Jury recommends death penalty for Steven Hayes

From the Hartford Courant. Hayes has been sentenced to death for the murders of three members of the Hawke-Petit family in Cheshire, Conn.

Hartford Courant…

A Superior Court jury decided today to sentence Steven Hayes to death for the murders of Jennifer Hawke-Petit and her daughters, Hayley and Michaela, during a seven-hour home invasion, robbery and arson at their Cheshire home in July 2007.

Hayes stood by as the jury of seven women and five men sentenced him to death row.

The jury sentenced Hayes to death on the first of six possible death-penalty counts: killing Hawke-Petit and Michaela and Hayley in the course of a single action.

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Steve McGough

Steve's a part-time conservative blogger. Steve grew up in Connecticut and has lived in Washington, D.C. and the Bahamas. He resides in Connecticut, where he’s comfortable six months of the year.

14 Comments

  1. Anne-EH on November 8, 2010 at 8:04 am

    Thank-you Jury.



  2. Dimsdale on November 8, 2010 at 8:34 am

    Can we get that verdict without 30 years of appeals on the side?



  3. phil on November 8, 2010 at 9:06 am

    Yesssss!  I'm licensed to carry, and I'm free tomorrow morning.  Listen to the appeals at 9:30, and we can all pull triggers at 10.



  4. VictimsRevenge on November 8, 2010 at 1:56 pm

    Phil, People that think like you disgust me.



  5. mskin on November 8, 2010 at 4:11 pm

    the sick thing is, the defense attorney Ulmann declares that Hayes is thrilled with the verdict and that he wanted to commit "suicide by state".  To what end does he make this statement?  saying that his client smiled when the verdict was read?  it just seams classless to me.  Poor Petit has to go through this entire ordeal again next year.

    i support the death penalty, but in this case, i think justice would be better by letting hayes rot in the general prison population.  Now he'll be probably be in isolation for the rest of his life and die from a heart attack from all the crack he smoked.



  6. JollyRoger on November 8, 2010 at 6:57 pm

    I think Hayes will be less than "thrilled" to realize that he has committed "suicide by general prison population- doggy style" It's funny the court had to determine whether he'd be a threat to other prisoners. Bureaucrats get everything completely backwards- and so will Hayes 🙂



  7. Forest on November 9, 2010 at 2:37 am

    I say we put him in Rentschler Field and sell tickets to his execution A few lucky attendees get to join the firing squad. We will erase Connecticut's debt and get rid of him at the same time. He can't suffer enough and he will burn in hell forever for what he did.



  8. Steve M on November 9, 2010 at 10:47 am

    I gotta say … I don't think some of the comments posted help the victim's family and friends all that much. Some things are better left unsaid.



  9. VictimsRevenge on November 9, 2010 at 12:16 pm

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    Steve, I’m glad you chimed in because I would like to make everyone aware of a couple different vantage points. Maybe it's a good way to point out to everyone the absurdity about being happy about Hayes’s situation, so let’s make a big joke out of it. Here’s another unpopular thought that my Christian background makes me aware of, and that is that sometimes people will do things to make themselves more important or more powerful, something that can’t really be proven, that tortured or possibly destroyed an innocent person or a whole family or for that matter many families. When I see an upscale family destroyed the way the Petit family was, it sure makes me think. I don’t claim to know what happened, but neither do you. I will say that it was a gut wrenching devastation of his family, but for some reason I don’t feel the same compassion for him that other people do. With all my truest sincerity I honestly couldn’t tell you whether or not my gut feeling is justified, I just know that I usually don’t feel this way, especially about something like this.



  10. chris-os on November 9, 2010 at 2:34 pm

    The hearts of Dr. Petit, his family and the Hawkes' family will never heal. I am happy for the small measure of comfort this decision has given to them.



  11. VictimsRevenge on November 9, 2010 at 3:02 pm

    Forest, George Carlin had a good idea about public executions. We should turn into a gambling event. It starts with a guillotine elevated fairly high up, and after the head is lopped off it rolls down an incline bouncing off random posts along the way (like the blinko game) and ends up in one of the numbered ports at the bottom, either red or black like roulette.



  12. winnie888 on November 10, 2010 at 1:46 am

    I am all for the death penalty, especially in instances such as this.  However, I am also a bit jaded.  This is Connecticut after all, and "we" did just elect a Democrat governor who is against the death penalty.

    I would like nothing more than to see this sentence carried out, if for no other reason than for Dr. Petit and his extended family to gain some semblance of closure (not likely to ever happen).  But again, this is Connecticut and while we sentence people to death here, very few sentenced to death actually die in the manner intended by jury.



  13. Forest on November 11, 2010 at 3:52 am

    <cite>To VictimsRevenge- Are you saying that you don't feel as much sympathy for the Petits because they were financially better off????!!!! Please tell me I'm interpreting this wrong?

    </cite>



  14. VictimsRevenge on November 11, 2010 at 5:12 am

    I'm saying that sometimes there's a thing called divine justice and my gut tells me that's what this was. As I said I'm not sure, but neither are you.

     

    Something like this cannot happen, not really, so when it does it makes me wonder, and it should make you wonder.



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