Carla Hughes Case: Affair, Murder, Trial, and Appeals

The Carla Hughes case is the Mississippi prosecution of a 25-year-old middle-school teacher who was convicted in October 2009 of murdering her lover’s pregnant fiancée, Avis Banks, and Banks’s unborn son inside the couple’s Ridgeland home on November 29, 2006. A Madison County jury found Hughes guilty of two counts of capital murder, and she is serving two concurrent life sentences without the possibility of parole at the Central Mississippi Correctional Facility.¹

The Affair Behind the Killing

In the summer of 2006, Hughes was a language arts teacher at Chastain Middle School in Jackson, Mississippi. She met Keyon Pittman, a 31-year-old teacher at the same school who was engaged to Avis Banks. Their sexual relationship began in August 2006 and became, in the words of colleagues, an “open secret” at the school. Hughes reportedly introduced Pittman to friends as her “future husband” and used students to carry notes to him during the school day.²

Pittman later testified that the affair was purely physical on his end and that he had repeatedly told Hughes he would not leave Banks.³ Hughes once tried to drive to the home Pittman shared with Banks to expose the relationship, but Pittman stopped her by threatening to call police. After an argument at a Picayune, Mississippi, hotel the weekend before Thanksgiving 2006, Hughes told Pittman, “from this point on some things are going to change.”⁴

What Happened to Avis Banks

Three days later, on November 29, 2006, Avis Banks was killed in the garage of her Ridgeland home. She was 27 years old and five months pregnant. She arrived home between 5:50 and 6:00 p.m. and was attacked shortly afterward. An autopsy showed she had been shot four times with a .38 caliber weapon, stabbed three times, and slashed once, with three of the four gunshot wounds fatal. Her unborn son died as a result of what the medical examiner classified as “maternal demise,” and his death was ruled a homicide.⁴

Pittman found Banks’s body when he returned home from basketball practice around 8:30 p.m. He ran to a neighbor’s house to call 911, and police arrived at 8:46 p.m.⁴

How Investigators Built the Case Against Hughes

Suspicion initially fell on Pittman, who admitted the affair when interviewed. Investigators cleared him after witnesses and cell-phone tower records confirmed he had been coaching basketball at Chastain Middle School from roughly 5:30 to 7:45 p.m., covering the entire window in which Banks was killed.⁵

The case turned when Hughes’s cousin, Patrick Nash, went to Ridgeland police. Nash said that on November 26, 2006, he had loaned Hughes a Rossi .38 caliber five-shot revolver and a folding hunting knife, ostensibly for her protection, and that the gun had been fully loaded. After her initial police interview on December 1, Hughes returned the revolver empty and cleaned. She never returned the knife.⁶ Nash surrendered the revolver to police on December 5, 2006. Ballistics testing at the Mississippi State Crime Laboratory matched bullets recovered from Banks’s body to that revolver.⁴

A December 8, 2006, search of Hughes’s home turned up a pair of women’s size ten TredSafe shoes whose tread pattern matched impressions on a glass door at the scene that the killer had kicked open. DNA testing confirmed Banks’s blood was on the shoes.⁴ Cell-phone records showed Hughes’s phone communicating with a tower covering the Banks-Pittman home between roughly 5:30 and 6:00 p.m. on the night of the murder, placing her within a quarter-mile of the scene.⁷

Hughes was arrested on December 6, 2006, initially on a charge of accessory after the fact. Two days later, the charge was upgraded to two counts of capital murder.⁴

The 2009 Trial

The trial opened in October 2009 in Madison County Circuit Court before Judge William Chapman, with District Attorney Michael Guest leading the prosecution. Hughes was represented by Johnnie Walls Jr., a Greenville attorney and former state senator who was a longtime family friend, along with Brandon Dorsey.⁸

The prosecution’s case was entirely circumstantial. There were no eyewitnesses and no confession. Guest told jurors Hughes had “the motive, the means and opportunity to commit the crime.”⁷ Pittman testified about the affair, Hughes’s escalating frustration, and his own alibi. Patrick Nash described lending Hughes the gun and knife and receiving the empty revolver back. Hughes’s uncle, James Nash, testified that when he asked her whether the gun was involved in the crime, she “dropped her head and shrugged her shoulders.”⁴ Forensic pathologist Dr. Steven Hayne testified about Banks’s wounds and told jurors she was likely already dead when the stabbing occurred.⁸ Radio-frequency engineers from Cellular South and AT&T Mobility walked the jury through the tower data.

The prosecution also played an 80-minute video of Hughes’s December 1, 2006, police interview, in which she denied having access to a firearm and described her relationship with Pittman as merely a friendship. Ridgeland detective Frank Dillard testified that both statements were false.⁶

Hughes did not testify. Her defense tried to point at Pittman, noting he had a key to Hughes’s home and had occasionally borrowed her shoes, and Dorsey suggested Pittman could have planted the blood-stained shoes. The defense also challenged the search warrant used at Hughes’s apartment and moved for a directed verdict, arguing the state had not proved Hughes was at the home or committed the underlying burglary. The court denied both motions.⁴

On October 13, 2009, the jury convicted Hughes on both counts of capital murder under Mississippi Code Section 97-3-19(2)(e), which classified the killings as murders committed during the course of a burglary. The unborn child’s death was charged as a separate count because he died as a direct result of the fatal attack on his mother.⁹

Life Without Parole and the Supreme Court Appeal

The jury declined to impose the death penalty. On October 14, 2009, the court sentenced Hughes to two concurrent terms of life imprisonment without the possibility of parole.⁹

Hughes appealed to the Mississippi Supreme Court, raising six issues, including alleged jury misconduct, the weight of the evidence, a disputed peremptory challenge, the denial of her suppression motion, the denial of a directed verdict, and the admission of DNA evidence from the shoes.¹⁰ The jury-misconduct claim came from a note jurors sent during deliberations asking, “Could the State have called Carla Hughes to the stand?” The court found the issue procedurally barred because Hughes’s lawyers had agreed at trial to the judge’s response and had not objected. On sufficiency, the court held that the forensic links, cell-phone data, motive evidence, and Hughes’s own misrepresentations to police were enough for a rational jury to convict on circumstantial evidence. The convictions and sentences were affirmed on June 21, 2012.⁴

The Dr. Hayne Challenge

In 2016, Hughes’s mother, Lynda Hughes, started a GoGetFunding campaign for new lawyers and private investigators, saying her daughter had been “framed” and was “a victim of Dr. Steven Hayne’s testimony.”¹¹ As of April 2016, it had raised $360.

Hayne served for years as Mississippi’s de facto state medical examiner, lacks national board certification in forensic pathology, and was known for performing roughly 1,500 autopsies per year. In 2008, the state removed him from its list of approved pathologists after the Innocence Project raised questions about his work and two men convicted in cases where he testified were exonerated. The Mississippi Supreme Court has ordered new trials in some cases involving his testimony, though Hayne has maintained he was never found to have engaged in misconduct.⁸ Whether Hughes’s legal team has formally pursued a post-conviction challenge on these grounds is not established in available records.

Lynda Hughes also criticized trial attorney Johnnie Walls Jr., alleging he did not hire a private investigator in a capital case and lacked criminal defense experience. Walls, who became a circuit judge in January 2011 and retired in early 2016, described Hughes as “not just a client but a friend he has known all of her life.”⁸

Where Carla Hughes Is Now

Carla Hughes (MDOC ID 153003) is incarcerated at the Central Mississippi Correctional Facility. She entered the Mississippi Department of Corrections on October 15, 2009, and her most recent facility placement was recorded on May 1, 2025. She is serving two concurrent life sentences with no parole eligibility.¹

1
Mississippi Department of Corrections. Inmate Details: Carla Hughes
2
Oxygen. Pregnant Woman Stabbed, Shot by Fiancé’s Girlfriend
3
Picayune Item. Man Testifies He Did Not Kill His Pregnant Fiancée
4
FindLaw. Hughes v. State, 90 So. 3d 613
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CNN. Mississippi Teacher Convicted in Slayings
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WLBT. Cousin Testifies He Gave Gun to Carla Hughes
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Picayune Item. Defense Attorneys: Wrong Defendant in 2006 Slaying
8
Clarion-Ledger. GoFund Account for Convicted Ex-Teacher Carla Hughes
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CBS News. Carla Hughes’ Parents Beg for Her Life; Jury Responds
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CaseMine. Hughes v. State, No. 2010-KA-01609-SCT
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WAPT. Convicted Killer’s Mother Raises Money for Legal Fund