Ohio to retry US-British citizen who faced death penalty

By JERUSALEM POST STAFF
An Ohio county prosecutor has agreed to retry a US-British citizen whose 1986 death sentence was tossed out by a federal appeals court earlier this month, the state attorney general's office said. Rather than challenge the ruling, Putnam County Prosecutor Gary Lammers made the decision to retry Kenneth Richey after discussing the case with state Attorney General Marc Dann and the family of Cynthia Collins, a 2-year-old girl who was killed two decades ago in an apartment fire in Columbus Grove in northwest Ohio, the attorney general's office said Friday. A message seeking comment was left at Lammers' office. Richey, now 43, was convicted of aggravated murder and sentenced to die for setting the fire. Prosecutors said he set the blaze to get even with his former girlfriend, who lived in the same apartment building as the victim.