KENNY Richey is set for the final chapter in his 21-year fight for freedom today, as a US court prepares to send him home to Scotland.
Ending a controversial legal saga that has kept him behind bars for nearly half his life, the 43-year-old will stand before a judge in Ohio to formalise a plea deal that he had previously vowed he would never take.
He will plead "no contest" to th
e involuntary manslaughter and endangerment of Cynthia Collins, his former girlfriend's two-year-old daughter, who died when her home in Columbus Grove, Ohio, was torched in 1985.
The charges are based on a prosecution assertion that he had agree to babysit the child that night but failed to do so, resulting in her death when flames swept the apartment where she was sleeping alone.
They replace the counts of murder and arson that had previously held him directly responsible for setting the fire that killed her, and for which he was sentenced to die by lethal injection in January 1987.
He will today be sentenced to 21 years in prison, which he has already served, and released.
"It's the day we have fought for, hoped for, dreamed of, and lived for," said his father, Jim Richey, 69.
He added: "I have almost lost count of the number of times they were close to putting that needle in his arm. It has been a rollercoaster journey, and it's going to be hard to believe it's finally stopped."
Waiting for him back home in Edinburgh will be his mother, Eileen, who has prepared her son's bedroom ready for his homecoming, 27 years after he left the city to live in America.
"She is very excited to be able to hold her son in her arms for the first time since 1984. She is looking forward to being able to sit and talk with him face to face, and spend time with him," said Karen Torley, of Cambuslang, Glasgow, who has led the campaign for Richey's freedom.
"Here we have a mother who has been through the emotional wringer for 21 years, and now the end is in sight. She can hardly believe it is happening at long last.
"She has been let down so many times in the past with false hopes, and she has dared to hope and believe that now Kenny is really coming home. She won't quite believe it until he walks towards her at the airport."
Richey was convicted and sentenced to death in January 1987. For the next 20 years, his case bounced around the US judicial system as he insisted that he had nothing to do with Cynthia's death, that the prosecution evidence was flawed and that his original trial lawyer was incompetent.
The US Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit overturned his conviction and sentence in August last year, based on a legal technicality, and he was taken off death row.
Despite holding American citizenship as well as British, Richey must leave the US within 24 hours as part of the deal with prosecutors, though he has the right to return at any time.
He will board a flight back to the UK tomorrow, where he will be reunited with his mother, and lucrative media deals brokered by publicity guru Max Clifford.
