VAN BUREN -- A Crawford County Circuit Court judge on Monday ordered a delay in the capital murder retrial of Rickey Dale Newman because Newman wouldn't cooperate in the performance of a mental evaluation.
"I want to go to trial on April 6," Newman blurted out during a 90-minute hearing before Circuit Judge Gary Cottrell.
"It's going to be hard to hit that date, Rickey," Cottrell replied.
Cottrell said he has tried to resolve the snag in taking the Newman case to trial by April 6. But he has been unable to determine whether Newman, 57, is mentally competent to assist his attorney in preparing for his retrial in the February 2001 mutilation death of 46-year-old transient Marie Elaine Cholette.
He said that as the case now stands, the last opinion on Newman's competence was from the Arkansas Supreme Court. It ruled in January 2014 that Newman was not mentally competent to assist his attorney before his June 2002 trial.
The court ordered his capital murder conviction overturned and his death sentence vacated.
Cottrell said he has to have a determination on Newman's current competence before he can decide whether to take the case to trial.
He could risk another conviction reversal later if he first failed to determine Newman's competence.
"I guess we can refer to this as Rickey Newman Two," Cottrell said at the start of Monday's hearing. "I want to make sure we don't have a Rickey Newman Three."
Since the state Supreme Court's ruling, Cottrell has twice ordered Newman to be evaluated -- once at the State Hospital, and once by an independent doctor, Little Rock psychiatrist Bradley Diner. Both times, Newman refused to cooperate with the doctors at the instruction of his attorney, Julie Brain of Philadelphia.
Brain told Cottrell she was responsible for Newman's noncooperation but said she told Newman not to cooperate because it would violate his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination.
She also pointed to Diner's Feb. 20 report to Cottrell in which he wrote that after reviewing earlier evaluations of Newman, his mental disorders and disabilities did not mean he could not assist his attorney in preparing his defense.
In his report, Diner wrote that Newman's letters to Cottrell asking for the death penalty were attempts to manipulate the system and prolong the proceedings, an indication he understands the charges against him and their consequences.
"Despite his assertion that he wants to die, he has never made a legitimate suicide attempt while incarcerated," Diner wrote.
Cottrell asked Brain and special prosecutor Ron Fields of Fort Smith to submit written arguments to him within 10 days on how to determine Newman's fitness to proceed to trial.
He also asked the two attorneys to submit written arguments on whether the death penalty remains an option as a possible punishment in case Newman goes to trial and is convicted.
Cottrell said during Monday's hearing that he was concerned the Arkansas Supreme Court's order for a new trial for Newman also eliminated the death penalty.
Newman told Cottrell during the hearing that he wanted the death penalty to be part of his trial.
He said that if it was good enough for him in 2002, when he was convicted for Cholette's murder, it was good enough today.
"You tell me you'll put the death penalty on the table, and I'll cooperate" in the State Hospital mental evaluation, Newman told Cottrell.
Cottrell did not rule Monday on Brain's request that Fields be disqualified as special prosecutor because he also acts as a defense attorney in the judicial district, which she called a violation of Arkansas Rules of Professional Conduct.
Fields argued Monday that none of his clients will be witnesses in the case. When informed he was acting as a special prosecutor in the Newman case, he said, none of his clients objected to continuing to be represented by him.
Newman was convicted of capital murder in Cholette's death after a one-day trial in Van Buren in June 2002. Acting as his own attorney during the trial, he admitted on the witness stand that he killed Cholette and asked the jury to sentence him to death, which it did.
He successfully petitioned the state Supreme Court to waive his appeals and to be executed. Days before his July 2005 execution, he allowed federal defenders to seek a stay on his behalf.
At his request, his appeals process was reinstated, which culminated in the 2014 Arkansas Supreme Court reversal of his conviction and death sentence.
NW News on 03/03/2015