The verdict is in and a Madison County Jury has found Carla Hughes guilty of capital murder. The jury now must choose between the death penalty and life in prison. Hughes has been found guilty of stabbing and shooting Avis Banks and her unborn baby. Banks was murdered outside her Ridgeland, Mississippi home in November 2006.
As the judge read the verdict, Hughes sobbed uncontrollably and held her head in her hands. Clearly grief stricken, she now has the fate of her sentence in the hands of the jury.
Jurors will reconvene Wednesday morning to hear testimony intended to help them decide whether Hughes should be put to death or spend the rest of her life in prison.
Banks was five months pregnant when she was shot in the leg, buttock and head and then stabbed in the face and neck on Nov. 29, 2006, in the garage of the Ridgeland home she shared with her fiancé, Keyon Pittman.
Prosecutors built their case around the theory that Hughes killed Banks so she could be with Pittman, a co-worker whom she was having a sexual relationship.
Pittman, who according to the defense as a “womanizer,” has since married and lives out of state.
In his closing argument to jurors Monday, District Attorney Michael Guest said, “Carla Hughes wanted the life Avis Banks had, and the only way she could get it was by killing Avis Banks and her unborn child.”
Guest told the jury that Hughes was obsessed with Pittman and although he didn’t particularly care for him, “but he’s not a murderer.”
Hughes’ attorney Johnnie Walls had urged the jury in his closing argument to take a serious look at the prosecution’s case. Saying the prosecutors could not put Hughes in Banks’ house or on her block.
Cell phone records however placed Hughes in the vicinity of the home during the time of the murder. Something that Walls said still wasn’t concrete enough. “They haven’t found any evidence Carla Hughes was in the house,” Walls said.
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