In rehearing, man says innocent of ’01 killing

An Arkansas death-row inmate found mentally incompetent and ordered to be retried has pleaded innocent to the murder he admitted committing more than 12 years ago.

Rickey Dale Newman, 56, entered the plea and waiver of arraignment via fax Tuesday through Julie Brain, a former federal public defender now practicing law in Philadelphia, who has represented Newman in the case since 2005.

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Last month, the Arkansas Supreme Court ordered that Newman be remanded to Crawford County Circuit Court in Van Buren and retried, concluding that the circuit court erred in finding that Newman was competent to stand trial. Associate Justice Courtney Hudson Goodson wrote the opinion for the court.

No new trial date was set Tuesday.

Prosecuting Attorney Marc McCune said Wednesday that he believed the next step will be to ask presiding Circuit Judge Gary Cottrell if a hearing will be needed or if an order from the judge to have Newman mentally evaluated will suffice.

Because of the Supreme Court’s finding that Newman is incompetent, McCune said, Newman will have to receive treatment until he is found competent to stand trial.

McCune said he expects a request for the evaluation to be filed within the next week.

Retrying Newman will be difficult, McCune said. Some witnesses have died since Newman’s June 2002 trial. Also, he said, he hasn’t had a chance since the Supreme Court’s ruling to review the evidence from the trial. He said he probably will do that in the next few days.

Newman is charged with capital murder in the February 2001 slaying of 46-year old transient Marie Elaine Cholette whose decaying and mutilated body was found at a transient camp on the edge of Van Buren. Newman, who was seen with Cholette shortly before her death, confessed to the killing two weeks later and was arrested.

Newman, who insisted on representing himself during the one-day trial, confessed to jurors that he enjoyed killing Cholette and that he should be put to death. The jury convicted him and recommended the death penalty, which the judge in the case, Circuit Judge Pete Rogers, ordered.

After a mandatory review of his conviction and sentence, Newman successfully petitioned the Supreme Court to waive his right to counsel and further review so he could be executed.

But days before his scheduled July 26, 2005, execution date, attorneys on his behalf obtained a stay, and he began the cycle of appeals of his sentence and conviction that has now sent his case back to circuit court.

One of the appeal issues was his mental incompetence. Brain, on Newman’s behalf, retained a neuropsychologist and a psychiatrist to examine Newman. They testified at hearings before Cottrell in 2011 that Newman was not mentally competent at the time of his trial, and was suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, major depressive disorder and frontal lobe damage.

Arkansas, Pages 14 on 02/23/2014

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