Francine Hughes

Francine Moran Hughes (later Wilson; August 17, 1947 – March 22, 2017) was an American woman who, after thirteen years of domestic abuse, set fire to the bed in which her live-in ex-husband Mickey Hughes was sleeping, on March 9, 1977, in Dansville, Michigan. Mickey was killed and the house destroyed in the resulting fire. At trial, Hughes was found not guilty by reason of temporary insanity in one of the first cases involving "battered-woman syndrome" as a defense.

Early life Francine Hughes was born in Stockbridge, Michigan. Her mother named her Francine after a French musician. Her father, a farmworker, was an abusive alcoholic. At age 16, Francine left high school to marry 18-year-old James "Mickey" Hughes. They had four children together: Christie, James "Jimmy" Berlin Jr, Nicole, and Dana. The movie about Hughes' story The Burning Bed includes only the first three children. Mickey had moved back in with her after he was involved in a serious car accident that summer. Francine later testified in court that although she was reluctant to have him return to the home, she felt she could not refuse as she did not want to "hurt him more...than he already had been", referring to the severity of his injuries from the accident.

The abuse persisted and escalated in the years after Mickey's recovery, and he regularly beat her, destroyed furniture and killed their daughter's kitten.

After Mickey forced Francine to cook his dinner, he raped her. She suffered through this last assault until he finally fell into a drunken slumber. She decided to wait for their youngest child, Dana, to return home. When he did not return after some time, Francine decided to burn the house down to prevent a return to life with Mickey.

Francine told the three children to put on their coats and wait in the car. She then poured gasoline around Mickey's bed and lit the gasoline. The resulting fire consumed the home. In the meantime, with her children in the car, Francine drove to the police station so she could confess to the murder.

At her trial in Lansing, Michigan, two of Francine's children testified that their father had hit their mother "a lot of times" over the years. Francine was found not guilty by reason of temporary insanity. Both the prosecution and the defense agreed that Francine's plight was sympathetic. However, no jurors have ever confirmed publicly whether that was a factor in their decision.

Her mother later said, "You did what was best for your husband."

Later years In 1980, Hughes married Robert Wilson, a country musician,

Cultural impact Hughes set a legal precedent with her case and began a new wave of fighting for domestic abuse to be recognized as a serious issue. A book about her situation, titled The Burning Bed, was the basis of a 1984 made-for-television movie with the same name, starring Farrah Fawcett. According to National Public Radio as broadcast on April 3, 2017, the song "Independence Day" written by Gretchen Peters and made popular by Martina McBride is about this event.

Folk singer Lyn Hardy also created a song about these events entitled "The Ballad of Francine Hughes".