Freed death row Richey faces jail after judge threat
FORMER death row inmate Kenny Richey is facing up to 12 years in a US prison after being found guilty of threatening a former judge.
The Scot made threats towards Randall Basinger, 67, in videos posted on Facebook last year.
Mr Basinger was a prosecutor who, in 1987, secured a murder conviction against Richey over the death of a two-year-old girl in a fire in Columbus Grove, Ohio.
Ex-US Marine Richey, originally from Edinburgh, was sentenced to death for killing Cynthia Collins, who died in the blaze at her mother’s apartment in June 1986.
He claimed it was a miscarriage of justice and was eventually freed in 2008 after entering a ‘no contest’ plea to manslaughter, child endangerment and breaking and entering in a plea bargain.
The 55-year-old, of Columbus, Ohio, was arrested in October over the alleged threats to Mr Basinger. A jury at the Putnam County Court in Ohio found him guilty of four counts of retaliation. Each count carries a maximum prison sentence of three years. Richey will be sentenced next month. The court heard that Richey repeatedly threatened ‘the man who ruined my life’. He did not name Mr Basinger, who was also a judge in Ohio before retiring, but six prosecution witnesses testified Richey had been referring to him. Richey was sentenced to three years in prison in 2012 for threatening Mr Basinger after leaving a telephone message telling him: ‘I’m coming to get you.’ Richey, who was born to a Scots mother and American father, flew to the UK and lived in Edinburgh following his release from Death Row but returned to the United States.