Petit Family Murders in CT-2007 SOLVED-Death Sentence for both men.

[San]

Dr. Petite has it right.

"I really don't want to dignify the ravings of a sociopath who appears to be a pathological liar as well," Petit said, seeming to struggle to contain his rage.

These diaries will be part of Komisarjevsky's defense.  They will say he is not right in his mind and should not be punished because he was mentally ill.  Komisarjevsky always knew he was guilty so there was no getting away from that fact.  So what does he do?  He writes a diary in jail filled with a bunch of BS so when read people will say he is out of his mind.

I don't believe for one second all the BS robberies he claimed to have made.  He is full of sh*t in plain english.

He doesn't want the death penalty because he is a coward.

This is what we will also hear in the next trial.  His lawyer will say he has changed and that he wants to see his own daughter grow up.

He doesn't deserve the right to see his daughter grow up.  He didn't give the Petite family that option.

Give them both the needle.

I told everyone this next trial is going to be worse than the Hayes trial and it is right on track after reading this BS.

[Sister]

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2010/10/20/earlyshow/main6974702.shtml
NEW HAVEN, Conn., Oct. 20, 2010
Home Invasion Murderer: Cohort the Mastermind
Steven Hayes' Lawyers Use Writings of Alleged Accomplice in Effort to Keep Hayes from Getting Death Penalty


It is hard to even read about this case. 
These monsters come in at #3 on my short list for the death penalty.
#1 Vandersloot
#2 Anthony
#3 Hayes/Komisarjevsky

Trimm, I so agree!

[Sister]

Dr. Petite has it right.

"I really don't want to dignify the ravings of a sociopath who appears to be a pathological liar as well," Petit said, seeming to struggle to contain his rage.

These diaries will be part of Komisarjevsky's defense.  They will say he is not right in his mind and should not be punished because he was mentally ill.  Komisarjevsky always knew he was guilty so there was no getting away from that fact.  So what does he do?  He writes a diary in jail filled with a bunch of BS so when read people will say he is out of his mind.

I don't believe for one second all the BS robberies he claimed to have made.  He is full of sh*t in plain english.

He doesn't want the death penalty because he is a coward.

This is what we will also hear in the next trial.  His lawyer will say he has changed and that he wants to see his own daughter grow up.

He doesn't deserve the right to see his daughter grow up.  He didn't give the Petite family that option.

Give them both the needle.

I told everyone this next trial is going to be worse than the Hayes trial and it is right on track after reading this BS.

San, you are so right!!! these men are evil, just plain evil!

[San]

Conn. horror killer tried to commit suicide more than a dozen times

By LAURA ITALIANO
Last Updated: 3:28 PM, October 20, 2010
Posted: 12:49 PM, October 20, 2010

Read more: http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/jury_continues_hearing_evidence_b0O6o0MBchUTk3IMZFBORP#ixzz12vltbQWM

NEW HAVEN, Conn. -- He's only good at killing other people.

Home invasion monster Steven Hayes failed at more than a dozen suicide attempts -- including by guzzling commissary Ibuprofen and tying a sock around his neck -- since getting locked up for murdering a Connecticut nurse and her two daughters, according to psych testimony today in the death penalty phase of his trial.

He even told defense shrinks he "fantasized" about suicide by toilet.

"That was to put his head in the toilet and do a backflip," said Dr. Paul Thomas Amble, an assistant clinical professor of psychiatry at Yale. "But he didn't think he'd be successful at it, and he might end up paralyzed."

Hayes' most recent purported suicide plot was to take the stand this week and intentionally portray a remorseless monster, so as to guarantee the jury would put him to death. Any thoughts of that have been foiled by his own lawyers, who aren't calling him as a witness.

"He wanted essentially to encourage the jury to vote for the death penalty, perhaps by taking the stand and looking like he had no remorse," the doctor said.

"His desire was to actually seek the death penalty," the doctor said, referencing what Hayes told him and his colleagues during a jail interview seven months ago.

But when asked on cross examination whether Hayes might actually only be pretending to want death in a bid for juror sympathy, the doctor agreed that's possible, particularly since Hayes has at times also expressed an inclination to live.

"Do I think [suicide] is actually what he wants? I don't know," the doctor said. "I'm not sitting here saying that I can exactly divine what he wants from his thoughts."

Hayes was convicted earlier this month of raping and strangling Connecticut nurse Jennifer Hawke-Petit, 48, and helping to burn alive her daughters Hayley, 17, and Michaela, 11, during a horrific home invasion robbery in the family's home just north of New Haven three years ago.

The New Haven Superior Court capital murder trial moved this week into the penalty phase, in which jurors hear defense testimony on how Hayes, 47, is a drug-addled patsy who only followed what the crime's mastermind, Joshua Komisarjevsky, 29, told him to do.

Komisarjevsky's creepy jail diaries were released yesterday. In them, he gallingly criticizes the attack's sole survivor, Dr. William Petit, for being a "coward" and not fighting back while getting clubbed awake from a deep sleep with a baseball bat. Komisarjevsky faces his own capital murder trial next year.

In addition to his suicide attempts, Hayes has suffered nightmares, feelings of isolation and anxiety, and a loss of appetite that whittled his formerly 200-pound body down to 135 pounds, the Yale shrink told jurors.

Still, Hayes' decision not to eat might count among his more sane inclinations. Consider: the hair ball.

"He pulled a hair ball from his food and he thought they were contaminating his food," the shrink told jurors. "So he didn't want to eat it."

Defense psychiatric testimony will continue today, then fill most of next week, with closing arguments possibly Friday. Deliberations on whether Hayes should get the needle or life without parole would then begin the following Monday.

[trimmonthelake]

http://www.ctnow.com/news/connecticut/hc-josh-rants-1023-20101023,0,6669652.story
'My Private Horror Show': Joshua Komisarjevsky's Journal Part Confession, Part Analysis Of 'Demons'
By DAVE ALTIMARI, daltimar@courant.com
 
9:12 p.m. EDT, October 23, 2010
The few passages from accused triple murderer Joshua Komisarjevsky's journal that were read into the court record this week were intended to draw attention away from his accomplice, Steven Hayes, who will be sentenced soon by a jury — possibly to death.

Those passages, in which Komisarjevsky's calls the sole survivor of the murders a "coward" and describes the power he had over an 11-year-old girl he tied to the bed and masturbated on, made the already unfathomable crimes even more macabre.

Equally disturbing are the rest of the more than 50 pages of Komisarjevsky's writings admitted as evidence for jurors to read. In small, single-spaced, handwritten prose, the world according to Komisarjevsky is part diary of a madman, part confession, part how-to burglary guide and, finally, part self analysis based in part on his recollection of being raped as a little boy.
There was something else from the journal that Hayes' legal team did not read in open court: an elaboration of Komisarjevsky's initial statement to police that Hayes was the one who racheted up the violence inside the Petit family's Cheshire home in July 2007.

"When Steave took the life of Mrs. Petit he brought both of us to a whole different level," Komisarjevsky wrote. "This was no longer just a simple robbery."

Komisarjevsky, who misspells Hayes name throughout his journals, writes that he regrets not killing Hayes himself. He claims that if he had, the three Petit women — Jennifer Hawke-Petit and her two daughters — would have lived.

"I beat a man with a bat, emotionally scarred a girl, and frozen in my own indecision about whether or not to take Steave out did nothing to stop Mrs. Petit's murder, and ultimately that of Michaela and Hayley as well,'' Komisarjevsky wrote.

"I ran that police blockade at full speed hurling myself at death — I was subsequently cheated of my retribution toward Steave and my own escape through death's imbrace everlasting,'' Komisarjevsky said.
In his initial 75-page statement to police, Komisarjevsky said he was upstairs and went to a railing when he heard noises and then saw Hayes on top of Hawke-Petit, strangling her to death. He said that Hayes then turned to him and said: "… there could be no witnesses."

Komisarjevsky told police Hayes then got the gas cans and started pouring gasoline on Hawke-Petit and then up the stairs to the girls' bedrooms.

Komisarjevsky never told police or revealed in his journals who lit the match. Hayes' attorneys have not said who ignited the gasoline either. But they have gone out of their way to paint Komisarjevsky as the ringleader, and the person who escalated the violence by telling Hayes he had raped Michaela and that Hayes needed to do the same to Hawke-Petit to "make it square."

The person who lit the match may not matter to the jury that will decide whether Hayes gets the death penalty, just as the attempt to paint Komisarjevsky as the ringleader may backfire.

"A jury could well conclude that among the gradations of evil there is a class of folks warranting death, and, while Mr. Komisarjevsky may be at the head of the class, Mr. Hayes remains an honor student,'' Bethany attorney Norm Pattis wrote in his legal blog.
What is clear is that Hayes had at least three occasions to walk away from 300 Sorghum Mill Road before anyone was killed.

Shortly after they broke into the home, beat Dr. William Petit Jr. with the baseball bat and tied everyone else to their beds, Hayes and Komisarjevsky left the house to move their truck away from the Petit home to a condominium complex about a mile away. Police believe they were out of the house for close to an hour.

A few hours later, Hayes drove off to fill up gas cans and taking the time to return to his own truck in the Stop & Shop parking lot to put some of the Petit girls' things in the front seat. Hayes got lost trying to return to the house and had to call Komisarjevsky for directions.

Hayes' third opportunity to leave came when he took Hawke-Petit to the bank and she withdrew $15,000 cash. The bank was in the same parking lot as his truck.

That Judge Jon Blue allowed Komisarjevsky's journals to be entered as evidence doesn't surprise seasoned defense attorneys. While the journals clearly would have been inadmissible as evidence at a regular trial, the death penalty phase of a trial has different boundaries.

"The death penalty lowers the threshold of what a judge will allow in as evidence and that's the only way this stuff comes into evidence,'' said New Haven attorney William F. Dow. "The worst thing a judge can do is give an issue to the defense that can lead to a retrial."

Dow called Komisarjevsky's writings "chilling" and speculated that the decision by Hayes' attorney to introduce them was a gamble, perhaps because the defense didn't have much else to work with.
"Usually in these cases they find that maybe Hayes' mother killed his pet rabbit when he was 6 and he never got over it or he had a horrible childhood, but there apparently isn't anything like that here," Dow said.

Komisarjevsky's childhood is likely to be raised. He was raped when he was 6 by a foster child his parents had taken in. The records of that case have long been sealed, but Komisarjevsky refers to it several times in his writings. He recalls being 9 years old, standing in a grocery store line with his mother, when a woman looked at him and told him "he had the face of an angel child and the eyes of an old soul."

"Month upon month my private horror show went unnoticed at an impressionable age of childhood innocence six years young,'' Komisarjevsky wrote. "When other children were experiencing the world's magic and life's simple games, I was baptized in humanity's inhumanity.''

Komisarjevsky wrote that he never "healed" from the sexual assaults and that a rage built up inside him that was unleashed when he attacked Petit with the baseball bat.

"What I was not prepared for was the combination of my demons getting the better of me juxtaposed with my failure to accurately account for the temperament(al) disposition of my codefendant under high pressure,'' he wrote.

"Not much pleases me more than a well executed strategy to achieve an objective and if things went to hell and you had to slug it out so be it. It's a time to summon a dark relish for mayhem,'' Komisarjevsky wrote. "It was that depth of darkness I was not prepared for once unleashed and dedicated to the task at hand. It's one thing to rob or suppress other traffickers and dealers and quite another to rob an innocent family."
Komisarjevsky acknowledged that the original plans to get in and out of the Petit house quickly changed when he beat Petit with the baseball bat while Hayes stood outside a window watching.

"Steave knocked on the window to my right pulling me back to the moment where time had meaning and was of the essence. Too much noise had been made and an unknown number of people were unaccounted for,'' he wrote.

Komisarjevsky said he interrogated Petit, determining that he had a wife and two daughters, what rooms they were in, that the house alarm was disarmed and that there was no remote emergency button in the master bedroom.

In his testimony during the guilt phase of Hayes' trial, Petit recalled the pain of getting smashed unexpectedly in the head with the bat and of blood pouring down his face before he lost consciousness. He did not remember talking to either of his attackers.

Komisarjevsky claims he may have saved Petit's life "by applying a makeshift pressure dressing to his wounds."

"I wonder why I even bothered,'' he wrote.

There has been no evidence that either Komisarjevsky or Hayes tried to help Petit, only that they took him downstairs and tied him to a pole.

While the two criminals point at each other as the catalyst for unleashing the violence that killed the three Petit women, they agree on one point: Both seemed resigned to death.

Hayes has tried to kill himself at least twice, while Komisarjevsky refers many times to his "anticipated death sentence that will be a state sanctioned murder of mercy."
"I'm not proud of the outcome of July 23, 2007. No one was supposed to lose their lives, however, I'm not surprised by the end result of human depravity,'' Komisarjevsky wrote. "The knowledge gained came at a heavy cost — my shadow now has a name — repression. My self destruction was almost absolute."

[San]

Prison officials testify at Conn. horror home invasion trial

ASSOCIATED PRESS
Last Updated: 2:52 PM, October 25, 2010
Posted: 2:43 PM, October 25, 2010

Read more: http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/prison_officials_testify_at_conn_Q0UxXgVevAuFY4wJ3u1qUN#ixzz13Pi1W800

NEW HAVEN, Conn. — A retired Connecticut prison official has testified a man convicted of a 2007 deadly home invasion threatened to kill a prison officer in March, saying he had nothing to lose.

Frederick Levesque testified Monday as a New Haven jury is considering if Steven Hayes should get the death penalty. Hayes pleaded guilty to threatening the officer and was punished by 20 days' loss of recreation and visitor rights.

Levesque also said Hayes would have limited contact with the general prison population if he gets a life sentence.

Retired state prisons commissioner Theresa Lantz testified earlier Hayes was kept on 24-hour observation because of concerns he could harm himself. His co-defendant, Joshua Komisarjevsky, was not.

Hayes was convicted earlier this month of killing a woman and her daughters in Cheshire.

[San]

There was never any doubt in my mind that they planned to kill this family from the get go.

You don't buy gas just for the fun of it.  From the above article.

Shortly after they broke into the home, beat Dr. William Petit Jr. with the baseball bat and tied everyone else to their beds, Hayes and Komisarjevsky left the house to move their truck away from the Petit home to a condominium complex about a mile away. Police believe they were out of the house for close to an hour.


A few hours later, Hayes drove off to fill up gas cans and taking the time to return to his own truck in the Stop & Shop parking lot to put some of the Petit girls' things in the front seat. Hayes got lost trying to return to the house and had to call Komisarjevsky for directions.

Komisarjevsky told police Hayes then got the gas cans and started pouring gasoline on Hawke-Petit and then up the stairs to the girls' bedrooms.

[San]

Conn.-horror killer said he raped woman post-strangling: doctor

ASSOCIATED PRESS
Last Updated: 3:49 PM, October 28, 2010
Posted: 9:21 AM, October 28, 2010


Read more: http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/testimony_continues_in_conn_home_4770mT77B2HwmBB429UGIK#ixzz13hGhoT6k

NEW HAVEN, Conn. — A man convicted of killing a woman and her two daughters in a 2007 home invasion told a psychiatrist he was shocked by his co-defendant's violence, but later found himself in a rage, strangling and then raping the woman, the doctor testified Thursday.

Dr. Eric Goldsmith took the stand for a second day as defense attorneys try to convince a New Haven Superior Court jury that Steven Hayes should be sentenced to life in prison, not given the death penalty. The same jury convicted Hayes earlier this month of killing Jennifer Hawke-Petit and her daughters, 17-year-old Hayley Petit and 11-year-old Michaela Petit, in their Cheshire home.

The defense claims Hayes, a paroled burglar and drug addict with no history of violent crimes, was led to murder by Joshua Komisarjevsky, who awaits trial. Prosecutors say both men are equally responsible.

Goldsmith said Hayes told him he was concerned someone could get hurt and that Komisarjevsky even broke into a couple of houses to show Hayes they could do it without being caught.

The psychiatrist said Hayes told him he was "in a state of shock" when Komisarjevsky calmly beat Dr. William Petit bloody with a baseball bat after they broke into the Petit house.

Goldsmith said Hayes told him he took Hawke-Petit to a bank, forcing her to withdraw money while her family remained hostages at home. When they returned, Hayes said, Komisarjevsky falsely told him William Petit had died. Hayes said Komisarjevsky also told him he had left his DNA on one of the girls, and he had to kill them.

The psychiatrist said Hayes recounted that when he saw police cars arriving outside the house, he felt Hawke-Petit had betrayed him by tipping off police from the bank, and fell into a rage during which he strangled and then raped her.

Hayes said Komisarjevsky told him "fire destroys everything," including DNA evidence, but Hayes had expected they would take the family outside before torching the house, according to Goldsmith.

"He said, 'It is like I am transported from the earth to the moon. I'm just following Josh's lead," Goldsmith testified of Hayes' account.

Goldsmith said Hayes told him he poured gasoline and Komisarjevsky lit the match. Prosecutors say the girls, who were tied up, died of smoke inhalation. Their father, tied up in the basement, managed to crawl to a neighbor's house.

The defense has presented several witnesses who described the 47-year-old Hayes' guilt and remorse, including several suicide attempts after the home invasion. They have said he tried to overcome a childhood of abuse that led to drug addiction and burglaries for which he served 25 years in prison.

Goldsmith read from a suicide note Hayes wrote, saying, "Although I am not the monster Josh is, I am one nonetheless," adding, "I always had the ability to change, but cowards don't change, they become me." He said the note was signed with the word "suicide" spelled backward.

Goldsmith also testified that Hayes was in an extreme emotional state at the time of the crime and that impaired his ability to control his conduct. But he said his conclusions were not enough to offer a legal defense such as extreme emotional disturbance.

His testimony sparked an animated cross examination by a prosecutor, who said state law would prevent the death penalty in cases where a defendant was mentally impaired to the point they can't control their conduct. Goldsmith said he was not testifying Hayes could not conform his conduct to the law.

[San]

Juror in Conn. home invasion case dismissed after derogatory comment

ASSOCIATED PRESS
Last Updated: 1:13 PM, October 29, 2010
Posted: 12:59 PM, October 29, 2010

Read more: http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/juror_in_conn_home_invasion_case_DRe4Y08096yE8mneTEu8MP#ixzz13lwMUjBr

NEW HAVEN, Conn. — The judge in the trial of a Connecticut man convicted in a deadly home invasion has dismissed a juror who was overheard making a derogatory comment to another juror.

The comment was heard by a clerk after testimony resumed on Friday with a psychiatrist on the stand for the defense.

The jury will decide whether Steven Hayes should get a death sentence or life in prison.

It was not immediately clear if the comment made by the female juror was directed at the witness or a defense attorney.

An alternate juror will be chosen to replace the dismissed panelist.

Hayes was convicted of killing a Cheshire woman and her two daughters in 2007.

A co-defendant, Joshua Komisarjevsky, faces trial next year.

[Blonde]

Conn. horror killer tried to commit suicide more than a dozen times

Why stop him let him die.

[San]

Conn. horror killer tried to commit suicide more than a dozen times

Why stop him let him die.

That's what I say.

[Sister]

Conn. horror killer tried to commit suicide more than a dozen times

Why stop him let him die.

That's what I say.

[Blonde]

Brother To Steven Hayes: 'Show Me Your Soul Is Worth Saving'


http://www.courant.com/community/cheshire/cheshire-home-invasion/hc-hayes-day8-1030-20101029,0,2870405.story

[San]

Elie Wiesel opposes death penalty in Connecticut home-invasion murders

By LAURA ITALIANO and BILL SANDERSON
With Post Wire Services
Last Updated: 7:32 AM, October 30, 2010
Posted: 1:47 AM, October 30, 2010


Read more: http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/let_killers_live_1E9xNWt8V3wPo8yxhWG4QJ#ixzz13qcwbIUe

Two men accused of killing a woman and her daughters in a horrifying home invasion should be spared the death penalty, Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel said in a speech at a Connecticut campus miles from where a jury is weighing one suspect's fate.

"Death is not the answer" was the refrain in Wiesel's talk, some of which seemed directed at Dr. William Petit, the sole survivor of the shocking 2007 crime in Cheshire, a leafy town 14 miles north of New Haven.

"Your wound is open," the writer and activist Wiesel said in his talk Tuesday at Wesleyan University. "You are mourning . . . but death is not the answer."

Petit was not in attendance.

A jury in New Haven is weighing a death sentence for one of the Petit family killers, Steven Hayes. He's been convicted of raping and strangling Jennifer Hawke-Petit, 48, and helping burn alive her daughters Hayley, 17, and Michaela, 11.

The other suspect, Joshua Komisarjevsky, is awaiting trial and could also face a death sentence if convicted.

A better punishment for fiends like Komisarjevsky, 29, and Hayes, 47, would be a life of hard labor, said Wiesel, whose parents and sister died in Nazi death camps.

"I know the pain of those who survive," Wiesel said.

Meanwhile, a woman was kicked off the jury in Hayes' case yesterday after a court clerk heard her telling a neighboring juror that someone from the defense camp -- it wasn't clear if the reference was to a lawyer or a testifying defense psychiatrist -- was "bullsh--," the Hartford Courant reported.

Defense testimony aimed at sparing Hayes from the death penalty continues Monday.

[San]

I will respectfully disagree with Elie Wiesel.  Death is the answer when we are dealing with monsters like this because they will never know what it is to do hard labor.  These two murderers will play the system to the hilt and get everything they need.  They will be treated better than the homeless.  They will have a bed and meals every day.

[Sister]

I will respectfully disagree with Elie Wiesel.  Death is the answer when we are dealing with monsters like this because they will never know what it is to do hard labor.  These two murderers will play the system to the hilt and get everything they need.  They will be treated better than the homeless.  They will have a bed and meals every day.

I understand her point.  But we have become so soft, there is no such thing as hard labor for criminals.  I agree with you San.

[cookie]

I will respectfully disagree with Elie Wiesel.  Death is the answer when we are dealing with monsters like this because they will never know what it is to do hard labor.  These two murderers will play the system to the hilt and get everything they need.  They will be treated better than the homeless.  They will have a bed and meals every day.

I understand her point.  But we have become so soft, there is no such thing as hard labor for criminals.  I agree with you San.

   yep

[San]

Death penalty closings start in Conn. home invade case; delibs set for tomorrow

By LAURA ITALIANO
Last Updated: 12:35 PM, November 4, 2010
Posted: 9:45 AM, November 4, 2010

Read more: http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/closing_arguments_planned_in_conn_NSYlEIJT5QopYN9Rnl4ALO#ixzz14Kxzv1a8

NEW HAVEN, Conn. -- It's the remorseful drug-addled loser defense.

Closing arguments began this morning on whether home invasion monster Steven Hayes will be put to death for the murders of a Connecticut nurse and her two daughters.

Hayes, a 47-year-old career burglar, is arguing that he deserves a break -- a sentence of life without parole -- because he's truly sorry for having raped and strangled the mother, crimes he's blaming on his history of crack abuse and child abuse.

He's also claiming that his yet-tried co-defendant, Joshua Komisarjevsky, was the real mastermind of the crime, and was solely responsible for setting the daughters on fire as they lay tied to their beds.

Not so, prosecutor Gary Nicholson, told jurors, speaking just after 10 this morning about the family's 7-hour ordeal of robbery, kidnapping, rape and murder, culminating nearly two months of testimony in New Haven Superior Court.

"Make no mistake about it," Nicholson said. "The violence, the destruction, and the deaths that the members of the Petit family were put through was a joint effort," he said, referring to pediatric nurse Jennifer Hawke-Petit and daughters Hayley, 17, and Michaela, 11.

"He could have left anytime he wanted," the prosecutor said of Hayes.

All three deaths were depraved, heinous and cruel -- thereby meeting the legal standard for the death penalty, the prosecutor said.

"In her last moments on this earth, as the defendant's hands were around her neck, choking the life out of her, what was on Mrs. Petit's mind?" he asked.

"She was thinking about her family... her daughters ... What were the defendants going to do to them?"

As for the girls, who were literally burned alive, "The girls had gas poured right on them," the prosecutor told jurors.

"I've already said it once, I'm going to say it again. Those girls knew they were about to suffer a horrible, painful death. Were they screaming? Were they begging for their lives? Use your common sense. Of course they were."

"If ever there was a case compelling the ultimate penalty, it is this case," he added.

Hayes' brother, Matthew, of Seattle, is sitting in the audience -- the first family member to come to court in his support.

Matthew, who soon after the slaughters told authorities "The family of this monster will have to live with this forever," and "Steven is alone," is sitting two rows behind his brother.

Closings by both sides are expected to last the morning. This afternoon, the judge will instruct jurors on the law governing their death penalty deliberations, which will begin Friday morning.

[cookie]

hopefully his brother is there to watch him get the death penalty that he so deserves and not in support of him...

[San]

Some jurors in home invade have sympathy for monster: Note

By LAURA ITALIANO
Last Updated: 5:13 PM, November 5, 2010
Posted: 11:18 AM, November 5, 2010

Read more: http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/home_invade_monster_life_now_in_zIL4IiJWCovhuXEYyyiZdP#ixzz14T5zqwz0

NEW HAVEN, Conn. -- Life-or-death deliberations hit an early snag in the home invasion case, with jurors sending out an afternoon note indicating they are split on whether Steven Hayes dodges the needle because he's "impaired."

Jurors, some looking exhausted, left for the day without reaching a verdict. They return tomorrow morning to begin deliberating again.

Members of the Petit hugged as they left the courthouse.

It's unclear from the note how wide, or how intractable, the split may be, or in which direction jurors are leaning -- more toward the death penalty or toward life without parole. But the note does indicate that at least some of the jurors are feeling, for now, a potentially life-saving sympathy for the 47-year-old crackhead murderer.

Jurors are deciding if Hayes, a career burglar, should be sent to the death chamber for raping and strangling pediatric nurse Jennifer Hawke-Petit, 48, and helping to literally burn alive her daughters, Hayley, 17 and Michaela, 11, who had been tied to their beds and doused with gasoline.

Jurors have been instructed to work their way through a complicated series of yes-and-no votes in weighing aggravating and mitigating factors for each of six death-penalty-eligible murder charges.

In the afternoon note, sent out after just three hours of deliberations, jurors asked whether they needed to be unanimous in cutting Hayes a life-saving break on the basis of his being mentally impaired, impaired in his ability to live a law-abiding life, or unable to foresee that his actions would result in death.

The judge answered "yes--" meaning all 12 of them must agree that either he gets the break or not, a decision they must repeat for all 6 of the death penalty charges Hayes faces.

If all 12 agree he was impaired or couldn't foresee his actions would lead to death, there can be no death penalty on at least that particular charge.

Still, jurors used a very pro-life hypothetical in asking for guidance -- telling the judge that, "for example," he should "assume" that either 9 or 10 of them want Hayes to live because they've found him impaired or unaware his actions would lead to any particular death.

Jurors have been told they'll work every day until a verdict -- including tomorrow and Sunday if necessary.