From the Hartford Courant: These case has affected everyone, we are suppose to feel safe in our own homes, if Steven Hayes wants to die, then deny the appeal and get on with it, why should we house and feed you while you linger for years, you didn't give Jennifer, Hayley and Michaela the same courtesy. You are a SCUM!!! I hope in your time alone you relive what you did in your head and get no peace...
NEW HAVEN – — Certain words in the litany of verdicts that sent triple murderer
Steven Hayes to death row Monday were reminders of what happened to a woman and her two daughters inside their
Cheshire home three years ago.Sexually assaulted. Kidnapped. Murdered.Included in the repetitive recitation of the verdicts by the judge's clerk Monday in Superior Court were the words
Dr. William Petit Jr. has said were often missing from three years' worth of court hearings:
Jennifer. Hayley. Michaela.When their names were read Monday, Petit, seated in the courtroom, lifted his head and closed his eyes.After deliberating for nearly 17 hours over four days, a jury of five men and seven women decided that Hayes, 47, a career burglar from
Winsted, should be executed for the torture and murders of Petit's wife,
Jennifer Hawke-Petit, 48, and their daughters, Hayley, 17, and Michaela,11, during a home invasion at their Cheshire home on July 23, 2007.Petit was badly beaten with a baseball bat and tied to a pole in the basement. He was able to break free and escape before the fire consumed his home."This is a verdict for justice," Petit said to reporters outside the courthouse. But, he said, upon hearing the jury's decision, "I was really thinking of the tremendous loss … I was sad for the loss we have all suffered."Petit, pausing to choke back tears, said, "Michaela was an 11-year-old little girl. She was tortured and killed in her own bedroom, surrounded by her stuffed animals."Petit also talked about his daughter Hayley's bright future and her strength and the many children who his wife, Jennifer, helped.Petit thanked the jury for doing its job, and said, "I appreciate the fact that there was seven women on the jury. This was a case of sexual predation …
I liked to see women stand up for other women." Hawke-Petit was raped during the attack, and Michaela was sexually assaulted, according to testimony."Crimes like this have to be pursued and prosecuted vigorously," he said. "The easy way out is to plead things out." He described how
New Haven State's Attorney Michael Dearington came to his house and said "If any case deserves the death penalty, it's this one. If I don't go for it, there's no reason to have it on the books." Petit said he agreed."In a civilized society, people need to be responsible for their actions."In court Monday, Petit shut his eyes and cried quietly as he clutched the hand of Beata Bagi, a victim advocate. Some of the more than two dozen family and friends, most of whom attended court with him daily, also cried and clutched one another as Judge Jon C. Blue's clerk, Edjah Jean-Louis, read the verdicts one by one.Across the room, Hayes, seated at a table with his public defenders, did not appear to react to the six death verdicts. He stared straight ahead toward the judge's bench, rarely looking at the jury or anyone else.The jury decided for death on six capital counts: killing Hawke-Petit and Michaela and Hayley in the course of a single action; killing a child under the age of 16; killing Hawke-Petit in the course of a kidnapping; killing Hayley in the course of a kidnapping; killing Michaela in the course of a kidnapping; and killing Hawke-Petit in the course of a sexual assault.During the penalty phase,
Hayes' lawyers argued that a series of mitigating factors, including Hayes' addiction to drugs, a "significantly impaired" mental state, a troubled family history of abuse, a weak personality and the responsibility they say Hayes has taken for the killings with his offers to plead guilty in exchange for life in prison without release, warranted a life sentence rather than death.But the jury found those mitigating circumstances did not outweigh the aggravating factors: whether Hayes killed Hawke-Petit and her daughters during the commission of, or immediate flight from, the commission of a felony — third-degree burglary — and that Hayes committed the murders in "an especially heinous, cruel or depraved manner" and "knowingly created a grave risk of death to another person."
After the verdicts were read, New Haven Public Defender Thomas J. Ullmann shook Hayes'
hand and patted his arm before a judicial marshal led him out of the room.
NEW HAVEN – — Outside the courthouse, Ullmann said Hayes "was thrilled" with the outcome. But he declined to say why he thought Hayes was thrilled and he refused to discuss what he talked about with Hayes. He said Hayes smiled at the verdict."That's what he wanted," he said, adding that Hayes wants to commit "suicide by state" with an execution."He's tried to kill himself before," Ullmann said. "The jury gave him what he wants."
