Former death-row inmate Rickey Dale Newman is not mentally competent to be retried on a capital-murder charge and has been committed to the State Hospital for treatment, a circuit judge has ruled.
Crawford County Circuit Judge Gary Cottrell issued the order last week after determining that no evidence has been presented since an Arkansas Supreme Court's ruling in January 2104 to show that Newman was now mentally fit to stand trial.
The court ruled last year that Newman, 57, was not mentally fit to assist in preparing for his 2002 Circuit Court trial. The high court vacated his conviction and death sentence and ordered a new trial.
Newman's retrial was scheduled to begin in Van Buren on Monday, but Cottrell ordered it scratched from the schedule until Newman has been restored to fitness.
Cottrell wrote in his five-page opinion that a determination of Newman's fitness has not been made because he has refused, on instruction from his attorney, to cooperate in two mental evaluations ordered since his return from death row to Crawford County last year.
And, the order said, letters Newman has written to Cottrell protesting his innocence of the murder charge but asking that he be considered for the death penalty have left Cottrell unconvinced that there has been a change in Newman's mental competence and fitness to stand trial.
Special prosecutor Ron Fields of Fort Smith petitioned Cottrell last month to waive the death penalty against Newman, arguing that execution was not legally appropriate for Newman because of his mental impairment.
"While a significant period of time had elapsed between the date of the original trial and the Supreme Court's finding that defendant was then incompetent, this court does not believe it can simply ignore that finding on remand and proceed with a retrial absent a determination that defendant's fitness to proceed has been restored," Cottrell wrote.
In the order, Cottrell recounted that after Newman was moved from prison to Crawford County, Cottrell ordered Newman to be sent to the State Hospital for evaluation and treatment.
Newman's attorney, former federal Public Defender Julie Brain, now of Philadelphia, opposed the order and sought a reversal from the state Supreme Court. She later dropped the appeal when Newman was discharged from the hospital and returned to Crawford County.
Doctors at the State Hospital could not complete the evaluation because Newman wouldn't cooperate. Later, Cottrell ordered Newman evaluated by an independent Little Rock psychiatrist, but Newman wouldn't cooperate with him.
Cottrell wrote in his order that despite Brain's insistence Newman is competent to stand trial, her own mental health professionals have testified that Newman's failure to cooperate in the evaluations "is itself indicative of mental illness."
Newman was charged with capital murder in the February 2001 death of transient Marie Cholette, 46, whose mutilated and decaying body was found at a transient camp on Van Buren's west side.
Newman confessed to police that he killed Cholette and testified in his one-day trial in June 2002 that he enjoyed killing her and wanted the jury to sentence him to death. It did.
Newman successfully waived all but the initial review of his sentence and death penalty and was scheduled to be executed in July 2005. But a few days before his execution date, he allowed Brain and another federal public defender to petition for a stay on his behalf and to reinstate his appeals.
U.S. District Judge Robert Dawson concluded in a 2008 habeas corpus petition in Fort Smith that doctors' evaluations of Newman showed he was mentally incompetent to waive his appeal rights and sent the case back to state court to resume the appeals process.
Metro on 04/09/2015