Juror refused to convict a Lexington suspect of murder. Now she advocates for the suspect.
Elizabeth Yellstrom sat in the jury room two years ago, incredulous about what she’d seen.
From her perspective, prosecutors wanted to put an innocent woman in prison for killing her husband. She didn’t think the evidence supported their claims — and she couldn’t understand why she was the only one who felt that way.
Yellstrom was one of 12 jurors tasked with determining if Carol Ann Hignite, then 74, had bludgeoned her husband with a hammer in Lexington, left him lying on the floor for days, and then set their house on fire. Yellstrom sat through four days of Hignite’s murder trial, and she didn’t see the proof.
So she stood firm. As the jury deliberated for eight hours, she wouldn’t be swayed. The day faded to night. A snowstorm and cold temperatures rolled in. It was two days before Christmas Eve. The jury was exhausted.
The discussion was intense — so intense, prosecutors said, at one point a juror had to leave the room because their blood pressure spiked.
A judge eventually declared a mistrial. Prosecutors and defense lawyers said the jury was prepared to find Hignite guilty of abuse of an elderly person and not guilty of arson. The murder charge was the hang-up.
“It was a rush to judgment from the very beginning,” Yellstrom said in a recent interview with the Herald-Leader. “(Hignite) was not provided with the presumption of innocence from the time she was arrested to the first trial.”
In the two years since that mistrial, Yellstrom, 72, and Hignite, now 76, have forged a close relationship. They exchange letters, and Yellstrom has attended nearly all of Hignite’s recent hearings.
Now, as Hignite faces a second murder trial this week in her husband’s death, Yellstrom remains a firm advocate for the woman whose fate she once held in her hands. On Monday, during prosecutors’ opening statements, she sat two rows behind Hignite and her defense team in the courtroom, diligently taking notes.
Is that relationship between a murder suspect and a former juror unusual?
“Hell yeah,” said Russell Baldani, one of Hignite’s lawyers in her first trial.
But Yellstrom’s steadfast belief in Hignite’s innocence, he said, “saved (Hignite’s) life.”
“She is a complete believer that she didn’t do what she is charged with,” Baldani said. “She has maintained that belief all throughout, and she has remained interested in this case.”
What happened in Hignite’s first trial
Hignite was charged with murder, abuse or neglect of an elderly person and arson in September 2017. She told investigators that on the night of Sept. 25, 2017, her husband fell in the bathroom of their Holly Springs Drive home, near Lane Allen Road. He tried to get up, but instead fell again and hit his head on the bathroom sink, she said.
Her husband had fallen before, so she didn’t call for help for nearly three days and left him where he lay on the floor. She checked on him periodically, she said, but didn’t think his injuries were severe enough to call for an ambulance.
When she finally did call first responders on Sept. 28, they found her husband lying on the bedroom floor, covered in his own bodily fluids and blood.
Witnesses at the first trial described him as emaciated. He died several days later at a hospital.
Prosecutors offered several theories for why Hignite may have killed her husband. Maybe she wanted to move away without her husband, or maybe she got mad and went “overboard.”
Yellstrom told the Herald-Leader she thought prosecutors attempted to make their case based on emotion. She felt remarks made during opening and closings were inflammatory. The evidence to convict wasn’t presented, Yellstrom said.
But the other jury members believed prosecutors. Some jurors spoke about their own experiences with domestic violence, which Yellstrom felt swayed their verdict.
“You want to believe police and prosecutors and that what they are giving us is factual information,” Yellstrom said. “And in that case, it simply wasn’t.”
At Hignite’s bond hearing after the mistrial, prosecutors said Yellstrom was “unwilling” to discuss the evidence during jury deliberations.
But Yellstrom says that wasn’t true.
She worked for 22 years as a compliance and safety inspector with the federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration, and she argued that Leon Hignite was medically frail and could have received his injuries in a fall.
After the mistrial, Yellstrom went to the office of Baldani, one of Hignite’s lawyers, and told him she didn’t think his client should’ve been charged. She went through what worked for the defense during the first trial — and what didn’t.
Nearly two years later, she can quote parts of witness testimony and Hignite’s police interrogation video.
As for Hignite and Yellstrom’s relationship, they don’t just talk about the case. They’re friends.
Hignite is an avid reader. Yellstrom has sent her several books by authors Tony Hillerman and Agatha Christie, as well as other murder-mystery thrillers. Yellstrom learned about Hignite’s childhood, that she’s developed cataracts and is constantly cold inside the detention center.
Yellstrom said she sympathizes with Hignite, who is estranged from her family. Hignite’s daughter testified Monday that she believed her mother abused her father for years before his death, and she hadn’t spoken to her mother since her arrest.
“She was abandoned by her family, and in the courtroom she has no one sitting there and supporting her,” Yellstrom said.
Baldani is no longer representing Carol Hignite — he withdrew because she could not continue to pay for his services.
But he, like Yellstrom, continues to follow her case.
“It is very sad to me she is in that situation,” Yellstrom said. “It seems like such a miscarriage of justice, and I would like to think that the system is better than that.”
Opening statements began Monday. The trial is expected to last through Thursday.
