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Thread: Michael Hubert Hughes - California Death Row

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    Michael Hubert Hughes - California Death Row




    Trial of convicted Calif serial killer to begin

    Opening statements are expected to begin Monday in the case of a convicted killer accused of four additional cold-case killings that could land him the death penalty if he's convicted.

    Michael Hughes is already serving a life sentence after he was convicted 13 years ago of murdering four other women in 1992 and 1993. Hughes was charged three years ago with the strangulation deaths of 15-year-old Yvonne Coleman and three women in their 30s between 1986 and 1993.

    Prosecutors said DNA evidence tied the former security guard to the crimes.

    Hughes was targeted by a task force investigating the notorious "Southside Slayer" killings that claimed the lives of as many as 90 women in inner-city Los Angeles. Authorities now believe between three to five men were responsible for the slayings.

    http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/articl...#ixzz1bhj2jStq

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    ::GRAPHIC::

    Portrait of a Serial Killer

    Los Angeles prosecutors say Michael Hughes is a predator who sexually assaulted and choked his victims before creepily posing them for shock value. After he killed his victims, it is alleged, the former sailor left their bodies near where he lived and worked in South Los Angeles.

    At the time, the killings of mostly young, poor black women hardly stood out. The murders took place between 1986 and 1993, a low point in Los Angeles urban history, when the crack epidemic of the '80s gave rise to drive-by shootings, and drug-related murders skyrocketed.

    It was a time when Hughes, a native of Michigan, was one of at least five active serial killers who used South Los Angeles as their sick playground.

    “We were asked to regularly patrol schools and parks because women were being assaulted there,” said Los Angeles Police Department cold-case detective Cliff Shepard. “It was a frightening time. There was a lot of violence, especially after dark.”

    Hughes was eventually caught in 1993 after he was spotted pushing a shopping cart containing the body of one of his victims. He was convicted in 1998 of four slayings and was serving a life sentence without the possibility of parole when investigators linked him to four additional murders.

    Hughes, now 54, is currently on trial in Los Angeles for the strangulation murders of three women and a 15-year-old high-school student who was assaulted on her way home from visiting her boyfriend on Jan. 22, 1986.

    The trial, expected to last about a month, is being heard in Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Curtis Rappe’s courtroom (just down the hall from the packed courtroom where Dr. Conrad Murray is standing trial for manslaughter in the death of Michael Jackson).

    Prosecutors are seeking the death penalty for Hughes. For his part, Hughes has denied murdering anyone, and admitted only to having sexual encounters with a number of women.

    During opening arguments this week, Los Angeles County Deputy District Attorney Beth Silverman told the jury that they would hear “a story of a serial killer.” Silverman said DNA evidence “conclusively” linked Hughes to the murders of Yvonne Coleman, Verna Williams, Deanna Wilson, and Deborah Jackson.

    According to police, Hughes moved to Los Angeles as a teenager, and in 1974 joined the Navy as a machinist and was stationed in San Diego. After he left the Navy, police say, he spent some time in jail for theft and perjury, was married briefly, and then bounced around from job to job.

    “He couldn’t hold a job,” said Shepard. “Any money he made, he spent it on dope.”

    Shepard said Hughes was employed in the aerospace industry in Long Beach and living with his mother and sister when he raped and murdered 15-year-old Yvonne Coleman in January 1986. On the day of her death, she had skipped school to hang out with her boyfriend and was on her way home when the assault occurred. A water-treatment-plant inspector found her body near a barbecue pit, just a few blocks from where Hughes lived. Grass was found in her mouth and throat.

    Five months later, the partially nude body of Verna Williams was discovered on the grounds of 68th Street Elementary School. She had been strangled. In August 1990, police allege, Hughes, who had since remarried, strangled and raped Deanna Wilson inside her garage while her young son was asleep in a nearby bedroom. Hughes was known to frequent the King’s Castle Motel, about half a mile from the murder scene.

    Then, in June 1993, just over a year after the Los Angeles riots devastated the city and left 53 people dead, the partially nude body of Deborah Jackson was discovered in a trash-storage container. At the time, Hughes was working for a moving company called Starving Students, located within two blocks of where Jackson was found.

    Later that year, Hughes, then employed selling Christmas trees near LAX, was arrested for the murder of another woman whose body was found tied to a shopping cart. He was trying to dispose of the body when he was discovered.

    During Hughes’s alleged killing spree, the bodies of more than 50 poor young black women were discovered wrapped in filthy rugs, under piles of junk, or in garbage bins in alleyways. Many had been strangled or shot. Others were stabbed. Police suspected a serial killer was afoot and dubbed him the Southside Slayer. Investigators later discovered that at least five serial killers were at work, including Grim Sleeper suspect Lonnie Franklin Jr., a car mechanic currently awaiting trial for the slayings of 10 women and the attempted murder of another.

    But Hughes’s signature stood out. After he killed some of the victims, he left them with their legs spread apart, most likely in an attempt to shock the passersby who found them. In at least one instance, he placed one of his victim’s hands on her pubic area so it looked as if she was masturbating.


    During Hughes’s alleged killing spree, the bodies of more than 50 poor young black women were discovered wrapped in filthy rugs, under piles of junk, or in garbage bins in alleyways.


    “He is trying to shock whoever finds the body,” said Shepard, who said that Hughes was trying also to demean his victims. “We suspect there was some incident in his life that set his actions in motion, and he later decided to take it out on a number of women.”

    The four slayings attributed to Hughes remained unsolved for almost two decades. In 2003, Shepard began the laborious task of searching through hundreds of cold cases as part of the LAPD’s newly formed cold-case squad. His job was to sift through the rape/murder files of the ’80s to see if any forensic evidence still existed for DNA analysis. In 2007, Shepard found DNA evidence that linked Hughes to the four slayings.

    http://www.thedailybeast.com/article...re-deaths.html

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    LA man guilty of 3 more 'Southside Slayer' cases

    LOS ANGELES -- A convicted serial killer has been found guilty of three additional murders during the "Southside Slayer" attacks that terrorized Los Angeles in the 1980s and '90s.

    Court clerk Lynnie Reeser says a jury on Thursday convicted Michael Hughes of first-degree murder with special circumstances. Prosecutors will seek the death penalty when the sentencing phase of trial begins Monday.

    Hughes was found guilty of strangling two prostitutes and a 15-year-old girl. Authorities say DNA evidence linked Hughes to the killings, which occurred between 1986 and 1993.

    The former security guard already is serving a life sentence for killing four women in the early 1990s.

    Hughes was investigated by a task force looking into the killings of as many as 90 women in inner-city Los Angeles. Several killers were later convicted.

    http://www.sacbee.com/2011/11/03/402...#ixzz1cfO6MmOj

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    Prosecutor: LA serial killer should get death

    A convicted serial killer should be sentenced to death for a string of decades-old murders in South Los Angeles because he showed no mercy to his victims, including a 15-year-old girl, and no remorse for the vicious, callous crimes, a prosecutor told a jury Monday.

    The murders of six women and a teenage girl by Michael Hughes in the late 1980s and early 1990s were purposeful, intentional and premeditated acts that warrant the stiffest sentence California has to offer, Deputy District Attorney Beth Silverman said.

    "This defendant knew exactly what he was doing when he killed each of these women," Silverman said during the penalty phase of Hughes' trial. "He knows the consequences of his behavior. He just doesn't care."

    Hughes, 55, already is serving a life sentence for killing four women in the 1990s. He was found guilty last month of murdering Yvonne Coleman, 15, Verna Williams, 36, and Deborah Jackson, 32, between 1986 and 1993.

    Jurors will have to decide if Hughes should be given the death penalty or life in prison without parole. His defense attorney is expected to present a closing argument later Monday.

    Hughes was investigated by a task force looking into the killings of as many as 90 women in South Los Angeles. Police dubbed the killer the "Southside Slayer" but later concluded at least three serial killers were stalking women during a crack cocaine epidemic that forced some women onto the streets as prostitutes in order to support their habits.

    Pizza deliveryman Chester Turner was convicted in 2007 and sentenced to death for killing 10 women and a fetus in Los Angeles in the 1980s and `90s. He has been charged with four additional killings and ordered to stand trial.

    In addition, investigators arrested Lonnie Franklin Jr., a South Los Angeles mechanic, last year. He has pleaded not guilty to 10 counts of murder and one count of attempted murder. Prosecutors suspect Franklin shot or strangled women and girls between 1985 and 2007, dumping their bodies in alleys near his home. The victims ranged in age from 14 to 36.

    DNA evidence linked Hughes to killings that authorities say were done for sexual gratification, Silverman said. Coleman was raped and like many of the other women, she was strangled.

    On Monday, Silverman placed large photos of the victims on each side of the jury box. Hughes, wearing a powder blue shirt and tan pants, showed no reaction during Silverman's closing argument.

    None of the experts called to testify said Hughes was insane or had any abnormal brain dysfunction, Silverman said. While Hughes may have had an abusive childhood, as the defense contends, that doesn't mitigate the severity of the crimes he committed, the prosecutor said.

    "Have you heard any evidence that reduces the brutal nature of these crimes?" Silverman asked jurors. "We ask you to show the same mercy, the same compassion, he showed his victims."

    http://www.lompocrecord.com/news/sta...#ixzz1gMreKm00

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    Jurors recommend death for LA serial killer

    Jurors deliberated for less than half a day Tuesday before recommending that a serial killer who took the lives of six women and a teenage girl be sentenced to death.

    Michael Hughes was already serving a life sentence for the killings of four women in the 1990s when a jury convicted him last month of murdering two other women and a 15-year-old girl.

    Hughes, dressed in a sleeveless sweater, tan pants and powder-blue shirt, showed no emotion as the verdict was read. He is scheduled to be sentenced by a judge March 30.

    In issuing their verdict, the jury ignored a plea made earlier in the day from his attorney, who asked for a sentence of life in prison without parole.

    "You don't have to kill him," attorney Aron Laub implored the jury during closing arguments. "The law does not compel it."

    Laub cited the 55-year-old Hughes' troubled, violent childhood in asking for leniency.

    Hughes, a former security guard, was investigated by a task force looking into the killings of dozens of women by the so-called "Southside Slayer." Police later concluded at least three serial killers, including Hughes, were stalking women during a crack cocaine epidemic that led some women onto the streets as prostitutes in order to support their habits.

    DNA evidence tied Hughes to the murders that authorities say were committed for sexual gratification. His victims were strangled and some of their nude bodies were posed for discovery with their legs spread apart in order to shock whoever found them, prosecutors said.

    Laub said Hughes had a lost childhood. He was 3 years old when his younger brother died and 5 when his infant brother passed away, Laub said.

    Hughes' mentally unstable mother beat him repeatedly for 12 years with an extension cord. The violence eventually led Hughes to become a lifelong alcoholic and addicted to crack cocaine, his attorney said.

    "That's not a childhood. That's a laboratory for destruction," Laub said.

    On Monday, Deputy District Attorney Beth Silverman had argued while Hughes may have had an abusive childhood it didn't mitigate the severity of crimes he committed. She said a just punishment for Hughes is a death sentence because the only thing he cherishes is his own life.

    "If there ever was a case where the death penalty is appropriate, it's this case," Silverman said.

    http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/2...serial-killer/

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    Death Sentence In LA Serial Killings Case

    LOS ANGELES (AP) — A convicted serial killer has been sentenced to death for strangling a 15-year-old girl and two women in the Los Angeles "Southside Slayer" attacks.

    City News Service says Michael Hughes was sentenced Friday. He was convicted last November of killing 15-year-old Yvonne Coleman, 36-year-old Verna Williams and 32-year-old Deborah Jackson between 1986 and 1993.

    Hughes already is serving a life sentence for killing four women.

    Dozens of women were so-called "Southside Slayer" victims in Los Angeles in the 1980s and 1990s. Investigators eventually concluded that at least three serial killers were at work.

    Chester Turner was sentenced to death for killing 10 women and a fetus.

    Lonnie Franklin Jr. has pleaded not guilty to killing 10 victims between 1985 and 2007 in what is now called the "Grim Sleeper" case.

    http://www.npr.org/templates/story/s...ryId=155588382
    An uninformed opponent is a dangerous opponent.

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    On July 2, 2015, the California Supreme Court appointed counsel to represent Hughes on direct appeal.

    http://appellatecases.courtinfo.ca.g...doc_no=S203514

  8. #8
    Senior Member CnCP Legend JLR's Avatar
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    On November 27, 2017, Hughes filed an initial brief on direct appeal.

    http://appellatecases.courtinfo.ca.g...tSMCAgCg%3D%3D

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    Senior Member CnCP Legend JLR's Avatar
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    On the 20th of September 2018, the prosecution filed its response.

    https://appellatecases.courtinfo.ca....tSMCAgCg%3D%3D

  10. #10
    Senior Member CnCP Legend JLR's Avatar
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    This case has been fully briefed on direct appeal since the 11th of June 2019.

    https://appellatecases.courtinfo.ca....tSMCAgCg%3D%3D

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