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29 March 2024

US home invasion horror jury to rule on execution

Published
By AFP

A Connecticut jury trying a man who with an alleged accomplice turned a smart suburban home into a house of horrors, murdering and incinerating a mother and two girls, will hear arguments Monday about whether he should be executed.

The trial in New Haven, Connecticut, just outside New York, has horrified and gripped Americans in equal measure with a story that rivals the scripts of the most terrifying Hollywood slasher movie.

Now defense attorneys are fighting for convicted murderer Steven Hayes' life, even arguing that it would cost taxpayers less to keep him behind bars than to send him through the litigious process of death row.

On Thursday, Judge Jon Blue rejected the financial savings argument as "perverse," giving a boost to prosecutors hoping to persuade the jury that Hayes deserves nothing less than execution.

According to authorities, Hayes, and a second man who has not yet been tried, entered a tidy, middle-class house on a leafy street in the town of Cheshire in 2007 with little motive other than robbery.

Then depravity took over.

Hayes, 47, and his alleged accomplice bludgeoned the father, a doctor, into unconsciousness.
Next they forced the wife, Jennifer Hawke-Petit, into a car to drive to a bank and withdraw money. Hayes then raped and strangled her back at the house.

The couple's daughters, aged 11 and 17, were held captive, tied to the bedposts of what court photos showed to be their lovingly decorated rooms. Finally, after the 11-year-old was raped, the victims were smothered in gasoline and set alight to burn with the entire house.

The father, William Petit, managed to escape from the cellar where he'd been locked up, blood pouring from a head wound, and fell into the street.

The same jury that convicted Hayes must now decide whether or not to impose capital punishment, while the second defendant, ex-convict Joshua Komisarjevsky, 30, will be tried next year.

The attempt to derail the possibility of execution by arguing the high costs was less usual than typical arguments based on defendants' personal qualities or mental condition.

An expert cited by defense lawyers for Hayes said a death penalty case in Connecticut costs three million dollars, while a life sentence costs two million dollars.

The expert, James Austin, said Hayes would in any case probably die in prison if sentenced to death, because the appeals process takes so long to exhaust -- and that this would simply cost the state more money.

"A natural life imprisonment sentence for Mr Hayes will be considerably less expensive than seeking the death penalty. Given Mr Hayes' age of 47 and life expectancy of 70 years, it is highly likely that he will die of natural causes within 23 years," Austin wrote.

The judge said the argument had "no moral sense."

"A jury in the penalty phase of a capital case is charged with the task of using reasoned moral judgment, not counting dollars and cents," he said in his ruling Thursday.

Only one person has been executed in Connecticut in the last half century -- serial killer Michael Ross, who died by lethal injection in 2005. There are 10 people on death row in the state.

A poll this week by Quinnipiac University found that 76 percent of respondents in Connecticut favor Hayes' execution.