Tom Richey ponders his inability to stand by his mother in her battle for life

Almost two years ago, my dad died after a four-year battle with cancer. I watched him fight the good fight. But each time he came to see me in prison, I saw less of him until he was in no condition to visit any more. I think that's when my pain really began.

My frustration from not knowing, and from being unable to be with him during his final journey, increased my sense of failure as a son.

We're supposed to look after our parents during their final days as they looked after us during our early years. It's the natural order of things, but I couldn't - I couldn't be with dad to comfort him, my very presence able to give him love and support. For as long as I live, I'll know an emptiness from my inability to have eased his suffering, from the knowledge that all I could give him in his time of need was the pain of having a son behind bars.

In January, when my younger brother, Steven, told me about the mass on my mum's lungs, that familiar emptiness opened inside me and I fell into it. I immediately clung to the hope that maybe it was something other than what I feared, but any respite I found in that hope was shortlived. The news came fast - cancer.

When my dad died, I promised myself I'd keep fighting for freedom. I didn't want to repeat the experience I had with my dad. I didn't want to fail my mum, too. But here she is, facing surgery to have the mass removed from her lung. I wish I was home. I wish I could hold her and ease her suffering. I wish I could give her strength. I wish I could have the chance to show her that the man I've become isn't the stupid laddie who caused her so much pain and humiliation. I wish...

My frustration is growing into bitterness. I know I should have been home by now. Last June, Washington state's supreme court ordered the judge in my case to remove the invalid crime he convicted me of. It should have resulted in my resentencing and release for time served. Instead, the judge removed my invalid conviction and replaced it with a crime for which I wasn't originally convicted. US law doesn't allow a conviction for a crime without the due process right to a trial or hearing. I suspect the judge knew he couldn't successfully try me for a crime 25 years later, and so he did the only thing that would keep me in prison - if only for a while longer.

I've appealed his unlawful act and I'm currently awaiting a decision from the court of appeals that can come any day.My impatience grows, especially since receiving the news of my mum's cancer.

I find my bitterness directed at the judge because he denied me relief from my exceptional sentence of 65 years, and at the prosecutor for objecting to my international transfer to a Scottish prison.

But I know I can't think like that. I can't allow bitterness and resentment to become like a ticking time bomb inside me. I've no-one to blame but myself. I'm to blame for my failure as a son to my dad and now to my mum. It was me who took LSD and picked up a gun. It was me who placed myself in this quagmire of prison. It was me who placed myself in the position to allow the judge and prosecutor to show no mercy.

Aye, I've no-one to blame but myself.

As I wait for news from my mum, I know her words will try to communicate strength but will fail to hide her loneliness and fear of facing her own mortality. And I'll try to find the right words to express my love, to give her support, to allay her fears. But I know there isn't anything I can say that will make things better, that can make up for my inability to stand beside her in her time of need.

I've known failure in my life - more than I care to admit - but this is a failure that's all the more frustrating because it's something I can do nothing about. I can only hope for more time for my mum and hope the appellate court will grant me relief.

Family trouble

TOM Richey moved to America from Edinburgh in 1982, when he was 17, to start a new life with his older brother Kenny and their American father after his parents' marriage broke up.

He was jailed in 1986 after being convicted of murdering a man and assaulting another while high on the drug LSD in Tacoma, Washington State.

He had turned himself in and confessed to the crime and spent a year on Death Row before being sentenced to 65 years in prison, without any chance of parole.

He has since appealed to be moved to a Scottish prison, and launched several failed appeals against his sentence.

Shortly after Tom was imprisoned, Kenny was charged with arson-murder. He spent years on Death Row before his conviction was overturned in 2008.