Death row Briton Ken Richey sent back to jail

A British man who spent two decades on death row in the US was sent back to prison yesterday after threatening a judge involved in his original case.

Ken Richey was sentenced to three years after he pleaded guilty to a felony retaliation charge last month. He said he had been drinking heavily before he left a threatening phone message from his Mississippi home.

Richey had been convicted of setting a fire that killed a two-year-old girl in Ohio in 1986. A federal court determined his lawyers mishandled the case, and he was set free in 2008 under a plea deal.