Sheriff ordered to pay for man’s medicine

VAN BUREN — A Crawford County Circuit Court judge has ordered the sheriff to provide all medications prescribed to Rickey Dale Newman after the lawyer for the murder suspect complained the sheriff refused to pay for the expensive prescriptions.

Newman, 58, is awaiting retrial on a capital murder charge in the 2001 mutilation slaying of 46-year-old Marie Cholette at a transient camp on the edge of Van Buren.

The order by Judge Gary Cottrell, issued Wednesday, also said the sheriff wasn’t allowed to take money from Newman’s jail commissary account to assist in paying for his prescriptions, which Sheriff Ron Brown said now total $632 a month.

Brown said Friday he didn’t understand the reason for the judge’s order and said he didn’t have a chance to respond to the request filed Aug. 18 by Newman’s attorney, Julie Brain of Philadelphia.

But since the judge ordered his office to pay for the prescriptions, he said, it will.

Brain said in her motion to Cottrell the sheriff paid for one month of Newman’s prescribed Combivent and Flovent inhalers but refused

to renew the prescription that ran out at the end of August. She said in the motion the inhalers cost $536 a month.

She wrote Newman had two attacks of chronic obstructive pulmonary disorder, a lung disorder, while in the State Hospital and was treated in a Little Rock hospital.

After Newman was returned to Crawford County, Brown said his office stopped paying for the drugs when the price of the prescription went up.

He said in August his office wasn’t obligated to pay for the prescriptions because Newman’s illness was pre-existing. If he had contracted the illness while in the jail, Brown said, his office would have to pay for the medication.

Brain wrote in her motion

since Newman was in the sheriff’s custody, it was his obligation to provide for Newman’s medical needs.

The Sheriff’s Office will not deprive an inmate of medication or medical treatment, Brown said. If a person complains of pain or an ailment, the sheriff said the inmate will get medical care.

But medical treatment is expensive, and if a person has the money in his commissary account, the Sheriff’s Office will generally take a percentage as a co-pay, Brown said.

However, Brown isn’t allowed to take money from Newman’s commissary account for the medication, he said, because the money was placed in the account by Brain so Newman could purchase jail phone cards to communicate with her.

Brown said Newman will be barred from using money in his account for anything but phone cards and necessities such as toiletries.

Commissary accounts are set up so inmates can use money placed in the accounts to buy such things as toiletries and snacks.

In his first trial in June 2002, Newman told a jury he killed Cholette and wanted to be executed. The jury convicted him, and he was sentenced to death.

He successfully waived his post-trial appeals, but days before his 2005 execution date, he asked for his appeals to be reinstated on the grounds he was mentally incompetent.

The Arkansas Supreme Court ruled in January 2014 he was mentally incompetent at the time of his trial and ordered him back to Crawford County for retrial.

A new trial date has not been set, as Cottrell is trying to determine if Newman is now competent to stand trial.

Newman