Fort Smith : DNA finds hairs not victim’s, authorities say

BY DAVE HUGHES ARKANSAS DEMOCRAT-GAZETTEFORT SMITH - Attorneys for condemned murderer Rickey Dale Newman say DNA tests on hairs prosecutors claim are from his victim are from someone else.

The attorneys, members of the federal public defenders office, said in a motion filed Thursday before U.S. District Judge Robert Dawson that DNA tests concluded that the hairs the state introduced as evidence as Marie Cholette’s did not match the DNA profile of blood samples taken from the 46-year-old transient.

The hairs were recovered from gloves belonging to Newman who was accused of murdering and mutilating Cholette in February 2001 at a homeless camp on the west edge of Van Buren. Newman initially confessed to the slaying.

“The results of this testing, which are fully exculpatory of Mr. Newman, provide significant support for Mr. Newman’s claims of actual innocence and ineffective assistance of counsel, as well as the applicability of the miscarriage of justice exception to any procedural defenses asserted by [the state],” the motion states.

Matt DeCample, spokesman for the state attorney general’s office, said Friday that the office is reviewing the motion to form a response and would file that response at the proper time.

Newman’s attorneys also said in the motion that other hair evidence from Newman’s circuit court trial in June 2002 was lost at the Van Buren Police Department in April 2004.

The motion said the hair evidence that had been collected from Newman’s clothing, blankets in a tent and near Cholette’s body had been shipped from the state Crime Laboratory in Little Rock to the Van Buren Police Department via UPS and was signed for by a department secretary on April 13, 2004.

Prosecuting Attorney Marc McCune and police spokesman Cpl. Rob Rogers said Friday that they believe the evidence samples were mislabeled or mistakenly mixed in with evidence from other cases being shipped from the lab to Van Buren.

The evidence has not turned up, Rogers said.

This story was published Saturday, August 12, 2006

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