Court won’t toss murder charge

The Arkansas Supreme Court for the second time denied a petition to throw out a murder charge against Rickey Dale Newman because his right to a speedy trial was violated.

Unlike the eight-page opinion the court issued in December denying Newman’s first petition to dismiss his murder charge, the opinion issued Thursday was one sentence:

“Petitioner’s petition for writ of certiorari is denied.”

Newman, 59, who is awaiting trial in Crawford County Circuit Court on a first-degree murder charge, filed the second petition through court-appointed attorney Julie Brain on May 4.

The state’s high court ruled there was no speedy trial violation between the time Newman was ordered retried in January 2014 because he was mentally incompetent, and Brain’s filing of the first request to dismiss his charge in November 2015. The second petition charged that the time elapsed since November 2015 constituted a new and separate speedy trial violation.

The latest ruling doesn’t put Newman’s trial back in motion. The case is stalled while special prosecutor Ron Fields of Fort Smith appeals to the Arkansas Supreme Court to overturn a ruling in January by Circuit Court Judge Gary Cottrell granting a motion by Newman to suppress statements he made to police after his arrest in 2001.

Cottrell ruled because the Arkansas Supreme Court ruled in January 2014 that Newman was mentally incompetent when he made the statements to police, the statements were inadmissible as evidence.

The Supreme Court had ordered Newman’s capital murder conviction and death sentence vacated and he be sent back to Crawford County Circuit Court to be restored to competence and retried.

Following multiple mental evaluations, during some of which Newman refused to cooperate on instructions from his attorney, Cottrell ruled Newman competent in November 2015.

Newman is charged in the Feb. 7, 2001, murder and mutilation of Marie Cholette, 46, at a transient camp on the western edge of Van Buren.

In a one-day trial in June 2002, Newman, acting as his own attorney, told jurors he killed Cholette and wanted to be condemned to death. After being sentenced to death, Newman successfully petitioned to waive his appeals and be executed.

Four days before his scheduled July 26, 2005, execution, Newman asked for a stay, which a federal judge granted after hearing evidence questioning Newman’s mental competence. His appeals process began at that point and has continued through Thursday.

Newman