[Deathpenalty] death penalty news-----USA

[Rick Halperin]

Jan. 18



USA:

Kenny Richey is proof that the death penalty doesn't need to be carried
out to destroy a life----The Scot has considered suicide more often in the
past week than during his time in jail


Kenny Richey, the 43-year-old Scotsman who returned home 10 days ago after
21 years on death row in the US, says he has never been more miserable
than since he was let out. In a BBC interview, he reveals that he has
considered suicide more often in the past week than during all his time in
an American jail. He says that in Scotland he feels "left behind" by a
world that has "moved on", and that he is finding it hard to fit in. "So
much has changed - even the scenery," he says. "This is a society that has
grown up without me."

Richey has always protested his innocence of causing the death of a
two-year-old girl, killed in an alleged arson attack in Ohio on the house
of his former girlfriend and her lover in 1986. I believe in his
innocence, since he even refused a plea bargain that would have changed
his conviction from murder to manslaughter and reduced his sentence from
death to 11 years. As a result, he once came within an hour of being
executed.

Yet even this horror pales before what he has endured since becoming a
free man again. This may seem extraordinary, but it is a well-documented
fact that his experience is far from unique. In the great controversy that
continues to rage in America about the death penalty - that great blot on
the country's reputation for humanity and human rights - the plight of
those on death row who are eventually released is almost totally
overlooked.

They may have been spared the terrible finality of lethal injection or the
electric chair, but nevertheless they have had to spend years in prison
expecting it, dreading it and preparing for it. Then, all of a sudden,
when doubt as to their guilt is grudgingly recognised by the authorities,
they are suddenly set free. But to what? Not to a normal life, but to
broken marriages, unemployment and social ostracism.

In America, state governments that have spent millions of dollars trying
to get them executed offer them almost no help or support. The most they
may get is the standard "gate money" of between $10 and $200, which is
given to all prisoners upon release.

It has repeatedly been shown that the death penalty doesn't have to be
carried out to rob people of their lives. Richey, it seems, is one such
victim. Asked if he feels bitter, he replies: "They took 21-and-a-half
years of my life for something I didn't do. Of course I'm bitter. Who
wouldn't be?" It is terribly sad.

(source: The Guardian)