Competency ruling in Fairmount Park killing delayed

Saying “death is different,” a Sedgwick County District Court judge on Friday delayed a ruling on whether Cornell McNeal is competent to stand trial in a case that could result in the death penalty.

McNeal is accused of grabbing Letitia Davis while she was walking through Fairmount Park in north Wichita on the night of Nov. 14, 2014. He has been charged with raping her, beating her, setting her body on fire and then leaving her for dead.

Davis died eight days later. One of the charges McNeal, 28, faces is attempted capital murder, meaning that if he is convicted the jury could sentence him to death.

After receiving a second assessment from Larned State Hospital recommending that McNeal is competent to stand trial, Judge Warren Wilbert said Friday that he was prepared to rule McNeal competent and that the case should proceed.

A second assessment was ordered after McNeal refused to speak with his court-appointed attorneys or acknowledge inquiries from the judge. He continued that behavior Friday in court, saying nothing to his attorneys and not responding to Wilbert.

“Mr. McNeal, you need to know, I think you do — and again we’re going through the same exercise where he’s just staring straight ahead and acting like he’s not going to participate — you need to know, sir, that the state can seek to put you to death,” Wilbert said. “So the consequences of a conviction is not just you go to prison.

“If the jury determines that you should be put to death, you’ll have a death penalty hanging over your head.”

The alternative to a death sentence upon a guilty conviction is life in prison without possibility of parole, Wilbert said.

Mark Rudy, Sedgwick County’s chief public defender, requested more time before a competency ruling is made, saying the defense team had hired its own expert to assess McNeal.

“We are not accepting the findings of Larned,” Rudy said, adding, “This is capital litigation. I’m not going to be stipulating to much of anything” — meaning little will go unchallenged because the defendant could be sentenced to death.

The defense’s expert is based in Texas and has not completed his assessment, Rudy said.

Given the stakes of the case, Wilbert said, he agreed to defer a ruling. A hearing on the status of the case was set for March 14.

Sedgwick County District Attorney Marc Bennett said a competency hearing that could be expected to include testimony from both prosecution and defense experts would take place sometime after that.

This story was originally published January 6, 2017 at 5:19 PM with the headline "Competency ruling in Fairmount Park killing delayed."