Teacher Pleads Guilty, Still Denies He Killed His Wife

Robert David Hughes, a Thousand Oaks teacher who has steadfastly maintained that he did not murder his wife nine years ago, pleaded guilty Tuesday to a reduced charge of felony manslaughter in Superior Court in Wilmington, Del.

Hughes, whose two previous first-degree murder convictions were overturned by the Delaware Supreme Court, was to have begun a third trial on the same charge next month. Defense and prosecution lawyers worked out a plea agreement Friday.

The 37-year-old Hughes faces a prison term of 3 to 30 years. He has already spent 4 1/2 years in a Delaware prison.

Hughes’ many supporters, largely members of the Thousand Oaks Lutheran community, said they have not lost the faith in Hughes that led them to raise nearly half a million dollars over the last five years to pay his legal expenses.

“Yes, I do,” Pastor Willis Moerer of Ascension Lutheran Church in Thousand Oaks said when asked if he thinks that Hughes, a parishioner, is innocent. “I can’t prove it, but it’s a belief I hold.”

Ralph Cameron, a member of a Thousand Oaks support group, said that Hughes, in order to get the plea bargain, was “going to have to lie” and say he killed his wife. “I don’t like it. I think the state has backed him into a corner.”

“This doesn’t in any way make me think he is guilty,” said Lisa Jensen, a resident of Camden, Del., who with her husband, Clyde, mortgaged their home to contribute $60,000 toward Hughes’ bail.

The Delaware prosecutor, Chief Deputy State Atty. Gen. Bart Dalton, said, however, “We’re satisfied that the issue of the guilt or innocence of Robert Hughes is finally and completely established.”

Hughes was asked by Judge Robert C. O’Hara in court Tuesday whether he killed Serita Ann Hughes on Aug. 31, 1976, the couple’s eighth wedding anniversary. The defendant swallowed hard, bowed his head and whispered, “Yes sir.”

After Hughes was led away, Lucille Bell, the victim’s mother, yelled, “Where was the remorse that he had taken a life? Where was it?”

In a telephone interview from Wilmington, Hughes said his claim of innocence was not compromised Tuesday.

“As long as I’m right before God, I really don’t care about men,” he said.

It has been a long, often sorrowful ordeal for Hughes since he discovered his wife’s body outside their home in Milford, Del. He was arrested but released for lack of evidence and moved to Thousand Oaks in Ventura County, where he began teaching at a Lutheran school.

In 1979, he was arrested again, tried, found guilty and sentenced to life in prison without parole. The Delaware Supreme Court overturned the conviction, citing prosecutorial misconduct during the trial. Hughes returned to Southern California to a crowd of joyous supporters.

Hughes took the stand in his own defense in his second trial, in mid-1982, and again the jury found him guilty. Hughes was again sentenced to life in prison and began serving his time.

The legal fight continued, however, and last February the state Supreme Court again nullified the verdict, citing, among other problems, evidence that jurors wrongly knew of the prior conviction.

Released on $100,000 bail, Hughes went back to Thousand Oaks. Three weeks ago, he began teaching at a public school, his father said. He has also tried to make up for lost time with his sons, Chad, 11, and Brock, 9.

With the third trial looming, it became clear that there would be little money to pay for his defense. The support group had run out of steam and owes $143,000, its treasurer, Harry Traoutman, said.

Hughes said he could have had the public defender’s office represent him. But, he said, God has a plan and “that plan cannot be fulfilled as long as I’m back here” engrossed in another trial.

At a press conference after Tuesday’s court appearance, Hughes was asked, “Did you kill Serita?”

“I think everyone knows my stand on that,” he replied.

“The presumption of innocence--it wasn’t there,” he said. “I don’t think there was ever a fair, just investigation.

“I’m still $150,000 in debt,” Hughes said in explaining his decision. “. . . My kids will probably be taken out of private school. . . . The expense, the pain, the agony, is not worth it.”

“We have fought for his innocence with every ounce of energy we have,” Hughes’ father, Clarence, said Tuesday.

Both he and his wife, Florence, said they believe that their son is innocent. Both believe, however, that the third trial could have ended in another guilty verdict. The plea bargain, they reasoned, was the lesser of two evils.