After three hours of deliberations on Friday, a DuPage County jury found Ernest Hubbard guilty of killing his pregnant wife by setting her on fire.
Hubbard, 32, of Glendale Heights, was charged with murdering his wife, Trijuana, on July 13, 1999. He was angry because he believed she was having an affair and was pregnant by another man, Assistant State’s Atty. Steven Knight said.
Knight told the jury that Hubbard soaked her in gasoline and set her on fire as she lay in bed. She then ran into the bathroom, and he locked the door, he said. A neighbor heard screams and called 911. Trijuana Hubbard was burned over 76 percent of her body, but survived 11 days at Loyola University Medical Center before dying of cardiac arrest. She was unable to talk to investigators.
The defendant received substantial burns over 60 percent of his body.
Assistant Public Defender Harriet Gustafson argued the death was a result of a mutual decision to commit suicide because both were frustrated with their lives. “They were reckless acts done jointly,” she said. “Unthinkable, irrational acts, but not murder.”
After the fire, Ernest Hubbard made several unclear and conflicting statements about how and why the fire started, which Gustafson argued were made when he was in “pain and suffering and heavily medicated.”
Knight claimed that Trijuana Hubbard “had no reason to commit suicide, and she never wanted to die. Ernest’s frustration with this marriage grew too strong.”
Judge Kathryn Creswell told jury members that they could find Hubbard guilty of murder, involuntary manslaughter or innocent.
Knight said the jury found the crime was “indicative of wanton cruelty,” which would allow prosecutors to ask for a prison sentence up to 100 years. Creswell scheduled sentencing for Jan. 16.
Hubbard has been in the DuPage County Jail since 1999.