competent assistance” because he failed to challenge the state’s evidence. The opinion stated: “The record indicates that a competent arson expert - fully informed and supervised, and using the methods available to him at the time of the trial - would have all but demolished the state’s scientific evidence, and with it a large part of the case against Richey…. Based on the state of the law at the time of his actions, the only way that Richey could have been constitutionally convicted of aggravated felony murder would have been upon a showing that Richey intended to kill the person that actually died. Because it is undisputed that there was no evidence to that effect, Richey’s conviction necessarily lacked the support of sufficient evidence.” (Emphasis added).

Richey is the only British foreign national on death row in the United States, and his case has been closely monitored in the United Kingdom. In response to the ruling, Alistair Carmichael, a member of the British Parliament who visited Richey in 2004, stated that it was “excellent news for all of us who have campaigned to highlight the flaws in the conduct of Kenny Richey’s initial trial. Where so much doubt exists about the safety of a conviction it would be an offense against humanity to carry out a death sentence.” (Toledo Blade, January 26, 2005). See Foreign Nationals and Innocence.