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Richey v. Mitchell, United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, Judge R. Guy Cole, Jr., January 25, 2005 [overturning UK national Kenny Richey's murder conviction and sentence and ruling that he must be released from death row in 90 days unless prosecutors decide to retry the case]. Excerpt:
The State could point to no Ohio law, prior to Richey's own case, that stands for the proposition that transferred intent applies in aggravated felony murder cases. Thus, in compliance with Ohio law, we must find that the State could not apply transferred intent in order to satisfy the specific intent requirement in an aggravated felony murder case. Whether or not the Ohio Supreme Court reached the issue of transferred intent as applied to subsection D, the State did not meet its burden of proving all the required elements of aggravated felony murder. Based on the state of the law at the time of his actions, the only way that Richey could have been constitutionally convicted of aggravated felony murder would have been upon a showing that Richey intended to kill the person that actually died. Because it is undisputed that there was no evidence to this effect, Richey's conviction necessarily lacked the support of sufficient evidence.
Read the full text of the opinion here. Reported in JURIST's Paper Chase here.