Huntington Beach : Court Won’t Overturn Conviction in Murder

The 4th District Court of Appeal on Thursday refused to reverse the first-degree murder conviction of a Huntington Beach woman who helped her lover kill her husband to gain his $500,000 insurance policy.

Jeanette Lynn Hughes, now 33, was convicted in a second trial last year in the slaying of her husband, James D. Hughes, 37, who was shot to death while asleep in the couple’s Huntington Beach home on Jan. 10, 1984. The principal witness against her was Adam Edward Ramirez, son of her lover, Adam Salas Ramirez, now 46.

The younger Ramirez testified that his father and Hughes had planned the murder and that she gave the Ramirezes a signal when her husband was asleep. The older Ramirez, who actually shot James Hughes, was also convicted of first-degree murder at a separate trial.

Hughes argued in her appeal that her jury should have been allowed to consider voluntary manslaughter because she had been the victim of spousal abuse and that such abuse constituted provocation. But Justice Sheila P. Sonenshine, writing the unanimous opinion for the appellate court, rejected that argument.

While there was evidence that the victim had beaten his wife in the past, Sonenshine ruled, there was no evidence that he had done anything abusive the night he was killed.

Hughes’ first trial ended in a mistrial when a juror refused to vote to convict her, but another jury convicted her in a second trial in December, 1985.