Family and Lawyers React to Carla Hughes’ Guilty Verdict
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Family and Lawyers react to Carla Hughes Guilty...
Members of the Hughes' family react to the guilty verdict. Also lawyers for both sides discuss the guilty verdict and what's next in the sentencing phase.
Published: October 13, 2009
Updated: October 13, 2009
Members of the Hughes’ family as well as lawyers on both sides discuss the guilty verdict against Carla Hughes. A Madison County Jury finds Carla Hughes Guilty of Capital Murder. The jury now must choose between the death penalty and life in prison. Carla Hughes’ murder trial is being held in Canton, Mississippi. 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.
Reader Reactions
I still can not get over the outcome of this case. I am entitled to my own opinion and I definitely believe Carla Hughes did not do this, and if she did have anything to do with it Keyon Pittman made her do it. She just couldn’t have committed these things alone. Keyon made her do it, I honestly believe he told her to and then afterwards they would be together once everything boils down. I mean no one runs off and gets married to someone else and has another child so soon, don’t you think that is just a little strange. I believe his wife of today may have did her part in this also and framed Carla to get her out of the way. She possibly wore the same size shoe and Keyon may have told her to go to her friends home until Avis left and then meet him there. It more than likely she had a key to there home and thats how he framed her after he and the new wife killed Avis. He is the one i solely blame because if he wasn’t cheating none of this would have ever happened!
I’m in shocked. Carla will have the right to live. Avis didn’t have that right nor her unborn son. Carla didn’t weep today and that is because she knows that even though she wont be out in the world as we all know it she will be in a world that she can still teach, make costumes and produce plays,become a hairstylist, or she has time to become a lawyer and get degrees. I think this a travesty. Don’t be surprised if Kenyon contacts her sometime down the road.. Wow such a injustice to Avis!!!!!
Because the jury has render it’s desicion; I just want to say the Prosecutor left to many questions unanswered. The verdict just prove to me that mot jurys are sheeps for the prosecution( if told a person is guilty its over). Truth be known I don’t know, but I do know; Mr. Walls and the associate punch many holes in the only three pieces of evident. Everyone ask why she didn’t get on the stand? The Constitution gives you that right. I do believe she knows more than she told but too STUPID to tell. (HE’S Gone give him up)
I think Carla blew it by not getting on the stand to 1st let the jury hear her say that she did not kill Avis although you the jury think I did, and nothing and no one could have kept me off the stand to plead for my life when I no that I did not commit this awful crime. I would have begged for my life!. She has already been found guilty so I would have stood up to the State when they began to fire away at me they would had to just bring it on and I know in my soul that Innocent!!!.It was foolish to not to open her mouth to save her life. I also think she have choosen another lawyer this one was to close to Carla and her family. I have never see a lawyer get up there and cry in front of a jury as he did. Carla needed a Johnny Cocran
If she gave the borrowed gun and knife to Keyon and he killed Avis and then gave the gun back to Carla, and that could be proved, would she still have been eligible for the capital murder/death penalty? Conspiracy to committ murder? Facilitating?
In other words would she be in just as much trouble if she had only helped Keyon as she is now having been found to be the killer?
It has been some time since I’ve been to a gun range and my boyfriend at the time had his own gun so I’m not sure if you can rent a gun, but I don’t believe so. I think it is just a place with targets and you bring your own gun to shoot with.
But also, where is the knife? Why did they (Carla and Keyon) keep the gun but not the knife? I wonder if she did the shooting and Keyon did the stabbing and slashing? I would have found her guilty too but there is no doubt that he was involved too. I really just suspect that she never thought they would trace the gun back to her and her cousin. I guess she thought that her cousin would never make the connection between the .38 revolver that he loaned Carla and the fact that a .38 was used to kill Ms. Banks. Did the cousin ever testify that he knew who Avis was and that Carla was having a relationship with Avis’ fiancee Keyon?
This is in response to the gun range allibi for Carla, I’ve never been to a gun range so my question is, do they supply the guns at gun range. If not, that would still place her cousin’s gun (AKA the murder weapon) in Carla’s possession at the time of the murder. So if the gun was with Carla at the time of the murder and the same gun was used to kill Avis then that would mean Carla killed Avis.
I’m not convinced that Carla is guilty or innocent, but I am sure she made a terrible mistake getting involved with Keyon and she should have told her side of the story because he told his. I am deeply saddened by the fact that this lust triangle ended in tragedy. The loss on both sides is tremendous and the pain will last a lifetime. I pray for all involved.
Carla didn’t do it she was set up. I think no I know they got the wrong person. I think she should have taken the stand. It’s not over because the real killer remains free. Why did they stop looking for the real killer. CARLA WE LOVE YOU AND ARE PRAYING FOR YOUR FREEDOM. My heart is broken. To both family don’t stop praying for each other. Because the real killer is still out there.
Stephen,
Now, why do you suppose that her defense team didn’t bring forth a witness to say that she was at their firing range, especially if this was all she needed to keep herself free? (LOL)
Anonymous—who should rethink the verdict and let her testify this time so that she can tell the truth? This is not a game. This is not truth or dare. She was found guilty by a jury of her peers (a jury that her attorney helped pick) and will either spend the rest of her natural life behind bars or end up with a needle in her arm. You don’t just get a “do over”. The only hope that she has of getting another trial is on appeal and unless there was an error in this trial she won’t get another trial.
Where do you people come from?
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