Justices to hear committal arguments

Man set for retrial in ’01 death needs new mental evaluation, attorney says

The Arkansas Supreme Court has agreed to hear arguments by accused murderer Rickey Dale Newman that he should be mentally evaluated before being committed to the State Hospital for treatment.

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Newman’s attorney Julie Brain filed the petition last month arguing that Crawford County Circuit Judge Gary Cottrell violated state law when he ordered Newman to the State Hospital to be treated to restore his mental fitness to proceed with his retrial on a capital murder charge.

Brain argued that the mental evaluation Cottrell relied on in ordering Newman’s treatment was 12 years old and that he needed a new evaluation.

“Those [Arkansas] statutes mandate that, if a court finds there is a reasonable suspicion that a criminal defendant is in fact unfit, the court is required to order a fitness-to-proceed examination of the defendant,” she wrote in the March 21 petition to the state’s high court.

In the petition, Brain stated that she had no alternative but to turn to the Arkansas Supreme Court to reverse Cottrell’s order.

An order from the state Supreme Court Thursday said that it was expediting the briefing schedule. Newman’s brief will be due in 20 days; Cottrell will have 15 days after that to respond, then Newman will have another five days to submit a final response.

Newman was on death row after being convicted of capital murder in the February 2001 slaying of Marie Elaine Cholette, 46, whose decaying and mutilated body was found in 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 June 10, 2002, confessed to the jury that he killed Cholette and that he should be put to death. After a mandatory review of his conviction and death sentence, the Arkansas Supreme Court granted Newman’s request to waive further appeals and to be executed.

But days before his scheduled July 26, 2005, execution, Newman sought and received a stay and requested that he be allowed to resume the appeals process.

A neuropsychologist and a psychiatrist examined Newman and testified in a 2011 hearing before Cottrell that Newman was not mentally competent at the time of his trial. Cottrell rejected their findings and ruled Newman was competent to stand trial.

In January, the Arkansas Supreme Court ruled that Newman was not competent to stand trial and ordered that he be remanded to Crawford County Circuit Court for retrial on the capital murder charge.

Based on the court’s ruling of incompetence, Cottrell ordered Newman in February to be transferred to the State Hospital for treatment to restore his competence to stand trial.

Arkansas, Pages 16 on 04/19/2014

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