By the Associated Press

August 2, 2002

WILLIAMSBURG, Ky. (AP) — The youngest man on Kentucky’s death row was freed after a jury acquit­ted him in a sec­ond tri­al of mur­der­ing an 82-year-old man and his 76-year-old wife in 1997.

Larry Osborne, 22, walked out of the court­room Thursday after a retri­al prompt­ed by a Kentucky Supreme Court rul­ing over­turn­ing his pri­or con­vic­tion. Last year the high court ruled it was improp­er to use the grand-jury tes­ti­mo­ny of a friend of Osborne’s who drowned before the trial.

Osborne’s case had become a ral­ly­ing point for oppo­nents of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment because he was sen­tenced to death for a crime com­mit­ted when he was 17. Opponents have tried with­out suc­cess to get the Legislature to abol­ish the death penal­ty for juveniles.

He is the first Kentucky death-row inmate to be found inno­cent since the state rein­sti­tut­ed cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment in 1976.

Relatives of Sam and Lillian Davenport said they remain con­vinced Osborne killed them.

“Two good peo­ple are dead and the com­mu­ni­ty is at risk of a dou­ble-mur­der­er that’s already beat the sys­tem once,” said Susan Davenport, the couple’s daughter-in-law.

Defense attor­ney Tim Arnold said, ​“We felt like our client was an inno­cent per­son and the jury ver­dict was the correct one.”

The slay­ings occurred in December 1997, when an intrud­er smashed a win­dow and broke into the Davenports’ home in south­east­ern Kentucky, blud­geon­ing the cou­ple and set­ting fire to the house. The cou­ple died of smoke inhalation.

Joe Reid, 15, a friend who said he was with Osborne the night of the slay­ings, told police Osborne broke into the cou­ple’s house and lat­er came out with a pock­et­ful of cash.

After hear­ing Reid’s tes­ti­mo­ny, a grand jury indict­ed Osborne on charges of mur­der, rob­bery, bur­glary and arson. Reid drowned sev­er­al months before Osborne’s trial.

Osborne was con­vict­ed after the first tri­al judge over­ruled objec­tions to Reid’s tes­ti­mo­ny by defense attor­neys who argued the dead teen could not be cross-exam­ined, and had changed his sto­ry sev­er­al times — lead­ing to the Supreme Court action.

Not hav­ing access to Reid’s tes­ti­mo­ny in the retri­al left pros­e­cu­tors ​“not a whole lot to work with,” Susan Davenport said Thursday.