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Thread: Cornell Antoine McNeal Sentenced to LWOP in 2014 KS Rape/Murder of Letitia "Tish" Davis

  1. #11
    Administrator Helen's Avatar
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    DA files notice to seek death penalty in Fairmount Park attack

    By Amy Renee Leiker
    Wichita Eagle

    Prosecutors have filed a formal notice announcing their intent to seek the death penalty against Cornell McNeal — the man accused of raping, beating and burning a woman in Fairmount Park nearly three years ago.

    McNeal on Friday was arraigned on capital murder, first-degree murder and rape charges connected to the Nov. 14, 2014, random attack on 36-year-old Letitia Davis, a year and a half after question of his competency to stand trial stalled the case in 2015.

    Davis, a newly engaged mother of four, was found naked and lying in a ring of fire at the park, near Wichita State University, on Nov. 14, 2014. Police have said she was snatched and assaulted while walking late that night. She died from her wounds eight days later.

    McNeal, in a police interview after his arrest, denied involvement. DNA and a broken cellphone linked him to the attack, according to court records.

    The notice, which reserves the state’s ability to seek a death sentence if McNeal is convicted of capital murder, was filed following Friday’s arraignment, Sedgwick County District Attorney Marc Bennett said. McNeal, who refuses to speak to his attorneys or in court, was deemed competent to stand trial last week.

    The court has set an October jury trial date for McNeal, according to Sedgwick County District Court records. The trial is expected to last two weeks.

    http://www.kansas.com/news/local/cri...157956854.html
    "I realize this may sound harsh, but as a father and former lawman, I really don't care if it's by lethal injection, by the electric chair, firing squad, hanging, the guillotine or being fed to the lions."
    - Oklahoma Rep. Mike Christian

    "There are some people who just do not deserve to live,"
    - Rev. Richard Hawke

    “There are lots of extremely smug and self-satisfied people in what would be deemed lower down in society, who also deserve to be pulled up. In a proper free society, you should be allowed to make jokes about absolutely anything.”
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  2. #12
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    Cornell McNeal granted new competency hearing

    By Kevin White
    KSN-TV News

    WICHITA, Kan. (KSNW) – Cornell McNeal, accused of capital murder, sat silent during his continuance hearing Tuesday. He is charged with capital murder in the November 2014 death of 36-year-old Letitia “Tish” Davis in Fairmount Park.

    McNeal’s attorneys asked for another mental competency evaluation, which Judge Wilbert granted. Both sides tentatively agreed to have competency evaluations done at Larned State Hospital over the next 60 days.

    Judge Wilbert asked McNeal if he understood the request for continuance, or for another evaluation. McNeal only acknowledged the judge’s words by making brief eye contact.

    The judge then ordered a status hearing for Friday, October 13 to see if McNeal will be cleared to stand trial on October 16.

    McNeal had been previously found competent to stand trial in June.

    http://ksn.com/2017/08/01/cornell-mc...tency-hearing/
    "I realize this may sound harsh, but as a father and former lawman, I really don't care if it's by lethal injection, by the electric chair, firing squad, hanging, the guillotine or being fed to the lions."
    - Oklahoma Rep. Mike Christian

    "There are some people who just do not deserve to live,"
    - Rev. Richard Hawke

    “There are lots of extremely smug and self-satisfied people in what would be deemed lower down in society, who also deserve to be pulled up. In a proper free society, you should be allowed to make jokes about absolutely anything.”
    - Rowan Atkinson

  3. #13
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    Cornell McNeal, suspect in brutal murder, was in court Thursday

    By KSN TV

    WICHITA, Kan. (KSNW) – The man accused of raping a woman and setting her on fire in 2014 was in court Thursday.

    Cornell McNeal is charged with capital murder, first-degree murder and rape for the death of Leticia Davis.

    Thursday’s hearing was to resolve the 35 pre-trial motions filed by the defense. During the hearing, McNeal got up and tried to leave the courtroom. He was stopped by a bailiff.

    After a recess, McNeal chose not to return to the courtroom but then changed his mind later on. District Attorney Marc Bennett addressed the length of the case and how it is still not resolved nearly three years after the crime happened.

    “We were off topic for a very long time having his competency assessed and that’s what caused the delays but that’s how this goes but delays don’t have any effect on things,” said Bennett. “They take a little longer but we’re making progress.”

    McNeal is scheduled to be back in court in October.

    http://ksn.com/2017/08/31/cornell-mc...ourt-thursday/
    "I realize this may sound harsh, but as a father and former lawman, I really don't care if it's by lethal injection, by the electric chair, firing squad, hanging, the guillotine or being fed to the lions."
    - Oklahoma Rep. Mike Christian

    "There are some people who just do not deserve to live,"
    - Rev. Richard Hawke

    “There are lots of extremely smug and self-satisfied people in what would be deemed lower down in society, who also deserve to be pulled up. In a proper free society, you should be allowed to make jokes about absolutely anything.”
    - Rowan Atkinson

  4. #14
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    Letitia Davis murder trial pushed back

    By Jenna Farhat
    Wichita State Flower

    Nov. 14, 2014, Letitia Davis was walking through Fairmount Park near Wichita State when she was raped, beat, set on fire, and left for dead, according to police.

    Nearly three years later, Davis’s accused attacker, Cornell McNeal, has not yet stood for jury trial.

    The jury trial was scheduled to start Mon., Oct. 16, but has been continued, or postponed. A new date has not been set, according to Dan Dillon, the district attorney’s office spokesman.

    Dillon said that, when the trial begins, it is expected to last two weeks due to the amount of evidence.

    McNeal will face charges of capital or first-degree murder, rape, and arson.

    Capital murder, which involves the rape and death of the same victim, is the only crime in Kansas that can warrant a death sentence.

    McNeal has consistently refused talk to his own defense attorneys or answer inquiries from a judge, stalling the case. He has undergone multiple mental evaluations and was found fit to stand trial, according to Judge Warren Wilbert.

    McNeal appeared in court Aug. 30 to resolve pre-trial motions.

    https://thesunflower.com/21201/uncategorized/21201/
    "I realize this may sound harsh, but as a father and former lawman, I really don't care if it's by lethal injection, by the electric chair, firing squad, hanging, the guillotine or being fed to the lions."
    - Oklahoma Rep. Mike Christian

    "There are some people who just do not deserve to live,"
    - Rev. Richard Hawke

    “There are lots of extremely smug and self-satisfied people in what would be deemed lower down in society, who also deserve to be pulled up. In a proper free society, you should be allowed to make jokes about absolutely anything.”
    - Rowan Atkinson

  5. #15
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    Man accused in woman's murder, rape to undergo mental evaluation

    By KWCH News

    WICHITA, Kan. A man accused in the 2014 murder and rape of a woman in Wichita's Fairmount Park will undergo a mental evaluation.

    Cornell McNeal is charged with raping Letitia Davis, then setting her on fire in the 2014 attack. Specifically, McNeal is charged with capital murder and rape in connection with Davis's death.

    The state has ordered a mental evaluation for McNeal at Larned State Hospital. As this process must happen before McNeal faces a jury, a continuance is likely, meaning the trial wouldn't happen until after the scheduled date of Dec. 18.

    At McNeal's arraignment in June, his attorney entered a "not guilty" plea on his behalf.

    http://www.kwch.com/content/news/Tri...450817363.html
    "I realize this may sound harsh, but as a father and former lawman, I really don't care if it's by lethal injection, by the electric chair, firing squad, hanging, the guillotine or being fed to the lions."
    - Oklahoma Rep. Mike Christian

    "There are some people who just do not deserve to live,"
    - Rev. Richard Hawke

    “There are lots of extremely smug and self-satisfied people in what would be deemed lower down in society, who also deserve to be pulled up. In a proper free society, you should be allowed to make jokes about absolutely anything.”
    - Rowan Atkinson

  6. #16
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    4 Wichita murders. 2 death penalty cases. More than 7 years with no trials. What’s taking so long?

    BY AMY RENEE LEIKER

    A man living in a quiet neighborhood near Wichita’s largest university found her, naked and screaming on the grass in a ring of flames. Letitia Davis, a 36-year-old newly engaged mother of four, had been walking in Fairmount Park late on Nov. 14, 2014, when a stranger attacked.

    When he was through with the assault, the stranger left Davis near the park’s tennis court, beaten and bloodied, raped and set on fire. Authorities eventually made an arrest. But Davis died after eight days in the hospital.

    She suffered burns on more than half of her body.

    Nearly five months earlier, on June 24, 2014, Wichita police had worked another horrific crime scene across town. A tidy, single-story home on a well kept south-side residential block became the site of a massacre when 45-year-old Tuyet Huynh; her 20-year-old daughter, Trinh Pham; and her soon-to-be son-in-law, Sean Pham, 21, were slaughtered as Trinh begged an emergency dispatcher for help.

    Police discovered the suspect in the deadly shootings, Huynh’s boyfriend, in the home with the bodies.

    The younger couple’s 5-month-old baby was the only other person found alive.

    At the time, the slayings shook the city: Four Wichitans were dead in two separate homicides with circumstances so chilling, prosecutors filed capital murder charges and announced they would seek the death penalty, the state’s harshest punishment for the worst premeditated killings.

    But nearly eight years later, the families of the victims are still waiting for justice.

    The men accused, Cornell McNeal and Vinh Van Nguyen, have been in jail since 2014.

    McNeal, 34, is charged with capital murder, an alternative count of first-degree premeditated murder, rape and two counts of arson in connection with Davis’ death. Nguyen, 48, is facing capital murder and three alternative counts of first-degree premeditated murder for the triple shooting, court records show.

    The men have pleaded not guilty. But neither case has gone to a jury yet.

    The defendants have trial dates scheduled for this summer — Nguyen’s on June 13 and McNeal’s on July 5 — although Nguyen’s will likely be postponed, court filings suggest.

    The two Wichita capital murder cases are among those that have taken the longest to resolve by a plea or jury verdict under Kansas’ contemporary capital punishment law, enacted in 1994.

    The families of the victims are frustrated. They want to know: What’s taking so long?

    “I’m very, very angry that this has not gone to trial yet,” Davis’ sister-in-law, Kimberly Donnelly, told The Eagle.

    The wait has been “absolutely ridiculous,” she said.

    “I have never heard of a trial taking eight years. . . . I understand appeals and all of that. But the very first trial, eight years? No. They’ve had him (McNeal) since five days after it happened.”

    Sean Pham’s mother agrees. Since the triple murder that stole her son in June 2014, Le Pham and her husband have been raising the baby boy Sean and his fiancee left behind.

    The child, who is 8 years old now, was his dad’s “whole world.”

    His life “got cheated because both of his parents got taken away,” she said.

    “Every time we go to court, he asks me when I get home, ‘How did it go?’” Le Pham said. “He is aware that the guy that murdered his parents is still sitting there.”

    Each time she leaves the courtroom after one of Nguyen’s hearings, she feels like she’s “breaking down,” she said.

    “I just want peace of mind for all of us.”

    In terms of victim numbers, 2014 wasn’t the worst for murders in Wichita. Twenty-six people were killed that year. Wichita police investigated more than double that in 2021, 54 homicides.

    But in a city where years sometimes pass with no multiple-victim slayings or capital murder cases, 2014 was notable. That year, three homicide cases investigated by Wichita police had two or more victims, and prosecutors filed capital murder charges three times, including in two of the multiple-victim cases.

    Nguyen is one of the defendants facing capital murder for allegedly killing more than one person.

    The other defendant’s case resolved long ago. Steven Wade Edwards II was sentenced to two life prison terms plus additional time in early 2017 after pleading guilty to reduced charges for the shooting deaths of an elderly Wichita couple over an alleged debt owed by their son. Prosecutors never sought the death penalty.

    McNeal is the third defendant who was charged with capital murder in 2014. There was only one victim, but circumstances surrounding the slaying — Davis was raped and fatally injured intentionally, prosecutors contend — supported a capital murder charge under state law. So the Sedgwick County District Attorney’s Office pursued it.

    Nguyen and McNeal could be sentenced to death if juries convict and unanimously vote to execute them. If either pleaded guilty, they would spend life in prison.

    Since lawmakers brought capital punishment back to Kansas in the mid-1990s, juries have handed down death sentences to 15 men, the last in 2016.

    So far, none have been executed.

    Nine are still on death row. Two have died. The rest had their death sentences overturned and are now serving life in prison.

    Attorneys and the court record say the delays in the two 2014 Wichita cases are the result of issues that commonly impact criminal proceedings, including appellate court rulings, evaluating a defendant’s competency to stand trial and attorneys and judges retiring or leaving for other reasons.

    Fallout from COVID-19 is also to blame. The pandemic left courts nationwide with unprecedented shutdowns that stalled most proceedings for months starting in early 2020.

    All of those issues have come into play in McNeal’s case, court filings show. He had mental health evaluations and was appointed new attorneys after he stopped speaking to his lawyers in 2015. While it is within a defendant’s rights to refuse to correspond or cooperate with their attorneys, courts must ensure the lack of communication is voluntary, not due to a mental illness, experts say.

    Mental examinations and restoring a defendant to competency, if necessary, can take months, or even years.

    A new judge, Jeffrey Goering, began overseeing McNeal’s case after the one assigned, Warren Wilbert, announced his January 2019 retirement. And one of McNeal’s defense lawyers, Val Wachtel, died, causing another hiccup.

    Appeals in two unrelated Kansas cases — one involving an insanity argument from Osage County death row inmate James Kraig Kahler and the other involving an abortion rights decision that Sedgwick County death row inmates Jonathan and Reginald Carr used to argue they have an inalienable right to life under the Kansas Constitution — also slowed the case, court records show. Those issues have since resolved.

    But McNeal’s attorneys still intend to hold a hearing later this month so their arguments stemming from the abortion-rights case decision become part of the court’s official record.

    Asked to weigh in on the delays, McNeal’s lawyers, Peter Conley, Paul Oller and Mark Manna, provided a written statement.

    “Cornell McNeal’s life matters. He is loved by his family, and is the father of a 10-year-old girl,” they wrote.

    “The government attempting to take the life of one of its citizens requires careful scrutiny, and differs dramatically from any other state action. Complicating this, Cornell’s legal representation had been in flux. His current legal team is working hard to ensure a fair trial, where we can defend Cornell and share his story.”

    The circumstances delaying a trial in Nguyen’s capital murder case are even more complicated.

    As in McNeal’s case, Nguyen’s lawyers have questioned his competency to stand trial. They argue that six medical professionals think Nguyen not only suffers from schizophrenia, a serious mental illness marked by delusions and hallucinations, but also an intellectual disability, which would prevent a death sentence from being carried out under a 2002 U.S. Supreme Court ruling.

    Nguyen has experienced two lengthy stretches of incompetency since prosecutors filed charges, with the latest lasting nearly three years, from August 2018 until April 2021 , court records show. Being competent means a person understands the legal proceedings and can assist in their own defense.

    People who are mentally incompetent cannot be convicted of a crime, regardless of how clear the evidence is.

    Nguyen’s case was also handed off to a different judge, Kevin O’Connor, after Wilbert’s retirement, records show.

    But the issue slowing progress toward trial the most at this point is his lawyers’ ability to conduct a deeply thorough investigation of Nguyen in his native Vietnam, where he spent most of his life before moving to the U.S. in the late 2000s.

    Court filings from Nguyen’s defense team say the country’s strict travel policies have hindered their ability to send investigators abroad to conduct in-person interviews with family and to track down information about his relationships, childhood and school, employment and health histories. Such information is vital to the sentencing portion of a defendant’s trial because when death is on the table, jurors must also hear reasons their life should be spared.

    While video or phone interviews might seem the solution to travel troubles, Washburn Law School professor Jeffrey Jackson says there’s debate about whether those workarounds violate a defendant’s constitutionally protected right to confront witnesses in open court.

    Citing pandemic-fueled problems associated with conducting Nguyen’s life investigation, his lawyers in February asked the judge to either take death off of the table or to push the trial back until a time that their work could be completed.

    It’s unclear when that might occur.

    In a written motion the lawyers said “proceeding to a capital trial in June would violate many of the constitutional rights guaranteed to Mr. Nguyen” and that “all of the roadblocks . . . stem from the fact that this is a death penalty case.”

    ”Constitutional rights do not get thrown out the window just because they inconvenience the government’s desired timeline,” the motion states.

    “Mr. Nguyen will be irreparably prejudiced in myriad ways if a capital trial moves forward in June.”

    The judge denied the request to pull death off the table, court records show, but did not set a new trial date.

    If execution wasn’t an option, the case would have ended long ago, Nguyen’s lawyers say.

    Asked for comment on the case delays, one of the lawyers on Nguyen’s defense team, Timothy Frieden, provided a written statement.

    “We are mindful of the families’ pain and frustration in this case. Mr. Nguyen is a person who grew up in a war-torn country, and in our view has a serious mental illness and an intellectual disability,” he wrote.

    “Those things, combined with the pandemic, have created challenges unlike any other. Absent the decision to seek the death penalty, this case likely would have been resolved long ago. However, if we must proceed to a capital trial, we have a responsibility to fully prepare Mr. Nguyen’s life story for a jury.”

    Sedgwick County District Attorney Marc Bennett said in a recent interview where he spoke generally about capital punishment in Kansas that prosecutors are ready to take both cases to trial.

    Because “death is different,” long delays “are not uncommon” in capital murder cases nationwide, he said.

    Experts The Eagle asked to weigh in on the case timelines also said it is common for capital murder cases to take years to get to trial.

    The U.S. Supreme Court requires a “super due process” for death cases because once the sentence is carried out, it cannot be reversed, said Jackson, the Washburn law professor.

    “From the very start of when you want to try somebody, there are a lot of additional things that you have to take into account because we want to make sure that the defendants’ rights are protected.”

    Long waits can lead to problems, though, such as witnesses forgetting details and evidence degrading, he said.

    There’s also question of whether years of delays help or harm a defendant.

    Jackson said judges are typically willing to grant continuances as long as the requests have merit. Judges are concerned with “getting it right” the first time so convictions and sentences are not reversed on appeal, which can drag cases out longer, he said.

    “One misstep then you have to do it all over again.”

    Jackson said McNeal and Nguyen’s cases are “a little on the long side” but probably not unusual, given the pandemic’s effect on the court.

    But Manna, the head of the state’s Death Penalty Defense Unit, said that over the years the length of capital murder cases has gotten longer as the courts and attorneys continue to figure out how to move them through without mistakes.

    “Twenty years ago, we were trying these cases within two or three years,” he said, speaking generally about capital punishment in Kansas.

    The Carr brothers, who committed one of the most infamous multiple murders in Wichita history, were tried and sentenced to death in under two years, for example. John Robinson, a Kansas City-area serial killer linked to the deaths of at least eight women from 1985 to 2000, was convicted by a jury and sentenced to die less than three years after his arrest.

    It was swift justice for victims and their families.

    But defense teams found they “weren’t really prepared” so quickly, Manna said.

    “There was a lot of things that weren’t getting done,” he said.

    Poorly prepared lawyers can lead to ineffective assistance of counsel claims, which may result in convictions or sentences being overturned on appeal.

    Robinson, whose death sentence was upheld by the Kansas Supreme Court in 2015, is currently making such an argument in civil court. Manna, who represented him at his 2002 trial, said he testified about case lengths and preparedness at one of Robinson’s hearings earlier this year.

    If a judge sides with Robinson’s claims that his lawyers weren’t ready for trial, his death sentence might be in jeopardy.

    “We began to learn over the years that there was so much more we could be doing on these cases” especially for the mitigation investigation and in pretrial litigation, Manna said, speaking generally.

    Manna says now the minimum length for a capital murder case where prosecutors are seeking a death sentence is around three years.

    But five to seven years had become standard, even before pandemic shutdowns.

    To him, McNeal’s and Nguyen’s cases “are not abnormally long.”

    “I know in a lot of other states, the capital litigation can sometimes be as much as eight, nine, 10 years. A lot depends upon what you’re dealing with,” he said.

    But the explanations are little comfort to the murder victims’ families.

    They say the delays have been detrimental.

    “It’s like ripping the scab off” every time the case is brought up, Davis’ sister-in-law said.

    “We’re hurt because he (McNeal) took her from us. We’re hurt that he’s not paying for what he’s done,” Kimberly Donnelly said.

    For three or four years after her death, Davis’ father, Jeffrey Donnelly, said he couldn’t stomach the silence and solitude of sitting in alone a deer stand.

    “She just popped in my mind all of the time,” he said. So he stopped hunting.“

    His wife still has the last text messages Davis sent in the days before her murder. And his family still lights a candle every year on her birthday. Davis was always smiling, he said.

    “We just miss her dearly, and her kids miss her.”

    David Holloway is a longtime friend and spokesman for Tuyet Huynh and Trinh Pham’s family. He said Nguyen’s case has taken so long that Huynh’s elderly parents wonder whether they’ll live long enough to see his trial.

    “Every time they see something like this on TV, it brings back that day,” he said, adding: “It is a nightmare that never, ever stops.”

    Le Pham says when she does get her day in court, she plans to ask Nguyen a question that’s plagued her since the night her son and the two women were killed.

    Nguyen had an alleged history of aggressive behavior toward his girlfriend, Huynh.

    But why murder the young couple, too?

    “Why the kids? Why would he do what he did?” she said, her voice shaking with grief.

    Asked whether she wanted Nguyen to be executed if he is convicted, she said:

    “As long as I’m alive, I will not change (my mind). He took three lives. He should receive the death penalty.”

    https://amp.kansas.com/news/local/cr...259834765.html
    Last edited by Bobsicles; 04-04-2022 at 01:21 AM.
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  7. #17
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    Jury selection begins for man accused in Wichita woman's rape, murder

    By KAKE News

    Davis, a mother of four, was found by a neighbor who said he heard blood-curdling screams from the park that night. When he went out to check, he found a small fire and Davis screaming.

    Davis told police that she did not know her attacker. She suffered burns on more than half of her body.

    Investigators said they used DNA evidence to connect McNeal to the attack. He could face the death penalty.

    Davis, a mother of four, was found by a neighbor who said he heard blood-curdling screams from the park that night. When he went out to check, he found a small fire and Davis screaming.

    Davis told police that she did not know her attacker. She suffered burns on more than half of her body.

    Investigators said they used DNA evidence to connect McNeal to the attack. He could face the death penalty.

    https://www.kake.com/story/46825205/...ns-rape-murder
    "I realize this may sound harsh, but as a father and former lawman, I really don't care if it's by lethal injection, by the electric chair, firing squad, hanging, the guillotine or being fed to the lions."
    - Oklahoma Rep. Mike Christian

    "There are some people who just do not deserve to live,"
    - Rev. Richard Hawke

    “There are lots of extremely smug and self-satisfied people in what would be deemed lower down in society, who also deserve to be pulled up. In a proper free society, you should be allowed to make jokes about absolutely anything.”
    - Rowan Atkinson

  8. #18
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    Cornell McNeal trial: 1st responders recall talks with battered, burned woman who later died

    By Grant DeMars
    KWCH News

    WICHITA, Kan. (KWCH) - More testimony came Friday in the trial of Cornell McNeal, the man charged with capital murder in the 2014 attack that killed Letitia Davis. Prosecutors say McNeal raped and beat Davis in Fairmount Park, then set her on fire. He is charged with capital murder.

    In court Friday, more first responders who briefly spoke with Davis after the attack took the stand. A friend who said she was with Davis also testified, as did fire investigators and a forensic scientist who discussed finding evidence of liquid fire accelerants in multiple places, including a woman’s bra. Investigators concluded the fire was set intentionally.

    In the minutes following the attack nearly eight years ago, two first responders said despite Davis’ condition, she was coherent and able to talk to them. They said she could tell them her name, date of birth and medical history on the scene before she was taken to a hospital’s emergency room and intubated.

    “The first question I asked her is, ‘what happened,?’ She responded with three words: ‘I was raped,’” former Sedgwick County Paramedic Captain Tyler Sullivan said. “That’s what she said.”

    Wichita Police Officer Alli Larison said she was standing and lowered herself to try to have a conversation with Davis.

    “I asked her if she knew the person who’d done this to her. She said, ‘no,’” Larison said.

    In court Friday, prosecutors also showed the jury photos from inside the ER the night of the attack. Those photos showed Davis naked, her skin lacerated and charred and her face so swollen you couldn’t see her eyes.

    Looking ahead in the trial, a list for testimony includes doctors who tried to save Davis’ life and a DNA analyst who will connect seminal fluid found in Davis to McNeal. Eyewitness News was told this trial could last about another week.

    https://www.kwch.com/2022/07/09/corn...ho-later-died/
    "I realize this may sound harsh, but as a father and former lawman, I really don't care if it's by lethal injection, by the electric chair, firing squad, hanging, the guillotine or being fed to the lions."
    - Oklahoma Rep. Mike Christian

    "There are some people who just do not deserve to live,"
    - Rev. Richard Hawke

    “There are lots of extremely smug and self-satisfied people in what would be deemed lower down in society, who also deserve to be pulled up. In a proper free society, you should be allowed to make jokes about absolutely anything.”
    - Rowan Atkinson

  9. #19
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    Medical witnesses take stand in murder trial of Cornell McNeal

    By Lily Wu
    KWCH News

    WICHITA, Kan. (KWCH) - The trial of a Wichita man accused of raping, beating and setting a woman on fire in 2014 continued Monday. On the third day of the trial of Cornell McNeal, nine witnesses took the stand, many that either took care of Leticia Davis, the battered and burned woman who died from her injuries, or handled some of the medical evidence in the case.

    Medical experts described the condition of 36-year-old Leticia Davis as “severely burned” when she was admitted to the hospital in November 2014. Davis also suffered bleeding in and outside of her brain. In court Monday, referencing an image of Davis shown after the attack Ascension Via Christi General Surgeon Dr. Robert Bingaman said he was looking at a picture of someone “who’s covered with a flammable substance that’s then lit on fire.”

    “You can’t just strike a match to a person and have them burn like this. There has to be something else,” he said. “It would take extreme heat to cause the amount and depth of damage that she encountered.”

    McNeal, now 34, accused of capital in Davis’ death, heard from several medical witnesses who described Davis’ condition after the attack nearly eight years ago.

    “When people were going in and out and they had the curtain open, I was trying to peek in to see what I would be going into. I noticed how severely she was burned,” one medical witness said.

    During testimony in court Monday, jurors saw graphic images of Davis’ injuries. She died Nov. 22, 2014, a week after medical professionals first treated her for the severe traumatic injuries.

    The state plans to have more witnesses Tuesday, the fourth day of testimony in the trial. McNeal faces charges of capital and first-degree murder, rape, arson, and battery.

    https://www.kwch.com/2022/07/12/medi...ornell-mcneal/
    "I realize this may sound harsh, but as a father and former lawman, I really don't care if it's by lethal injection, by the electric chair, firing squad, hanging, the guillotine or being fed to the lions."
    - Oklahoma Rep. Mike Christian

    "There are some people who just do not deserve to live,"
    - Rev. Richard Hawke

    “There are lots of extremely smug and self-satisfied people in what would be deemed lower down in society, who also deserve to be pulled up. In a proper free society, you should be allowed to make jokes about absolutely anything.”
    - Rowan Atkinson

  10. #20
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    Detective provides investigation details in murder trial of Cornell McNeal

    By Shawn Loging
    KWCH News

    WICHITA, Kan. (KWCH) - The trial of a man accused in a 2014 violent crime that fatally injured a Wichita woman entered its fourth day on Tuesday, July 12. Going over the investigation and evidence the state says link Cornell McNeal to Letitia Davis’ murder, the case’s lead detective and the medical examiner took the stand.

    In November 2014, Davis was found in a northeast Wichita park, beaten and burned. She’d also been raped. She died from her injuries a few days later at a Wichita hospital. In court Tuesday, the state’s case against McNeal focused on what led police to him and is movements the night of the violent crime. The lead detective told the jury it wasn’t until DNA results came back from the sexual assault examiner that McNeal was named a suspect.

    “The swab taken from Letitia at the hospital, that had matched up to a previous case where a sample had been taken from a person involved in that case,” Wichita Police Det. Tim Relph said.

    Detective Relph was on the stand for most of the day, discussing the investigation into Davis’ murder.

    In addition to the first interview police did with McNeal after his arrest where he denied having sex with Davis, or anyone, the jury saw two surveillance videos from the night Davis was found in Fairmount Park, burned and beaten. The state said one video showed McNeal entering and leaving a fast food restaurant. The other showed McNeal walking up to a woman at a bar and then taking a cigarette lighter from her, and leaving with it. Both pieces of surveillance were in the area of the crime scene.

    McNeal’s attorney argues that when McNeal was arrested less than a week after the crime, he didn’t have any noted injuries even though Davis had injuries consistent with fighting back.

    The medical examiner also covered the injuries Davis suffered, saying her cause of death was from burns with brain trauma.

    “Without the blunt force injuries, she still may have died from the burns, but having this level of trauma to the head certainly may have accelerated death or contributed to death,” Sedgwick County Forensic Pathology Specialist Dr. Scott Kipper said.

    The state has one more witness to call Wednesday. The defense says they have a number of witnesses but could wrap up their case on Wednesday as well. Closing arguments could be possible for Thursday.

    McNeal faces charges of capital murder and first-degree murder, along with rape, arson and battery.

    https://www.kwch.com/2022/07/12/dete...ornell-mcneal/
    "I realize this may sound harsh, but as a father and former lawman, I really don't care if it's by lethal injection, by the electric chair, firing squad, hanging, the guillotine or being fed to the lions."
    - Oklahoma Rep. Mike Christian

    "There are some people who just do not deserve to live,"
    - Rev. Richard Hawke

    “There are lots of extremely smug and self-satisfied people in what would be deemed lower down in society, who also deserve to be pulled up. In a proper free society, you should be allowed to make jokes about absolutely anything.”
    - Rowan Atkinson

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