In court the prosecution gave their theory, that Hughes had killed her husband out of jealousy. Witnesses testified he had two girlfriends. The jury made their decision, Hughes was guilty. In February , the judge granted Hughes a new trial citing jury selection discrimination by the prosecution. In November the new jury reached a different verdict Hughes was cleared of murder charges. The District Attorney at the time Faye Peterson was sure the jury got it wrong.
For Hughes she finally felt justified. Through her attorney, Dennis Sweet, Hughes declined our request for an interview. Sweet said Hughes believed the local media never told her story fairly. The attorney says she is now unemployed. Hughes has moved out of the Jackson home where Brian Hughes was killed. She now lives in Pearl with her two daughters. The case is getting a lot of attention because it demonstrates that innocent people can get convicted and go to jail.
But by the grace of God and the judge's appropriate ruling in granting her a new trial she got a second chance. If not for that she would be serving the rest of her life in prison. I think the media was so interested because of the acquittal from the second trial. Skip to content. There was however strong testimony from neighbors who said they heard someone drive off after hearing the shots.
Hughes says, "The real tragedy in this is not the time I've been prosecuted over the past three years but the person who actually killed Brian is still out there.
Hinds county District Attorney Faye Peterson said after the trial, "unfortunately there are times when killers go free and this is one of those instances.
It was a warm early June night in Jackson, Miss. Elicia Hughes had just closed up her third-grade classroom for the summer. The year-old teacher had been over at her parents with her two kids earlier. Elicia Hughes: Brian had a very erratic schedule. So it was not uncommon for him to get home late.
So I didn't sit up and wait on Brian. That night, June 3, , she put the two girls — one 3, the other 4 — in the big bed with her.
Now, after 10 o'clock, she could barely stay away as she read in the master bedroom. Then, a little after 7 p. And then hearing that alarm sound that made me aware that was the popping sound was probably something pertaining to my house. Her husband Brian was known as a security conscious guy. And the alarm he'd had installed --the kind you have to arm and disarm on entering and leaving --was blaring. She got up and looked at the bedroom keypad to disarm the horn, she said, but couldn't remember the code.
She started walking down the hallway. And then I kind of glanced across the foyer and I see Brian laying in the living room.
And his back is to me, and he's facing the couch. And the first thing I felt was relief because I thought, oh, he is here. He is at home. He can handle this. And it never, it did not enter my mind at that point that he was hurt. Brian Hughes, her year-old husband, was on the floor near the coach, not moving. Elicia Hughes: Worse case scenario: I thought that he was intoxicated. And one of his friends had brought him home and just laid him on the floor, and I was, okay, you need to get better friends.
I need you to help me. I need to turn it off. And I didn't know what to do. And as I was touching him, I felt blood and he was there, and he was hurt. And my mind was racing. Brian and Elicia had met in high school when they were He spied her through the door of her classroom and made a point of talking to her, the pretty girl who'd been chosen Miss Lanier High. Elicia Hughes: He was so outgoing. He was such a people person.
And he had a way about him that made you feel important. Elicia had graduated college, taught a little, then worked in insurance before she and Brian finally became engaged. Brian had served in the Air Force and for the past few years had been working alongside his dad at the Delphi Packard plant where he fabricated moldings for the automobile electrical supply company.
A single-story ranch with plenty of family nearby, always up for babysitting and backyard barbecues. Now at at night, Brian was lying on the floor of his home, not passed out drunk as Elicia first thought, but riddled with multiple gunshot wounds. Elicia Hughes: I did not realize that he had been shot until I was kneeling on the ground beside him. About then the phone rang. It was the alarm company, someone asking what was going on there.
As the alarm company notified the police, Elicia says she took stock the best she could: Husband shot. Who and where was the shooter now? Dennis Murphy, NBC Correspondent: Do you worry that this guy might be in the house, and maybe has even gotten back to where you were with the children? Elicia Hughes: I can't remember what I did specifically first. But I know that I was kneeling beside Brian, and I was trying to comfort him.
And I was still thinking, "Oh god, somebody could still be in the house. I remember crawling towards the front door, and kicking the door shut. Dennis Murphy: You thought whoever shot him might be just outside the door still?
Elicia Hughes: Could have been, I didn't know. I closed the door, I locked the door. At some point I remember peeking out the window in the living room. And it was just a lot of back and forth. Because I would like close the door, go back to Brian, peek out the window, go back to Brian. Dennis Murphy: Brian's mother, Pat Hughes, was notified by the alarm company that something was wrong at Elicia and Brian's house.
Pat Hughes: All I could think of, is the house is on fire. So on my way I call my brother-in-law, who worked with the fire department, I said, "Did you hear anything? Brian's mother got to the front door but the police would let her go no further. Pat Hughes: One of the policemen at the door told me Brian had been shot so I called his name.
And I called Elicia's name she called back to me. And I told her, "Elicia, don't have Brian die. Talk to him. Hold him. Please don't let my baby die. Willie Jr. My mother's car, police cars. I just hoped that I was dreaming and I had passed out and went to sleep and was in a deep dream. Elicia Hughes: One of the detectives came into the kitchen and told me that Brian's injuries had been fatal. It just seemed that everything just seemed kind of surreal and I just kept thinking I don't know what to do.
He'd been murdered, apparently, by an intruder who unloaded a gun on him when he opened the front door. Crime scene investigators began their work gingerly because this case was sensitive, almost like a murder in the law enforcement family.
The victim's uncle Vernon is the ranking fire chief and a former arson investigator. Vernon: We met up with a couple of detectives to try to decipher what had actually happened. Dennis Murphy: Because you are a close family member but you're also a professional crime scene investigator? Dennis Murphy: So you're just trying to put together what is this little bit of evidence I have?
Bonnie: Elicia was sitting at the kitchen table saying, wringing her hands, saying "what am I going to do, what am I going to do? The police worked the crime scene at the Hughes home late into the night. Daniels, a patrol officer, briefed me on what it was: "I've got a black male. Appears to have multiple gun shot wounds.
Someone had unloaded a. Dennis Murphy: Did you find any blood from, say, the doorway threshold back to where the body was? Dennis Murphy: The front door of the house opens into a small foyer, the body lay about five feet away from the door by the couch in the living room. The master bedroom where Elicia said she was drowsing off is to the right.
The floor tiles inside the door showed no sign of blood spatter, as the detective expected. Daniels: All the blood was right there with the body. The type of weapon used, a. One shot looked as though it had gone wild and lodged in the door molding.
The victim's wounds -- all around the arms and torso, six in all, including two to the groin area -- told the detective it wasn't a professional hit. Daniels: That large of a gun was being shot by an inexperienced shooter. Routinely, when a husband and wife are together in a house and one of them has been shot to death, the police immediately take a hard look at the surviving spouse, but that didn't happen on that night at the Hughes home. Daniels: The commander of the unit advised us not to talk to her because he felt like she was going through a lot, she was grieving real hard.
Daniels: The victim, his sister-in-law works at the state crime lab. Then his brother works at the police crime lab. They have an uncle that is the arson investigator for the fire department. So the detective admits out of respect for the family, the crime-scene work was less aggressive than it might have been.
Investigators sawed out the sheetrock where a stray bullet came to rest, but they didn't do a thorough search of the house. They did, however, recover what they thought was a small baggie of marijuana. Daniels: Next door neighbor said they heard the gunshot and they looked out. Dennis Murphy: Didn't see anybody running out the front door Over the next few days the police continued their legwork but without any breakthroughs. And while the police searched for the killer, Elica has to tell her two girls -- 3 and 4 -- that their father wouldn't be coming home.
Elicia Hughes: That was probably the hardest thing I ever had to do. They were still looking for their dad to come home. Pat Hughes: I couldn't wrap my mind around burying my child.
And Brian's big family would embrace their daughter-in-law in the weeks ahead. Pat Hughes: I gave her a key to the house and I told her when she's on this side of town she could always come by the house and just be there.
The detectives needed, of course, to get Elicia's statement about that night down after the shock had worn off, so six days after the shooting she went to the police station for an interview.
As she spoke, the detectives wondered why she didn't hear the alarm go off before the "pops" of gunfire? Elicia Hughes: I heard what I heard. I heard it in the order that I heard it. And I did not change it around. They would ask the question, you know, different ways. And I would answer it according to how they asked it. But the police detectives were also adding to their case file information about the marriage of Elicia and Brian.
Did it mean anything that he'd had children before the marriage and was paying child support? Elicia Hughes: Brian had two children prior to our marriage. Dennis Murphy: Everyone knew the facts involved in that yes? But when they found out Brian had two current girlfriends, they definitely wanted the details.
Phone logs told them he'd been talking to one of his lovers on the his cell phone that very night, as he went in the door. Daniels: We found out that as he got home he was on the phone with his girlfriend. Dennis Murphy: That gives you a very interesting lead?
His father Willie couldn't help but think back to the day of Brian and Elicia's wedding, how out in the garden he'd taken them both aside for some pre-wedding counseling from a year veteran. Willie Hughes Jr. And, as it turned out, once you got past the family portraits, Brian's happy-go-lucky air, and Elicia's beauty, his parents both knew it had been a rocky union for a while.
Pat Hughes: Brian told me how mean Elicia was. Pat Hughes: He told me he was going to move out, and I took off my job and went to where he worked. And he and I sat in the parking lot and cried together. And I begged him not to do it. Dennis Murphy: Stay with her, try and hold it together? As for Elicia, she concedes the two of them were in a rough patch but nothing any worse she thought than most couples go through. Elicia Hughes: I'm not going to sit here and say that "oh we had a perfect life, perfect marriage," because we didn't.
But I thought we had a happy life and good marriage. Dennis Murphy: Was your marriage in trouble at that point Elicia? Elicia Hughes: There was not any discussions of divorce, of leaving, of separating, or anything like that. We were doing what we were supposed to do as parents. And we were doing what we were supposed to do as a husband and a wife. Dennis Murphy: Was it a less happy proposition than you thought marriage with Brian might be? Elicia Hughes: I knew that a marriage would have seasons, you know, seasons of happy bliss, and then seasons of hard work.
And at this particular time, it was an in-between season. It wasn't, you know, that we were walking' around giddy and happy. But we weren't walking around the house arguing and bickering either. It was just an in-between season. Dennis Murphy: Was Brian seeing women on the side, Elicia? Elicia Hughes: At the time that Brian died, I did not believe that he was seeing other people.
But Brian and I met when we were 17, and we didn't marry until we were And so there had been instances before where there had been other people in in the relationship. So if anyone had asked me, "Was Brian above cheating," I would have said, "No, he's not above it. But he was seeing someone — a young woman who'd just lost a baby, and the scuttlebutt was that it had been Brian's. It was the same woman he was talking to on a cell phone as he walked into his home that night.
Remember, Brian had been shot six times, what cops refer to as overkill. Dennis Murphy: What does that tell you when a man gets shot in the groin? Dennis Murphy: As you did what you could do at the scene and you're putting away your notepad going back to the car what did you think you had, detective? Daniels: It kind of got in my head that "okay, something is not right. Either the wife did something here or she knows something.
Whichever it was, the cops were no longer going to be treating Elicia as a handle-with-care widow. Elicia Hughes had sold the ranch house where her husband Brian had been shot to death the previous June. She was trying to hold her life together, teaching third grade, caring for her two small girls.
Elicia Hughes : I would show up at the police department and ask them a question about, you know, where are you with this investigation? Elicia Hughes : What's going on. I haven't heard anything. What have you got?
But Brian's family, who'd been so close to their daughter-in-law going back years, could feel it more than put their finger on it. Elicia, they thought, seemed to be turning her back on them, acting colder somehow. The murdered husband's kid brother, Willie Jr. He believed his sister-in-law had a deep-down mean-streak in her and now he saw it really coming out, even as he tried to help her.
The times that you did attempt to contact her, you didn't get a return call. She kind of became real stand-offish. I tried willingly to put myself in that position to assist, and instead of embracing me; she kind of pushed back on me and continued to push back.
There'd been some grumbling at the time of the murder about Elicia Hughes getting off easy during the initial stages of the investigation because of her family connections. But not anymore. The questions in Detective Daniel's mind at the scene that night, the stuff that just wasn't adding up, had only become more insistent.
If the husband was shot at the front door: Why wasn't there blood on the floor? Daniels: The way the body was positioned and the blood was there, we knew the shooting occurred in the den. We knew that from day one. Daniels: Because of where the blood was by the body. Underneath the body. And it made no sense to the investigators that Brian would have failed to disarm the alarm that night before opening the door. And just why would a security-obsessed man like Brian Hughes even open the door after 11 pm in the first place?
Brian's family said his home was his castle and you didn't get across the moat unless you gave him warning. He actually laid back down and some time later, he must have looked back out the window and saw my dad was still in the truck.
Dennis Murphy: You weren't getting in his house unless you followed his rule of "call me"? I respected his rules. And then, the detective thought, thought there was major problem with the logic of the story Elicia had first told him about being awakened that night. She told the police she heard the "pop pop pop," then the alarm went off. Dennis Murphy: So the sequence of events here, detective, what do you have to believe has happened for her story to be right?
Daniels: For her story to be right is that the intruder came in, the alarm went off, then the shooter shot Brian. And another part of the growing case file was what Brian's family regarded as Elicia's demeanor that night. As shook up as Elicia was in that call recorded by the alarm company, Brian's family say that in the hours they were in the house with her, they never saw or heard those kinds of emotions again.
Had she, perhaps, been washing away evidence, the cops would later ask? That night, almost as an after-thought, the police gave her the only forensic test. Daniels: The mobile crime lab investigator did a gunshot residue on her hand that night. So as the weeks went by, in the investigators' mind there was no question that Elicia Hughes was a suspect in her husband's murder. But the victim's family just could not wrap their minds around that concept, that Elicia could be the killer of their Brian.
My heart would not let me believe it. Pat Hughes: That she was involved. I didn't want to believe it. But after eight months of investigating, the gunshot residue test on Elica's hands was finally complete and had tested positive for a trace on the back of her left hand. Daniels: When we got the gunshot residue results back, we went over everything we had. And the district attorney said "you have enough to cut an arrest warrant. Elicia, the sweet-faced third grade teacher and mother, was charged with the murder of her husband.
Elicia Hughes: I did not see it coming. I went to work that day. I received a phone call from my attorney and she said, "well, I heard that they have a warrant out for your arrest.
And immediately the adrenaline is pumping and I was really hoping she was joking, but knowing that she wasn't. And not knowing what to do. Elicia Hughes: I was handcuffed. I didn't want to be handcuffed in front of my children, so we arranged for a meeting place. Dennis Murphy: Charged with the murder of your husband Brian. Elicia Hughes: Read my rights. Read my rights, placed in a police car and driven downtown.
She was accused not just of a crime of passion, but plotting it all out. And the authorities believed she unloaded a. Daniels: The fact that she knew was she going to get all this money, plus the fact that he was doing all this cheating, it's time to get rid of him. And the prosecutors, partners Stanley Alexander and Rebecca Mansell, thought they had plenty to convince a jury: The philandering husband, the angry wife, no blood where it should be, an across-the-street neighbor who'd looked out and seen no killer speeding away.
Dennis Murphy: You had to believe this demure third-grade teacher got a. He's on the phone with his girlfriend, then moments later he's dead. If there was no one at the door, then the gun is in Elicia's hand, argued the prosecutors. Rebecca Mansell: There is no question that not only the forensic evidence, but every other piece or shred of evidence we could put together and the witness accounts, Elicia Hughes is the only person that had access.
And it didn't take the jury of six men and six women, almost evenly split on race, to see the case just way the prosecutor laid it out. Dick: Exactly. We felt that she had planned it and executed it. Even the husband's family that stood by her for so long was finally now convinced. The mom and third-grade teacher was sentenced to life in prison.
Bonnie Smith was Brian's aunt. Bonnie Smith: We still couldn't believe Elicia could have done that, because we loved Elicia just like she was my blood niece. We were very close. It was just unbelievable -- until the trial did I finally make up my mind that she did do it. Up until then I still had doubts. There was someone else with doubts about the trial. Someone who's opinion mattered. The trial judge. Elicia Hughes, the year-old mother of two, was going behind bars for virtually the rest of her life for a crime she proclaimed she didn't commit.
She said her husband Brian had been shot to death by someone who came to their front door that night. Elicia Hughes: It was very surreal, to the point you almost don't believe it's happening to you. Dennis Murphy: And it was also very real. It wasn't a movie because there you were: standing before a jury and a judge accused of the murder of your husband saying "jurors, the motivation here is this man has a lot of girlfriends on the side.
The wife was absolutely outraged and you need to find her guilty of premeditated murder. Elicia Hughes: Not only did they think that I was angry with Brian because he had multiple girlfriends but they also alleged I was greedy and I killed him for the insurance money. Dennis Murphy: You were found guilty and sent away for life.
Elicia Hughes: Through this whole situation, it's always like I can't believe this is happening. I cannot believe that it has gotten to this point. I can't believe it has gotten this bad. I always thought that the justice system worked. I thought that if you told the truth, that the truth worked. And it's not working for me, the truth is not working for me. And the system is not working for me and not only was it not working for me, it was almost like it was working against me.
Dennis Murphy: They processed you into the county jail? Dennis Murphy: They take away your clothes, your personal things? Elicia Hughes: Yes. I grew up a pretty sheltered life. Never been arrested. And to go from my life as I knew it to a situation where they take everything that you have on and give you an outfit that says "convict" on the back of it — property of the state -- it's just all humiliating.
And I was hurt that this had happened to me for something that I did not do. Her late husband's family, of course, had come to believe she was guilty.
Didn't understand the crime. Didn't want to believe the facts laid out by the prosecution, but it was what it was. I guess I was hoping something in that trial would have convinced me the other way.
Dennis Murphy: So you wanted to be persuaded that there was somebody else at the front door? Pat Hughes: I wanted to. I wanted to.
But it didn't happen. Dennis Murphy: In the end they settled all your doubts about what had happened? Dennis Murphy: There was only one person in that house with a gun and it was your daughter in law? So I guess from that standpoint that eased the pain to a degree. But nothing but pain was what Elicia was feeling inside a prison cell. Elicia Hughes: As hurt as I was by the system and my situation I never believed that I was going to spend the rest of my life in jail.
I didn't know how long I would be there but for me I couldn't sit there and accept this idea that I was going to be there for the next plus years. The two prosecutors disagreed passionately with the judge's ruling about the fairness of the jury composition but he was the one wearing the robes.
Dennis Murphy: So here you are, she's going to get a new trial. Dennis Murphy: The person that you believed had killed her husband in cold-blooded fashion is out on bond. Rebecca Mansell: Not only do I believe, but 12 other people believe, 12 other jurors ruled six weeks earlier that she was guilty of murder.
Wille Hughes Jr. Elicia was out of prison, but she would have to be back in court to stand trial again in about eight months. Elicia Hughes: Going into the second trial I was more knowledgeable with the process and what's going to be said about me. So I felt our chances would better this time because of that knowledge.
What had happened inside the home of Elicia and Brian Hughes as their children slept? Had an unknown assailant, perhaps an angry lover or jealous husband -- maybe even a drug dealer -- gunned him down? Or had his wife been looking for a insurance payout and a way to put an end to all of his infidelities, as the prosecution told the jury? Ten months after they'd gotten a conviction from a jury, the prosecutors were doing it all again. Calling the same witnesses, introducing the same evidence but this time before a jury that met the judge's test for fairness.
And there was Elicia, again sitting at the defense table looking like a courthouse visitor who'd walked in and inadvertently taken the wrong chair. Rebecca Mansell: She does not look like she could kill her husband. But that's kind of the irony to it is that anybody in this room is capable of murder. When pushed to a certain point, anybody is capable of it. And it doesn't matter if you're a blue-eyed blond or a beautiful woman that has a master's degree like Elicia Hughes.
Rebecca Mansell: Elicia Hughes is the only person that had the access to do it. Unless you're going to blame her two daughters, which we know they're not capable of firing a. As they had before, the prosecutors wanted the jury to understand the timeline of events on that night in June Early that evening, Elicia's husband Brian had gone out to meet his brother, Willie Jr.
Willie: We went to Olive Garden, that's one of the bars we always met up at and we just sat in in the bar and talked. Afterward, the younger brother said they drove over to a friend's house to watch a movie. Willie: We watched "Walking Tall" until just about the end and he ended up taking me home. He dropped me off and said "We'll talk tomorrow.
After he dropped off brother Willie, the prosecution says Brian didn't go straight home. He stopped by his current girlfriend's. Rebecca Mansell: After he drops his brother off, he goes and sees one of his mistresses. They do not apparently physically see each other, according to the mistress, they just talk on the phone. He sits in the parking lot and talks to her. In the statement Elicia gave to police, she said she had called Brian's cell phone a couple of times in the course of that evening to ask him when he was going to be home?
Stan: What Elicia said was she had been calling Brian that night to come home, she wanted to talk to him. It started out as "when you coming, honey," but at one point she made a statement that said "I asked him real nice, when are you coming home. You just say "I asked when he was coming home. The two prosecutors could easily imagine a frustrated Elicia Hughes that night, pacing impatiently, with a plan all set to spring and no prey.
Rebecca Mansell: I think luring him to come, that she was ready to get this over with and he was obviously out catting around. We know after he left the girlfriend's place, he swung into a Wendy's for a take-out order. A policewoman, who happened to notice Brian's Car, saw him pull out of the lot. From this point on in the timeline the prosecution had an intriguing nugget of evidence: An eyewitness almost to the crime itself.
The prosecution said that it knew from his cell phone that Brian was still talking to that same girlfriend when he pulled up to his house. And she would later confirm exactly what she heard. Stan: Cell phones have pretty sensitive microphones. She heard him close the door to his car in the garage. She heard him set the alarm on his car. She heard him go into the house. She heard him set the house alarm, the beeping sound when you push the buttons in. She heard him place his food down, place his keys on the table and he was on the phone with her right before he died.
Dennis Murphy: So this cell phone gives you a pretty tight window. Dennis Murphy: How this thing is tic-tocking down. You know when he hangs up from the call. A few minutes later, at , the burglar alarm goes off, according to alarm company records. ADT guy: The first entry is the activation of the alarm at that location. Stan: Their time is set by the atomic clock, which is perfect. That's when the ADT operator gets a hold of Elicia and she reports her husband down and in trouble.
Even though Elicia sounds distraught and emotionally torn-up, the prosecutors aren't buying it. Stan: You just shot somebody. This is something new to you. She doesn't do it for a living. So of course we expect her to be emotional.
Now whether or not it's the emotion of fear of being caught or fear that my husband's been killed, that's the question.
Usually when people are really afraid and crying, their speech patterns are broken up. Hers aren't broken. She is saying what she had to say and that's it. Prosecutors then put one of Brian's lovers on the stand, and she told the jury that, on the night of the murder, she had been talking to Brian on his cell phone, but he had hung up when Elicia walked into the room.
Cell phone records showed that the call had ended around pm - within five minutes of the time Elicia claimed to have been awakened by the popping noises. It only took jurors two hours to find her guilty of first-degree murder. She was sentenced to life in prison, but got a reprieve in February The trial judge granted Elicia a new trial, citing racial discrimination in the jury selection at her first trial. At her second trial, she had better luck with the jury; they acquitted her of Brian's murder in November Add content advisory.
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