Parolee who battered girlfriend gets 25 years

Neal, 56, making sixth trip to prison

Ricky Lewis Neal has robbed. He has raped, and he has killed.

He once cut a man’s throat and sliced off half his ear.

On Thursday after a three- day Circuit Court trial, the 56- year- old Little Rock man was sentenced to 25 years in prison for beating his 66- year- old girlfriend with a broken pistol and clubbing her with a ceramic seashell on Dec. 12, 2012.

After beating Betty Frazier bloody in her home, the parolee fled in her car as she stumbled out of the house they shared at 1816 S. Woodrow St., looking for help. Neal next engaged police in a high- speed chase, which ended only when officers used spike strips to disable the vehicle.

Convicted of second- degree domestic battering and felony fleeing, Neal avoided a life sentence because the Pulaski County jury acquitted him of the most serious charge, aggravated robbery, for stealing the car. The life term would have been imposed automatically if he’d been convicted of the robbery count because of his

history of criminal violence. Jurors did convict Neal of misdemeanor theft for taking the vehicle and some of her jewelry.

Frazier and Neal offered vastly different accounts of how she came to be injured. Frazier testified that an argument between them turned violent when she backed out of a promise to marry him because she could not take his temper tantrums. He threw her down and beat her with a broken .25- caliber pistol she had in her bedroom dresser, she told jurors.

He pushed her into a wall and hit her with the seashell as she tried to get by him and out of the house, saying she was so desperate to escape that she tried to break out a living- room window with a lamp so she could get away from him.

One of her teeth was knocked out in the attack, which also left a 4- inch heavily bleeding cut on her scalp, she said. Investigators were able to follow a blood trail through her home and across the street where she had gone to seek help, according to testimony.

Neal testified that he had fallen asleep after a day of drinking only to wake up in the couple’s bed with his arms tied down and someone attacking him in the dark bedroom. Neal said he managed to slip out of the bonds and fight back.

“I didn’t know if it was a man or a woman,” Neal said, telling jurors he didn’t realize Frazier was his assailant until he turned the bedroom light on. “It messed me up. I love her.”

He said he never hit her with any instrument and denied trying to keep her from leaving the residence. Once he realized she was hurt, Neal told jurors he tried to come to her aid, but Frazier rebuffed his efforts to tend to her wounds. He told jurors that a prominent bloody mark on her bedroom wall did not come from her head hitting the wall, as she had testified.

Rather, Frazier had thrown the bloody towel he had pressed to her head against the wall. He denied ever asking Frazier to marry him, telling jurors he loved her but, despite living with Frazier, loves his wife of eight years, Louberta Bailey Neal, more.

He told jurors he didn’t set out to take her car, a 2010 Ford Edge, and flee from police. He’d gone to get the sport utility vehicle to drive Frazier to get medical attention, but decided to leave when he saw her leave the house. He said he knew she was calling law enforcement, whom he feared would ignore his version of events and immediately lock him up because he was on parole.

“I knowed it was police time,” he said. “It was time for me to go.”

Defense attorney Willard Proctor called on jurors to acquit Neal, describing Frazier’s version of events as unbelievable.

“It did not make sense because it did not happen that way,” he said, telling jurors Frazier was the real aggressor.

Deputy prosecutor Jayme Butts- Hall told jurors they had a simple choice to make.

“This case is about who you believe,” she said. “Which story is supported by the evidence?”

The seven men and five women of the jury took about 2 ½ hours to reach their decision Wednesday, but they could not reach a unanimous verdict on a fifth felony count, first- degree terroristic threatening. That charge was based on Frazier’s accusations that Neal had threatened to kill her and then himself during their altercation.

Neal’s sentence for the battering and fleeing charges — which requires him to serve a little more than four years before qualifying for parole — was less than the 45- year maximum penalty available for jurors to recommend.

The punishment handed down by Circuit Judge Leon Johnson was also shorter than the 35- year sentence jurors recommended. They asked for 25 years on the battering charge and 10 for fleeing on Thursday after deliberating about 50 minutes.

Jurors did not learn the full extent of Neal’s 40- year criminal history until after they had reached a verdict. Neal has previous convictions for armed robbery, rape, false imprisonment and manslaughter.

Johnson declined to impose consecutive sentences, which would have required Neal to serve almost six years before parole. The judge did not say why he didn’t follow the jury recommendation.

After jurors had been excused, deputy prosecutor Robbie Jones asked the judge to impose the sentence requested by jurors, arguing that by not following their wishes, he would be sending a message to the community that criminals would not be held accountable for lesser felonies once they are convicted of more serious crimes.

Proctor, the defense attorney, asked for the 25- year term, telling the judge that Neal will likely never be paroled and that whatever time Neal got would mean he would spend the rest of his life in prison. Proctor said prosecutors had unfairly used “inflammatory” language when calling on the jury to impose the maximum sentence.

To the jury, Proctor argued for a minimal sentence, saying that Neal had conceded his guilt on the fleeing charge from the very beginning and has always apologized for what happened to Frazier, but those were injuries he accidentally inflicted.

Proctor told jurors they should expect Neal to spend every single day of his sentence in prison and accused prosecutors of trying to use the proceedings to punish Neal for crimes he committed 40 years ago as a teenager.

“The sentence should be whatever you believe this [ crime] warrants,” Proctor told jurors. “The state does not want to let go. He appreciates the fact that what he did was wrong. Don’t throw away the key.”

Jones asked jurors for the maximum sentence, telling them that Neal has not learned his lesson despite having 10 prior felony convictions, which have earned him five trips to prison.

“He has committed nearly every single violent felony that exists,” he said. “What speaks for itself is Ricky Neal’s record. All of that tells you all of what you need to know about the character of Ricky Neal. If he hasn’t learned his lesson now … prison won’t work. Today, it’s justice time.”

Neal still has other problems with the law to resolve. He’s scheduled to stand trial in November over accusations he stabbed his stepson, 34- year- old Orlando Jones, in the stomach in August 2012 at 1715 Johnson St. in Little Rock. Jones told police that Neal stabbed him while they argued about how Neal had been treating his mother, Louberta Neal.