Ronald Lederman Jr.: Putnam County gets another shot at Richey

It's hard to disagree with Kenneth Parsigian. It looks like Putnam County officials finally have another shot at Kenneth Richey.

But two of the officials leading the current charge — Sheriff Jim Beutler and Prosecutor Gary Lammers — say justice, not revenge, is their motivation. Neither Beutler nor Lammers was in office all those years ago. Not when Richey was alleged to have killed a young Columbus Grove girl in an apartment fire, not when he was convicted and sentenced to death. And, though Beutler and Lammers were not in office for most of the 21 years Richey spent on Ohio's death row, they both were there when he left.

Parsigian, whose appeals got Richey sprung from death row in 2005, told The Lima News last week that the arrest of Richey seemed like officials settling a score. Richey was arrested for a message he left at the Putnam County Clerk of Courts Office.

“It was certainly clear to me when we were in court the last day Kenny was released, they said in words or substance, ‘We're going to get another crack at this guy.' That was their attitude,” Parsigian said.

Richey was arrested Wednesday in Tupelo, Miss., after a Putnam County grand jury indicted him on charges of retaliation and violating a civil protection order. Both are third-degree felonies, and together they could earn Richey another 10 years in prison.

That might seem, at least in Putnam County, like justice served, however late in coming, for a man many believe shouldn't have been allowed to leave death row on his own feet. Parsigian, who is not representing Richey, certainly was quick to plant that seed. Richey was a problem, if only an inherited one, for Beutler and Lammers, so they also appear to have reason to hold a grudge. Beutler's deputies wrote a taunting note to Richey when he was sent to prison in Scotland. When the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals tossed Richey's death sentence here, that case fell into Lammers' lap — while he was in his first month on the job.

Now, Lammers appears willing to fight to bring Richey back to Putnam County for a phone call. Beutler appears ready to send deputies — from the same staff that taunted Richey last time — to Mississippi to deliver him back to Putnam County.

Given all those circumstances, however unrelated, Lammers isn't helping himself with public perceptions. He refuses to say what was in the phone message Richey left at the Clerk of Courts Office, not wanting to taint the jury pool. It's a concern many law-enforcement officials needlessly cite in high-profile cases.

Nonetheless, charging Richey is about justice, Beutler and Lammers say. It's about his criminal record and the unnamed threat he made, not merely about it being Richey.

“Simply not true. He's been out of prison for how long?” Beutler said. “My understanding, there's an outstanding warrant for him in Minnesota, and I heard a rumor that there's even warrants for him over in Scotland, without confirming that myself. It's simply not true. It's easy for one to surmise that or assume that, but it wasn't until he committed some type of act that prompted the prosecutor to take some type of action. It was him that did something to cause this to happen.”

“Considering the history on Mr. Richey, statements made in the past, this was taken very seriously. Subsequently, that's why the prosecutor charged him,” Beutler said.

The Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction in 2011 locked up 86 people for violation of a protection order, with an average sentence of 17.2 months, spokeswoman Teri Baldauf said. The Ohio prison system saw only 11 court commitments for retaliation, she said, and those carried an average sentence of 26.6 months.

Lammers prosecuted an Oregon, Ohio, woman in 2011 for a letter perceived to be threatening that she sent to Putnam County Common Pleas Judge Randall Basinger's home.

“Obviously, it's not my job to go looking for cases. If the evidence does not indicate that a law has been broken, then I'm not going to prosecute, simply put,” Lammers said. “If someone sends threatening messages to someone, that potentially is a crime, whether it's a threatening phone message between private persons, whether it's threatening messages to someone on the bench or a law-enforcement officer, obviously that's going to get some attention, too.”