Richey v. Mitchell, 01-3477.

Citation395 F.3d 660
Decision Date25 January 2005
Docket NumberNo. 01-3477.,01-3477.
PartiesKenneth T. RICHEY, Petitioner-Appellant, v. Betty MITCHELL, Warden, Respondent-Appellee.
CourtUnited States Courts of Appeals. United States Court of Appeals (6th Circuit)

ARGUED: Paul E. Nemser, Goodwin Procter LLP, Boston, Massachusetts, for Appellant. Michael L. Collyer, Office of the Attorney General of Ohio, Cleveland, Ohio, for Appellee. ON BRIEF: Paul E. Nemser, Kenneth J. Parsigian, Goodwin Procter LLP, Boston, Massachusetts, for Appellant. Michael L. Collyer, Office of the Attorney General of Ohio, Cleveland, Ohio, for Appellee.

Thomas F. Bush, Jr., Paul B. Ockene, Adam Goodman, Yasmin Waljee (admitted in England only), Lovells, Chicago, IL, for Amicus Curiae Law Society of England and Wales, Human Rights Committee of the Bar of England and Wales and the Parliamentary Supporters of Kenneth T. Richey.

John J.P. Howley, Kaye Scholer LLP, New York, New York, for Amicus Curiae Government of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.

Before: SILER, DAUGHTREY, and COLE, Circuit Judges.

COLE, J., delivered the opinion of the court, in which DAUGHTREY, J., joined. SILER, J., (pp. 688-92), delivered a separate dissenting opinion.

OPINION

COLE, Circuit Judge.

Kenneth T. Richey was arrested, convicted, and sentenced to be executed for intentionally starting an apartment fire that killed two-year-old Cynthia Collins. He continues to maintain his innocence. Following a series of unsuccessful appeals in the Ohio state courts, Richey petitioned the district court for a writ of habeas corpus, and the court denied his request. Richey now appeals this decision. Because constitutional errors have undermined our confidence in the reliability of Richey's conviction and sentence, we REVERSE the decision below.

I. BACKGROUND

On June 30, 1986, at approximately 4:15 a.m., a fire started in the second-floor apartment of Hope Collins, who was elsewhere at the time. Her two-year-old daughter, Cynthia, was alone in the apartment, and she died in the fire. The Fire Chief initially blamed the fire on an electric fan, but then asked Assistant State Fire Marshal Robert Cryer to investigate further. Cryer arrived at the apartment at 6:30 a.m. and spent most of the day investigating. The next day, Cryer told the prosecutor's office that he believed that the fire had resulted from arson.

Cryer based his conclusion solely on his belief that some of the burn patterns he found at the apartment demonstrated the presence of accelerants. He found no empty containers of flammable liquids. From the apartment, Cryer took nothing that the Ohio Arson Crime Laboratory ("State Arson Lab") could test for the presence of accelerants, nor did he order the scene secured at the end of his June 30 investigation. Instead, Cryer authorized the building's owners to clean the apartment. The owners discarded the damaged living room carpet, which ended up at a local garbage dump.

The police investigation quickly focused on Richey. On the morning of June 30, within hours of the fire, he was interviewed by the police chief. On July 1, Richey was arrested for arson and gave a tape-recorded interview to the police, who were joined by Cryer and a prosecutor. Although acknowledging that he was intoxicated and therefore did not remember much of what happened early in the day on June 30, Richey denied starting the fire. Because gasoline and paint thinner were stored in an unlocked greenhouse across the street from the apartment building, the State theorized that Richey had obtained these materials from that greenhouse. However, the owner of the greenhouse was unable to determine whether any gasoline or paint thinner was missing, and Cryer took none of the accelerants from the greenhouse to compare with the materials at the fire scene.

On July 10, 1986, a grand jury charged Richey with: (1) aggravated felony murder; (2) aggravated arson; (3) breaking and entering; (4) involuntary manslaughter during the commission of a felony; and (5) child endangerment. The court appointed two attorneys to defend Richey against the charges, to which he pled not guilty, not guilty by reason of insanity, and not competent to stand trial by reason of insanity. The trial court ordered Richey to undergo a psychiatric examination, and he eventually withdrew his insanity plea and was adjudged competent to stand trial. In late 1986, Richey waived his right to a trial by jury, and agreed to be tried before a three-judge panel, under Ohio Revised Code Section 2945.06. The heart of the indictment against Richey was the charge of aggravated felony murder, which, if proven, made him eligible for the death penalty. According to the statute in effect at the time, an aggravated felony murderer must have "specifically intended to cause the death of the person killed[ — ]the prosecution must prove the specific intent of the person to have caused the death by proof beyond a reasonable doubt." Ohio Rev. Code Ann. § 2903.01(D). The State concedes that it presented no evidence that Richey specifically intended to kill Cynthia Collins. Rather, the State hypothesized that Richey set fire to the Collins apartment so that he could kill his ex-lover, Candy Barchet, and her new boyfriend, Mike Nichols, who were spending the night together in the apartment below. The testimony at trial established that Barchet moved into the building on June 15, and that within a few days she and Richey progressed to a sexual relationship. Apparently, Richey frequently told Barchet that he loved her and would kill any other men she dated. John Butler testified that on June 24, he had sex with Barchet, and that when Richey learned of this encounter, he confronted Butler while carrying a knife. Right after the confrontation, Richey broke his hand by punching a door.

On June 29, Richey attended a party hosted by Peggy Villearreal, who lived next door to Hope Collins. Barchet brought Nichols to the party, kissed him in plain view of the other guests, told Richey that she wanted to date Nichols, and later took Nichols home with her. Several witnesses testified that Richey — who was intoxicated that night — became upset upon learning of Barchet's new boyfriend. One witness testified that Richey proclaimed that "[i]f I can't have [Barchet], nobody else can." Three other witnesses testified that Richey told them that Building A, the subsection in which Barchet resided, "was going to burn" that night.

Hope Collins testified that around 2:00 a.m., as the party began to wane, Richey asked her if he could sleep on her sofa that night, but she refused. Collins testified that Richey offered to steal some flowers for her from the greenhouse located across the street, but she declined his gesture. Shortly after 3:00 a.m., a friend of Collins drove up to the building and asked Collins to go out with him that night. Collins told him that she did not have a babysitter. According to Collins, Richey volunteered to "keep an eye" on Cynthia, as long as he could sleep on Collins's couch. Collins testified that at 3:30 a.m., with Cynthia in Richey's care, she went out with her friend.

The fire started at about 4:15 a.m. Five eyewitnesses testified that after Richey emerged onto the scene: (1) he repeatedly hollered that "[t]here's a baby in the house"; (2) he repeatedly attempted to enter the burning apartment building to save Cynthia's life; (3) he proceeded so far into the building that "he came back out coughing and spitting up"; and (4) and police eventually had to restrain him from entering the building. The Assistant Fire Chief stated that Richey's efforts to save Cynthia "constituted that of a person who completely was disregarding his own safety." Conversely, another tenant testified that upon viewing the fire, Richey boasted that "[i]t looks like I did a helluva good job, don't it."

As part of its investigation, the State eventually retrieved six samples of debris remaining from the fire. Several of those samples came from the carpet that had first found its way into the garbage dump. On the afternoon of July 1, nearly two days after the fire broke out, the Deputy Sheriff retrieved the carpet from the dump. One piece of carpet was recovered from atop the garbage pile, and another was partially covered by trash. Once removed the carpet was placed in the sheriff's parking lot. The carpet stayed in the parking lot — located no more than forty feet away from gasoline pumps — for three weeks, before it was finally taken to the State Arson Lab for testing. Similarly, a wood chip sample was not removed from Collins's apartment for testing until July 17, nearly three weeks after the fire.

These samples were analyzed by the State Arson Lab using gas chromatograms, which one of the State's forensic chemists, Dan Gelfius, described at trial as "scientific instrumentation that allows the differential migration of the components of hydrocarbons to separate and to give ... a pattern similar to the identification of fingerprints." Basing his conclusions on a method of analyzing the chromatograms that has neither been published nor peer-reviewed, Gelfius testified that both a sample of carpet from Collins's living room and a sample of wood from her balcony contained paint thinner, and that another sample of the living room carpet contained gasoline. The State detected no traces of accelerants on the other three samples from the apartment, the clothing and boots that Richey wore on June 29, or the bandage that covered his broken hand.

Gelfius was unaware of the carpet's removal to the local garbage dump and then to the sheriff's parking lot until he arrived to testify at trial. He has since acknowledged that, had he known about these detours, he would have been "very concerned" and "probably work wouldn't have been done on this case." The missing links in the carpet's chain of custody did not disturb Assistant State Fire ...

To continue reading

Request your trial
69 cases
  • Priest v. Hudson
    • United States
    • U.S. District Court — Northern District of Ohio
    • September 15, 2009
    ...rule was "firmly established and regularly followed" is determined as of the time at which it was to be applied. Richey v. Mitchell, 395 F.3d 660, 680 (6th Cir.2005). Under the second prong, the last state court to which the petitioner sought review must have invoked the procedural rule as ......
  • Ross v. Kelley
    • United States
    • U.S. District Court — Northern District of Ohio
    • October 5, 2009
    ...rule was "firmly established and regularly followed" is determined as of the time at which it was to be applied. Richey v. Mitchell, 395 F.3d 660, 680 (6th Cir.2005). Under the second prong, the last state court to which the petitioner sought review must have invoked the procedural rule as ......
  • Richardson v. Smith
    • United States
    • U.S. District Court — Northern District of Ohio
    • October 30, 2012
    ...rule was "firmly established and regularly followed" is determined as of the time at which it was to be applied. Richey v. Mitchell, 395 F.3d 660, 680 (6th Cir. 2005). Under the second prong, the last state court to which the petitioner sought review must have invoked the procedural rule as......
  • Hayes v. Gray, Case No. 5:17-CV-2035
    • United States
    • U.S. District Court — Northern District of Ohio
    • October 22, 2019
    ...rule was "firmly established and regularly followed" is determined as of the time at which it was to be applied. Richey v. Mitchell, 395 F.3d 660, 680 (6th Cir. 2005), vacated on other grounds in Bradshaw v. Richey, 546 U.S. 74 (2005), remanded to Richey v. Bradshaw, 498 F.3d 344 (6th Cir. ......
  • Request a trial to view additional results

VLEX uses login cookies to provide you with a better browsing experience. If you click on 'Accept' or continue browsing this site we consider that you accept our cookie policy. ACCEPT