Kenny Richey faces new US prison sentence over phone threat to judge

A SCOT who spent two decades on death row could be sent back to jail in the US after he admitted threatening a judge who prosecuted his original case.

Kenny Richey pleaded guilty to a retaliation charge and now faces up to three years in prison. He will be sentenced in Ohio on 7 May.

The 47-year-old Scot agreed to plead guilty in exchange for prosecutors dropping a charge that he broke a protection order when he called the Putnam County courthouse in Ottawa on New Year’s Eve.

Investigators said Richey was at his home in Tupelo, Mississippi, when he left the phone message for county judge Randall Basinger, warning that he was coming to get him.

Richey was on death row for 21 years after being convicted of starting a fire that killed a two-year-old girl in 1986. He denied any involvement and became well-known in Britain as he fought for his release. Among his supporters were several MPs and Pope John Paul II.

Following years of appeals, a federal court determined his lawyers mishandled the case, and his conviction was overturned.

Putnam County prosecutors initially planned to retry him, but Richey was released in 2008 under a deal that required him to plead no contest to attempted involuntary manslaughter.

He was ordered to stay away from the north-west Ohio county and anyone involved in the case, including Judge Basinger. Richey, though, carried a lifetime of bitterness over his conviction, his friends said.