MERRILL, WI (WSAU) — Another trial date has been set for Henry Hughes, the Lincoln County man accused of shaking his 23-day-old child to death in 2016.
On Tuesday a judge scheduled a nine-day trial to run between May 23rd and June 3rd, with jury selection to occur three days before the start of the trial. Hughes faces two felony counts of reckless homicide and child abuse causing great bodily harm.
Those charges stem from the death of Hughes’ child in September 2016. He told investigators that he was making dinner when the child started choking and turned blue. He said he tried to perform CPR, but the boy became unresponsive.
But doctors say the child’s injuries were not consistent with the story, saying they were more consistent with crushing or shaking and could not have been accidental.
The boy was hospitalized and died two days later.
This is the third attempt to bring the case to trial in the last few years. A trial was scheduled for November of 2019 but was delayed when one of the key prosecution witnesses required an emergency medical procedure. The case was then scheduled for October of this year but was adjourned days before.
A final pre-trial conference will be held on April 12th. If found guilty Hughes faces up to 75 years in the Wisconsin prison system.
