Ex-death row Briton back in prison (From Daily Echo)

Ex-death row Briton back in prison

6:15pm Monday 7th May 2012 in National News © Press Association 2013

A Scot who spent two decades on death row before being released is heading back to jail for threatening a judge.

Kenny Richey had previously admitted the retaliation charge and he was sentenced to three years in prison at the Putnam County Common Pleas Court in Ohio on Monday.

Prosecutors said Richey had left threatening telephone messages for judge Randall Basinger, warning that he was "coming to get him".

Judge Basinger had prosecuted Richey's original case when he was convicted of starting a fire that killed a toddler in 1986.

Richey, 47, said in an earlier court appearance that he had been drinking heavily before he left the phone message and regretted making the call from his Mississippi home on New Year's Eve.

He spent 21 years in a US prison awaiting execution but was released in 2008 under a plea deal when a court determined his lawyers mishandled the case.

The former marine, who was born to a Scottish mother and American father, returned to Scotland for a period after his release in 2008.

He moved back to Tupelo, Mississippi where he was arrested in January on the retaliation charge.

He had been held in custody without bail since his arrest.