Hughes v. State

• Decision Date: 21 June 2012
• Docket Number: No. 2010–KA–01609–SCT.,2010–KA–01609–SCT.
• Citation: 90 So.3d 613
• Court: Mississippi Supreme Court
• Parties: Carla HUGHES a/k/a Carla A. Hughes v. STATE of Mississippi.

90 So.3d 613

Carla HUGHES a/k/a Carla A. Hughes

v.STATE of Mississippi.

No. 2010–KA–01609–SCT.

Supreme Court of Mississippi.

June 21, 2012.

Brandon I. Dorsey, Johnnie E. Walls, Jr., Clarksdale, attorneys for appellant.

Office of the Attorney General by Stephanie B. Wood, attorney for appellee.

Before WALLER, C.J., RANDOLPH and CHANDLER, JJ.

CHANDLER, Justice, for the Court:

¶ 1. A Madison County jury convicted Carla Hughes of two counts of capital murder. The jury declined to impose the death penalty, and the Circuit Court of Madison County imposed two sentences of life imprisonment without the possibility of parole, with both sentences to run concurrently. Hughes raises six issues on appeal:

I. Whether the jury committed misconduct by submitting a note to the judge during deliberations asking whether the State could have called Hughes to the stand.

II. Whether the verdicts are against the overwhelming weight of the evidence.

III. Whether the trial court erred during jury selection when it denied one of Hughes's peremptory challenges.

IV. Whether the trial court erred by denying the motion to suppress the evidence found in Hughes's house.

V. Whether the trial court erred in overruling Hughes's motion for a directed verdict.

VI. Whether the trial court erred by admitting DNA evidence from a pair of TredSafe shoes.

¶ 2. Finding no error, we affirm the judgment of the Circuit Court of Madison County.

FACTS

¶ 3. Hughes was convicted of two counts of capital murder for the murder of Avis Banks and her unborn son. Hughes had been having an affair with Keyon Pittman, Banks's fiancé. Pittman and Banks lived together in Ridgeland, Mississippi.

¶ 4. Pittman met Hughes in August 2006 at Chastain Middle School, where they both were teachers. They became friends and began a sexual relationship. Pittman testified that Banks had been unaware of his relationship with Hughes. According to Pittman, Hughes had remained in the relationship despite her knowledge that Pittman planned to marry Banks and that Banks was pregnant with his child. Pittman said Hughes had referred to him as her “future husband” when they were around Hughes's friends and relatives. Pittman also testified that Hughes had been unhappy that Pittman would not leave Banks. Pittman testified that he repeatedly had told Hughes that he was not going to leave Banks to be with her, even when Hughes believed that she was pregnant.¹ He said that on one occasion, Hughes had started to drive to Pittman's and Banks's house to reveal her affair with Pittman, but Pittman had stopped her by threatening to call the police. Hughes had known where Pittman and Banks lived because she had been there on three prior occasions.

¶ 5. The Saturday after Thanksgiving 2006, Pittman and Banks were in Picayune, Mississippi, visiting Banks's family. That day, Hughes and Pittman met at a hotel in Picayune. Because Pittman would not stay out late to be with Hughes, the evening ended on a bad note. On Sunday, Hughes told Pittman that “from this point on some things are going to change.” Pittman testified that, for the next few days, their relationship was more distant.

¶ 6. Four days later, on the afternoon of November 29, 2006, Pittman dropped off groceries at Hughes's house to keep cool in her refrigerator while he coached basketball practice at Chastain Middle School. Pittman left Hughes's house around 5:10 p.m. or 5:15 p.m.; practice began around 5:30 p.m. that evening and lasted until 7:30 p.m. or 7:45 p.m. Pittman spoke to Banks at 5:12 p.m. and at 5:36 p.m. that evening, when Banks was driving home from work. After practice, Pittman returned to Hughes's house to pick up his groceries and noticed that Hughes was unusually quiet.

¶ 7. Pittman stayed at Hughes's house for twenty to thirty minutes, leaving at about 8:30 p.m. While Pittman drove home, he called Banks, but she did not answer, and Pittman became concerned. When Pittman arrived home, he pulled into his normal parking spot and used the garage-door opener to enter the house through the garage.² He saw Banks lying in a pool of blood on the garage floor next to her car.³ He ran into the garage and tried to rouse Banks, but she did not respond. Pittman quickly checked the house to see if anyone was there and then ran next door, where a neighbor called 911. When the police arrived at 8:46 p.m., Pittman was in the garage holding Banks's body. The police ordered Pittman away from Banks and conducted a search of the residence. The paramedics arrived to treat Banks, but she was dead.

¶ 8. The police investigation concluded that Banks had arrived home between 5:50 p.m. and 6:00 p.m, and that she had been killed shortly thereafter. The autopsy performed on Banks revealed that she was shot four times, stabbed three times, and slashed once. Three of the four gunshot wounds were fatal.⁴ The stab wounds were not fatal, and may have occurred postmortem. All the bullets were from a .38 caliber weapon. The autopsy also confirmed that Banks had been in her second trimester of pregnancy, carrying a male fetus. Because the baby had died from maternal demise, his death was classified as a homicide.

¶ 9. The police collected several pieces of evidence during their investigation. The initial search of Pittman's house revealed that the back door had been forced open. There were two shoe prints on the exterior side of the glass door where it appeared that the perpetrator had kicked the door. There were blood smears along the wall and light-switch plate. The door between the house and the garage was open, and there was a dent in the sheetrock where the doorknob had struck the wall. There was a bullet hole in the lower left corner of the garage door, but no shell casings were found. While it appeared that there had been a burglary, nothing was missing from the house. The police took a smear of the blood found on the light-switch plate, and took photographs of the shoe prints on the exterior glass door. They also lifted an impression of the shoe print from the glass door.

¶ 10. Pittman gave a statement at the police station. His clothes were photographed because they had blood on them. His hands were processed for gunshot residue, and each hand had a single particle on it. An expert witness testified that those particles could have come from touching Banks's body. Pittman remained a suspect in the homicide until the investigation established that he had been at Chastain Middle School at the time of the murder. Pittman's cell-phone records indicated that he had not been in the vicinity of his house during the time the murder occurred. Witnesses who had been at Chastain Middle School during basketball practice verified that Pittman had been at the school when the murder had occurred.

¶ 11. Employees at Chastain Middle School told police that Pittman had several girlfriends, including Hughes. Police initially talked to Hughes at Chastain Middle School on December 1, 2006. In this initial statement, Hughes said that she and Pittman were just friends. But Hughes gave another statement at the police station that evening in which she admitted that she had a sexual relationship with Pittman. Hughes also said that she did not own or have access to a gun. However, it was established Hughes had a gun on the day that the homicide occurred. Hughes's cousin, Patrick Nash, testified that, on November 26, 2006, Hughes had asked him to borrow a weapon for protection because of attempted break-ins at her house. He said he had loaned Hughes a Rossi .38 caliber gun with five bullets inside it, and a three-and-a-half-to-four-inch-long folding hunting knife. Nash said that he showed Hughes how to use the gun. He gave Hughes no additional bullets.

¶ 12. After her interview with police, on the evening of December 1, 2006, Hughes returned the Rossi .38 caliber gun, and Nash noticed that no bullets were in it. Hughes did not return the knife. Nash became uneasy because Hughes had called him on the night of the murder and mentionedthat someone had killed Pittman's girlfriend. Later, Hughes's uncle, James Nash, asked Hughes if the gun had been involved in Banks's murder. James testified that, in response, Hughes “kind of dropped her head and shrugged her shoulders, and I took that to be ‘I really don't know’ or affirmative.”

¶ 13. Nash turned the Rossi .38 caliber gun over to the police on December 5, 2006. Hughes was arrested on December 6, 2006, on a charge of accessory after the fact. After Hughes's arrest, Detective John Neal obtained a search warrant to search her house, which was executed on December 8, 2006. The police specifically were looking for six things:

1) Any firearm, ammunition, shell casing, bullet projectile or packaging for any firearm, ammunition, shell casing or bullet projectile.

2) Any tool or instrument with a folding blade which may be used to puncture, stab, slice or cut.

3) Any article of clothing which may contain evidence of blood or blood stains.

4) Any type of footwear which may contain the impression design as indicated in Exhibit “A.”

5) Any glove which may contain physical evidence of blood or blood stains.

6) Any notes, papers, documents or any form of written communication which may establish a relationship between Carla Hughes and Keyon Pittman.

A picture of the shoe-print impression taken from the crime scene was attached to the search warrant as Exhibit A. The police seized three items during the search: a pair of women's size ten TredSafe ⁵ shoes, a photograph of Pittman that was in the master bedroom night stand, and a handwritten note/poem with the initials K.P. on it. The shoes had a tread pattern that appeared to match the shoe prints from the crime scene.

¶ 14. The shoes and the Rossi .38 caliber gun were sent to the Mississippi Crime Laboratory for testing. Testing showed that the tread pattern on the soles of the shoes matched the impressions lifted from the crime scene. Test projectiles from the Rossi .38 caliber...