Scot freed after 20 years

This story hasn't been getting much press in the United States, but it's been a topic of interest in Europe. Kenneth Richey of Scotland has spent 20 years on death row in Ohio, exhausting round after round of appeals for a crime he insists he didn't do. Finally, a plea bargain has been reached in which he will plead no contest to involuntary manslaughter and be home in time for Christmas.

Europeans had been outraged at the conditions of Richey's confinement, which are ho-hum here in the prison nation. Said one Scottish official who visited Richey: "The reality of somebody who is kept locked up in a cell for 23 hours a day for 19 years is quite mind-blowing. It is a dreadful, inhumane and dehumanising system. If one man is off it, then remember there are hundreds {sic!} of people in America still enduring that dreadful situation."

source: 'Scot freed after 20 years' by Karen Franklin; forensicpsychologist.blogspot.com/2007/12/news-roundup.html; 20 December 2007