Arkansas News Bureau

LITTLE ROCK — The state Supreme Court has denied a request by a death-row inmate to stop all proceedings in his appeal so he can be executed.

Rickey Dale Newman, 51, has been sentenced to die for the 2001 slaying of 46-year-old Marie Cholette at a transient camp in Van Buren. He asked the court in a recent petition to end his appeal, saying he wanted to die.

“I know only my death is the only and right thing for me, so please let me be put to death” Newman said in the hand-written petition, filed without the aid of his federal public defenders. “Death is my only peace in life.”

The state’s highest court denied the petition Thursday without explanation.

Newman was allowed to represent himself at his 2002 trial, during which he took the stand and testified that he killed Cholette. His attorneys have argued that he is mentally ill, that he did not receive a fair trial and that new evidence casts doubt on his conviction.