Actress backs appeal by Briton on Death Row

The Hollywood actress Susan Sarandon has joined the campaign to save a Briton who has spent 16 years on Death Row in America for the murder of a child.

The anti-capital punishment lobbyist, who won universal acclaim for her role in the film Dead Man Walking, has called for a retrial because of new evidence in the case of Kenny Richey.

Richey, 38, was convicted of an arson attack on a building in Ohio that killed Cynthia Collins, 3, in 1986. He was sentenced to death by electric chair.

At the trial, the victim's mother, Hope Collins, claimed she had left the child in Richey's care while she went out with a boyfriend. There are now claims that Collins used to drug her daughter with sleeping pills and had been visited twice by Child Welfare Services investigating accusations of neglect.

Ms Sarandon was presented with the evidence in the case gathered by Richey's supporters while she was appearing in the Edinburgh Fringe Festival with her actor husband, Tim Robbins. She said yesterday: "I want to add my voice to the growing campaign to have the whole case re-examined. Individuals and organisations as diverse as his Holiness the Pope, the European Parliament, the Archbishop of Canterbury and Amnesty International believe there is such a 'reasonable doubt' over the conviction there should, at the very least, be a retrial.

"For the family of the victim of this crime, I have nothing but the deepest sympathy.

"I call on the authorities in Ohio to re-examine the evidence, listen to the voices around the world."

Richey moved to the United States in 1981, aged 18, after growing up in Edinburgh, to live with his American father.

Two months ago, law students from Edinburgh University appealed to the Foreign Office and Scotland's Lord Advocate to intervene after finding a number of shortcomings in the way Richey's trial and appeal were handled.