Justice for a Connecticut Family

10/07/10

This nightmare will never be over for him as he must now pick up the pieces while knowing what happened in his home that day. He was afforded some degree of relief this week as one of the accused stood trial. The defendant in the first trial was found guilty of 16 charges, including the sexual assault of Mrs. Hawke-Petit, the doctor's wife and the mother of the two young girls who also lost their lives. He was, however, acquitted of arson, the only charge he was not convicted of. Steven Hayes is now facing the death penalty, as Connecticut makes it legal to do so.


Another accused, Joshua Komisarjevsky, faces a trial early next year and he too faces the death penalty. Hayes has stated Komisarjevsky was the aggressor and the one who found Mrs. Hawke-Petit and her two daughters in a local grocery store. They then followed the family home and returned later that same day to commit the crimes that could now land them both on death row. They forced Mrs. Hawke-Petit to go to the bank and withdraw $15,000 early on during the ordeal. She managed to get a message to the bank teller, who then called 911. After they returned to the home, both men raped and then strangled Hawke-Petit before placing the girls in their respective bedrooms, tying them up, covering their heads with pillow cases and then setting the house on fire. The two girls died of smoke inhalation.

Steven Hayes, now 45, first began running into legal problems in 1980. Many arrests followed, although Connecticut officials considered him a ''minimum security offender'' with a ''minimal violence history''. In October, 2003, Hayes was sentenced again to five years in prison for a third degree burglary charge. In June, 2006, less than three years later, he was released to a halfway house, only to be rearrested for drug use in November 2006. He was granted parole and released just six months later. It was at the halfway house where Hayes and Komisarjevsky, now 26, met. Six months after being released on parole, the two men were arrested for this brutal crime.

The charges Hayes was convicted of this week, many of which qualified for the death penalty, include first degree aggravated sexual assault, first degree arson, murder of a kidnapped person (3 charges), murder of a person under 16 and murder of a person during a first degree sexual assault.

For now, Petit is content with the verdict. He knows sentencing for Hayes and Komisarjevsky's trial is approaching. Many legal analysts say the death penalty is most likely the course of punishment for both men, providing Komisarjevsky is convicted, of course. Petit refused requests for interviews, but did state that he was pleased with the guilty verdict, but that it ''won't bring my family back''.