New multimedia exploration of the Michigan criminal case that changed domestic violence laws

A quarter of a century has passed since the case of “The Burning Bed” dramatized domestic violence for viewers around the country and marked the tiny village of Dansville on the legal history map forever. The case was a murder trial against Francine Hughes, but it was much more than that. It served as a wake up call for America about the plague of domestic violence secretly destroying women behind closed doors.

In 1977, Francine poured gasoline over her husband, James “Mickey” Hughes, stepped back and lit a match, and dropped it. He burned to death, and the house which had served as the backdrop to years of unthinkable violence was burnt to the ground. The murder trial uncovered 12 years of abuse at the hands of Mickey, and a jury in Lansing acquitted Francine of murder, voting instead to say she was not guilty by reason of temporary insanity.

The jury rejected the arguments of defense attorney Arjen Greydanus pleading for them to find Francine not guilty. No qualifer, no yes, buts. Simply and plainly: not guilty.

Thus was born the battered woman syndrome defense.

The case spawned a book, and in 1984 a made for television movie featuring the late Farrah Fawcett as Francine Hughes. It galvanized the new domestic violence prevention and education movement. It was a turning point in America’s understanding of domestic violence, some have argued.

And now, the Lansing State Journal has launched a multimedia exploration of the case, the movie, and the impact on American culture, the domestic violence movement and even tiny Dansville.

As a side note, attorney Greydanus is semi-retired now, spending most of his time in a vacation villa in Italy. But I had the opportunity to see Greydanus in action in 1999. He was defending Semaj Dion Beal on charges of murder. Beal was charged with, and convicted of — among other things — first degree premeditated murder.

Beal had gone to the home of victim Alden Judge, and, as I recall the prosecutor described it, shot Judge in execution style. Beal claimed Judge had made a sexual advance on him. It was a classic homosexual panic defense. In short, the concept that the sexual advance on one man by another man was so untoward that it necessitated the immediate, violent response. In this case, putting two bullets in the man’s body.

Greydanus seemed out of place in the case. And I recall Sean Kosofsky of the Triangle Foundation telling me he believed that Greydanus was attempting to rekindle the glory of the Hughes case. The media attention, the book, the movie, the notoriety.

But his attempts to create the panic defense as solid legal defense failed that day. Regardless, Greydanus has rightly earned a spot in American legal history with his defense of Hughes.