OTTAWA, Ohio - Twenty-one years and 191 days after he was arrested for setting a fire that killed a 2-year-old Columbus Grove girl, Kenneth Richey should get out of jail today.
After years of appeals that culminated in winning a new trial last summer, the former death-row inmate is scheduled to enter no-contest pleas to three felonies that make no mention of setting a fire.
His conviction was overturned by a federal appeals court that determined his original defense attorney did not adequately challenge questionable arson evidence presented at his trial. Now arson is not part of the case at all.
Richey's attorney, Ken Parsigian, said Richey, 43, has agreed to plead to attempted involuntary manslaughter, child endangerment, and breaking and entering at 1 p.m. in Putnam County Common Pleas Court. As part of a plea agreement with prosecutors, Richey is then supposed to be released from jail and by tomorrow on a plane bound for Scotland where his mother lives.
Richey was arrested July 10, 1986, for a June 30 fire at a Columbus Grove apartment complex that left 2-year-old Cynthia Collins dead. Prosecutors at the time alleged he had set the fire to get back at a former girlfriend who was asleep with another man in the apartment below the Collinses'.
Richey was convicted by a three-judge panel of aggravated arson and aggravated murder and sentenced to death. The victim's mother, Hope Collins, who had reportedly asked Richey to baby-sit for Cynthia that night before going out, pleaded guilty to involuntary manslaughter and was given a two-year suspended prison sentence.Today, the charges Richey is pleading to only have him conceding he was supposed to baby-sit for Cynthia, he did not, and she died as a result. Mr. Parsigian said the breaking-and-entering charge stems from the theft of a plant from a nearby garden shop.
Richey was to have been home for Christmas, but a previous change-of-plea hearing set for Dec. 20 had to be postponed after Richey developed severe chest pains and had to be hospitalized. He was returned to the county jail the next day.
Putnam County Sheriff James Beutler said Richey has been doing OK since then.
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