VAN BUREN -- Former prosecutor Ron Fields was appointed Wednesday as special prosecutor for Ricky Dale Newman's capital murder retrial in Crawford County Circuit Court.
Fields, a private defense attorney in Fort Smith who was prosecuting attorney for Sebastian and Crawford counties from 1979 to 1996, was sworn in as special prosecutor by Circuit Judge Gary Cottrell after Crawford County Prosecuting Attorney Marc McCune announced to Cottrell that he was disqualifying himself and his office from the Newman case.
McCune pulled himself and his staff from the case after Newman's court-appointed attorney Julie Brain of Philadelphia, Pa., filed a motion in June to appoint a special prosecutor to handle Newman's prosecution.
She argued in her motion and Wednesday before Cottrell that McCune was a potential witness because he sat in on a May 9, 2002, interview with Newman during which Newman gave details about how he killed fellow transient Marie Cholette, 46, and asked McCune to promise he would seek the death penalty for Newman.
A month later, in June 2002, Newman was sentenced to death after a one-day jury trial during which he admitted killing Cholette and asked the jury to condemn him.
Brain told Cottrell on Wednesday that if the state planned to use Newman's statements from the May 9, 2002, interview in his retrial, she would seek to suppress them and could call McCune as a witness.
When Cottrell asked McCune to respond to Brain's arguments, McCune said to avoid the appearance of impropriety and in the interest of fairness, he was disqualifying himself and his staff from the case.
"What does that mean?" Newman said from the defense table where he sat shackled hand and foot.
"I don't know, Ricky. I'm trying to figure that out myself," Cottrell replied.
McCune said after court that it was best that he and his office step away to avoid possibly tainting the case and creating issues Newman could use on appeal.
"Get everyone out and start with a clean slate," he said of his decision.
Fields, who was in the courtroom during the hearing, told Cottrell that while he would be willing to serve as special prosecutor, he knew almost nothing about the case. He said he had not followed the case in the media or through the court.
Faced with an Oct. 27 trial date for Newman, Cottrell told Fields to go through the volumes of files on the case that fill a room in the courthouse annex, try to determine what witnesses he would call and evidence he would present and report back to him within a month on whether he could proceed to trial by Oct. 27.
Fields could not say Wednesday what staff he could have to help him with the case preparation. After court, he said the senior partner in his firm, Rex Chronister, told him he did not object to taking the case. Andrew Flake also is a member of the firm.
After court Wednesday, McCune said he had contacted at least three former or retiring prosecutors to ask if they would take over the Newman prosecution. None could, he said.
When he called the Prosecutor Coordinator's Office, he said, Fields was suggested as a choice for special prosecutor.
In addition to serving nine terms as prosecuting attorney, then-Gov. Bill Clinton appointed Fields acting attorney general in 1990 after the resignation of Steve Clark.
Later, Fields went to Washington, D.C., from 2001 to 2005 as a special assistant to Drug Enforcement Administration Director Asa Hutchinson then as special assistant to Hutchinson when he became Undersecretary of Homeland Security for Border and Transportation Security.
After his circuit court trial, the Arkansas Supreme Court affirmed Newman's capital murder conviction and death sentence, and the court granted Newman's request to waive further appeals and to be executed.
But as his July 2005 execution date approached, Newman allowed Brain, then a federal public defender, to file a motion in federal court in Fort Smith to stay his execution on his behalf. With Brain representing him, he renewed the appeals of his conviction and sentence, which eventually led the state Supreme Court to order a new trial.
Metro on 08/28/2014