Kevin Jenkins

kevin@thespectrum.com

A prominent St. George attorney pleaded guilty Friday to shooting “in the direction of” his wife during a middle-of-the-night domestic violence incident last year that may land him in jail for up to a year.

Michael Dean Hughes, who turns 69 this month, acknowledged firing the gun at his wife and that two children in the home, one of them a friend visiting the wife’s son, “heard the gun shot, and smelled the gun powder,” and that they heard Hughes say to his wife, “‘Are you hit?’ and then ‘that was a warning shot, the next one is in your head,’” according to a statement of the evidence read by Deputy County Attorney Laina Arras at the hearing.

Central Utah Judge James Brady, chosen to preside over the case after all of the district court judges in the southwestern part of the state recused themselves, asked Hughes if Arras’ summary of the facts in the June 25, 2015 incident is correct.

“To the best of my recollection, your honor,” Hughes said.

Because the defense noted at an April hearing that Hughes was sent to a Salt Lake City hospital under an involuntary commitment order to treat “some definite mental health issues,” and acknowledged Friday that he is taking several medications that may “actually assist him in understanding” the court proceedings, Brady asked Hughes to clarify the written statement that he is of sound mind and free from any mental disease that might hinder his ability to understand the rights he was giving up by pleading guilty.

“I am bipolar, your honor. That was the diagnosis I received about 11 months ago,” Hughes said. “Though I do take, I would say, three drugs for that particular condition, as prescribed, those do not prevent me from understanding these proceedings. And in fact they assist me.”

The plea agreement eliminates charges of attempted murder and aggravated kidnapping that were added in October. Hughes pleaded guilty Friday to a felony count of aggravated assault, the charge that had originally been filed against him three months after the incident, as well as two misdemeanor counts of domestic violence in the presence of a child, and a misdemeanor count of providing false information to a police officer.

Sentencing is scheduled for Sept. 28, after Adult Probation and Parole officers conduct an investigation of Hughes’ personal and criminal history to determine his likelihood to accept probation supervision and avoid future crimes.

Hughes was a senior partner and co-founder of the well known Hughes Thompson Randall and Mellen firm practicing family law in St. George, but friends say he is largely retired from active practice. His name was removed from the partnership’s signs in March amid media inquiries about the case.

A family friend, Bradley Jennings, in a recorded statement played during an evidentiary hearing in May, described Hughes as a rare “five-star attorney” who was highly successful in school and in his practice – someone who also worked as a deputy prosecutor in Washington County briefly during the 1970s and who was offered a district court judgeship but declined it during the 1990s.

Another friend, Linda Nelson, said Hughes grew up in Costa Mesa, California, where his father was the area’s first doctor at a time when “this town was nothing but horses,” and that Hughes' father and Nelson’s father joined together to open Newport Beach’s renowned Hoag Hospital, acquiring a fair amount of real estate there along the way.

Plea deal in works in attorney's attempted murder case

As part of the plea agreement, Arras has agreed not to seek prison time at Hughes’ sentencing but said she will ask for up to a year in jail. Defense attorney Douglas Terry plans to present mitigating evidence in opposition to the request, the attorneys told Brady on Friday.

Brady apparently has agreed with the attorneys that he will not sentence Hughes to more than a year in jail under civil procedure “Rule 11” discussions that have taken place, although Brady told Arras and Terry that he was relying on their memory of the discussions Friday because he didn’t recall the specifics.

Brady presided over the couple's divorce case filed by Hughes and granted a final judgment in March. Hughes’ ex-wife did not attend Friday’s hearing.

“She was aware of the hearing. … She was told she could be here if she wanted to,” Arras said. “(But) she is not pushing for jail time or prison.”

She also did not call police to report the shooting incident and it only came to light, ironically, after Hughes went to the police department nearly 24 hours later to report that his wife had pointed a gun at him, which is the foundation for the false report to police charge.

Her reluctance to inform the police about the shooting confounded investigators.

Hearing postponed in attorney's attempted murder case

“She (told me), ‘We always had this unwritten rule between us that our problems stay with us. We don’t get outside law enforcement involved. We’ll take care of it in the house. So when he went to the police, I was kind of surprised,’” Detective Barry Golding, the chief investigating officer for the Washington County Attorney’s Office, said during the recorded interview with Jennings played for Brady in May.

People in California and Idaho contacted The Spectrum & Daily News earlier this year to express their concerns that maybe Hughes was indeed the victim, noting that his wife had completed a jail sentence and was still serving a 14-year probation term when she and Hughes met through a dating website and married in December 2009, and that Hughes had told them last year that he was afraid of her.

She had been a Boise, Idaho, area attorney who was jailed and then disbarred after she was convicted of forging a judge’s signature to help a woman get her child in a custody case. The evidence stated Hughes’ ex-wife then pressured a witness to testify falsely about the case, that she destroyed recorded evidence of it and falsified court documents, using money paid by unrelated clients to hire a new attorney in the case, according to a disciplinary report issued by the Idaho State Bar in 2006 as well as Ada County court records.

Jennings, a former Dixie College police officer working as a private investigator, said Hughes was aware of her history and asked him to look into her background before deciding to marry her.

“She paid her price. She made the biggest mistake of her life,” Jennings said.

When Jennings visited Hughes’ wife after the shooting, “She said, ‘Tell him I love him, I want him home,’” Jennings told Golding. “She wasn’t the fearful victim you would expect if he tried to kill her. I was surprised.”

Despite initial concerns about Hughes’ report to police and his ex-wife’s background, the prosecution ultimately decided that her description of Hughes being the shooter seemed to best match the evidence based on witness statements as well as an analysis of the bullet and its trajectory within the home.

“This case identified some discrepancies, some things that needed to be done by us,” Golding told Jennings in the recording. “I’ve interviewed, like you, thousands of people, and (his wife has) been really believable to me.”

The plea agreement also resolved a dispute over whether Terry should be allowed to continue representing Hughes. Arras sought to have him removed from the case because Terry also represents Jennings, a potential key witness for the prosecution, in an unrelated criminal case.

Arras dropped the complaint when terms of the plea agreement were established.

Follow reporter Kevin Jenkins on Twitter, @SpectrumJenkins. Call him at 435-674-6253.