Posted on 11/08/2010 9:06:26 AM PST by Racehorse
Steven Hayes was sentenced to death by a Connecticut jury today for his role in the deadly 2007 home invasion that killed Jennifer Hawke-Petit and her two daughters.
The verdict came halfway through day four of deliberation for the jury that spend the whole weekend holed up in a New Haven courtroom discussing the fate of Hayes, 47.
Hayes is convicted of raping and choking Hawke-Petit to death, while accused accomplice Joshua Komisarjevsky is accused of sexually assaulting 11-year-old Michaela Petit. Michaela and her older sister Hayley, 17, died after they were tied to their beds and the house was set on fire.
The jury had struggled several times during deliberation to agree on a sentence for Hayes. On the first day of delibrations the jurors sent a note to Judge Jon Blue asking, "What does it mean to unanimously find the existence of a statutory mitigating factor?"
(Excerpt) Read more at abcnews.go.com ...
Only criminals can get away with that. No trial. No jury. Nothing but a excruciating death sentence for the victims.
And then the bleeding hearts liberals whine about HIS suffering when he dies.
V: It is indeed hard to imagine that anyone can come up with an excessive punishment for these beasts. PS: thanks for the GIF
God is the one who instituted the death penalty for murder. Jesus came to fulfill the Law, not abolish it.
The only people who can forgive him for what he did are dead, those he killed. It's not the place of the government to forgive him for them. It's the place of the government to execute justice.
Romans 13 1Let every person be subject to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God, and those that exist have been instituted by God. 2Therefore whoever resists the authorities resists what God has appointed, and those who resist will incur judgment. 3For rulers are not a terror to good conduct, but to bad. Would you have no fear of the one who is in authority? Then do what is good, and you will receive his approval, 4for he is God’s servant for your good. But if you do wrong, be afraid, for he does not bear the sword in vain. For he is the servant of God, an avenger who carries out God’s wrath on the wrongdoer.
This guy committed this crime knowing full well that he raped and murdered and that it's wrong and there are penalties for it. It's a risk he CHOSE to take.
It's not worth the risk to society that these animals could get loose, or be freed, and go out to do it again. What will you say to the next victim and the family of the next victim by protecting the criminal?
The death penalty is a protection for society since so many of these people will do it again given the chance. It needs to be enforced and God can still grant him mercy, even if he doesn't have years left on this planet.
If there’s even the slightest chance that men like those two were ever allowed in public again, there’s too much of a chance they will harm someone else. As it is, they might spend a lifetime sentence murdering inside prison. What if one of your loved ones were incarcerated with them? Wouldn’t prisons be at least a little less full and a whole lot less dangerous if violent criminals were executed?
For the few not familiar with the case, the Petit family lived in an upscale neighborhood in Connecticut. On the night of the crime, the two perpetrators broke into the Petit home and surprised William Petit, who was up late, reading. Doctor Petit was beaten into unconsciousness with a baseball bat, tied hand and foot, then strapped to a post in the basement of his home as the killers ravaged his wife (who suffered from MS) and daughters, age 17 and 11. Dr. Petit eventually came too and managed to free his hands (but not his feet) and crawled out a basement window. He hopped/crawled to a neighbor's house and managed to summon the neighbor, who freed Petit and called police, who had already been alerted and had surrounded the Petit house but didn't know how many men were involved or what was happening inside.
About then, the perps, Joshua Komisarjevsky and Steven Hayes, set the house on fire and tried to escape in the Petit's family van but were intercepted by a police roadblock (they crashed the van trying to escape). Dr. Petit was taken to the hospital with a huge gash in his forehead, requiring many stitches. He has been unable to work as a doctor since the beating. According to his confession, Petit's wife, Jennifer Hawke-Petit was raped and strangled by Steven Hayes. Eleven-year-old Michaela Petit was raped by Komisarjevsky. Both Michaela and her sister, Hayley, 17, were tied to their beds, doused with gasoline and set on fire. They died of smoke inhalation. Hayley's body was found outside her bedroom. She had apparently gotten free and tried to escape but was overcome by smoke inhalation. Michaela's body was found still tied to her bed.
This is what these men did while holding the women hostage and attempting to have Jennifer Hawke-Petit take $15,000. out of her bank account to give to them. She did, but wrote a note on the withdrawal slip that alerted a bank teller to the fact that she was being held hostage. The bank teller called the police but had no information other than Mrs. Petit was being held hostage. This is why the Cheshire, Connecticut police didn't immediately enter the house but set up a perimeter around it to thwart an escape by the perps. It worked, but three lives were lost that day and the survivor, William Petit, will certainly never be the same, although he doesn't blame the police.
Following the death penalty verdict for Steven Hayes, Dr. Petit commented: "Vengeance belongs to the Lord. This is about justice. We need to have some rules in a civilized society." He also said it wouldn't bring 'closure', saying whoever came up with the concept was "an imbecile." "It's a hole with jagged edges," he said. "Over time the edges may smooth out a little bit, but the hole in your heart, the hole in your soul is always there."
Joshua Komisarjevsky will be tried next year.
Most people I know in the “against” column are there for two reasons:
1. Study after study has shown that, in many jurisdictions, the death penalty is administered disproportionately against certain groups. (Blacks more than whites, men more than women, for instance). That is to say, those groups are more likely to receive the death penalty for having committed the same crime.
See http://www.abanet.org/irr/hr/summer99/tabak.html for the argument that discrimination remains a problem. Note that there are counterarguments, some of which are addressed in that article.
2. Many high-profile exonerations since the advent of DNA-evidence have shown that some number of death row inmates must be innocent. (Intuitively, this must be the case regardless of DNA evidence, unless we naively believe our justice system never makes mistakes.) While many of those innocent will never be exonerated, there seems to be a philosophical resistance to denying them the chance that some revelation will free them.
You think it might be that soon?
I’m offended this POS is still drawing breath.
Something I will ponder for awhile. Don't get me wrong, I am in favor of the DP. Still, an interesting question.
FMCDH(BITS)
One day should have sufficed. Four is a bit much. My guess is that someone on the panel didn’t actually think this monster deserved the death penalty. I’ve made wrong guesses before, but after the second day, that did seem likely.
I am well aware of the Innocence Project. However, this is where you and I might disagree. Truly, there are cases where the evidence is not so great, but then there are cases where there really is NO shred of doubt - such as this recent trial of Mr. Hayes. This is why there must be some way to ensure that people like this no longer walk the earth.
We will never get it perfect. Meanwhile, we do have much better forensics; now if only the police will do their job. So many times, I have seen stories where the cops just botched it from the first moment - loss of chain of custody and so on.
And I do think our justice system is definitely lacking - in many, many ways. Money should not be the arbiter of justice EVER. That is just wrong on so many levels and why I think Jesus says we are to pray for and visit those in prison. We know that the saints themselves have been in prison and that the persecuted church still is - and often ends up unjustly persecuted and prosecuted.
On the first day of delibrations the jurors sent a note to Judge Jon Blue asking, "What does it mean to unanimously find the existence of a statutory mitigating factor?"It means the court is out to lunch. As soon as the guilty verdicts are handed down, these two pieces of shit should be hauled out in front of the courthouse and hanged. And not the nice, quick-click way.
no sense makin em hafta come back again...
At the very least, they should make it random as to when they execute these bastards over the next 20 years. His victims had no idea they were going to die that day.
20-30 years of appeals!
Good. The bastard deserves it. Can’t believe the defense attorneys actually had the stones to get on camera afterward and decry the verdict saying it was unfair toward their client. Slimy scumbags. I realize that people have a constitutional right to a defense, but after a conviction in a case like this, the defense attorneys should just shut their traps and respect the family of the victims.
In reality though, I think the death penalty is too merciful for Hayes. I think it would be far more fitting to throw him into general population with a hand-written letter sent to every inmate on his cell block detailing how he is a murderous rapist and child molester, just in case they haven’t been following the news. I guarantee you Hayes would be wishing for the death penalty in a week’s time, and I’d prevent him from ever going into administrative segregation for protection. That’s what justice would be, in my opinion.
I’m sure they weren’t crying for Hayes. If you had to sit on a jury for 3 weeks and hear about these gruesome crimes in detail, I suspect you might be shedding a tear or two at the conclusion also.
My post two posts up explains why I think it’s the easy way out. If he’s on death row, that means he gets his own cell and 1 hour out a day. That prevents other inmates from getting access to him and exacting their own form of “prison justice” for his crimes of rape and murder. Is a little prick in the arm really justice? Wouldn’t it be more satisfying to let the inmates mete out their own form of justice instead? Sex offenders are the lowest item on the prison totem pole.
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