NEW HAVEN, Conn. — It’s death for the home invasion monster.
After 17 hours of deliberations, jurors in the capital murder trial of Steven Hayes have voted that he should be put to death.
Hayes, 47, was one of two men who three years ago broke into the tree-shaded, four-bedroom Colonial of noted endocrinologist Dr. William Petit, unleashing a seven-hour nightmare of rape, murder and arson.
The verdict left many among family and friends in silent tears. But Dr. Petit began to cry only at the verdict for the last of six death-eligible murder charges — that for the death of his wife during the commission of a sex crime.
When verdict came down Hayes smiled, his lawyer said.
Lead public defender Thomas Ullmann said, “He’s very happy with the verdict. It’s what he’s wanted all along, which is suicide by state. He wants to die and he can’t kill himself. He’s very happy with the verdict. He smiled when it came in.”
Petit said the verdict was about justice and did not bring closure.
“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.”
Hayes, meanwhile, showed no emotion, though he slumped forward ever so slightly the first of six times that the clerk, standing and reading aloud from 50-pages of verdict sheets, uttered the single, condemning syllable: death.
Outside the courthouse, Petit also said it took too long — 38 months — for him to get justice.
“I don’t know what’s wrong with our system that it takes three years,” he said.
Petit added, “I still think the system must be improved for victims.”
“I’m glad for the just verdict because there was justice,” he said.
The crackhead career burglar was convicted last month of strangling and raping Petit’s wife, pediatric nurse Jennifer Hawke-Petit, and of helping to literally burn alive the couple’s daughters, Hayley, 17, and Michaela, 11.
Hayes’ co-defendant, Joshua Komisarjevsky, 29, is due to be tried next week as the alleged mastermind of the mom and girls’ senseless slaughter. Prosecutors say Komisarjevsky, another career burglar who met Hayes in a prison half-way house, targeted the three after seeing them in a supermarket parking lot the day before.
Petit said he’s had a lot of “sleepless nights” and “tears” before getting to this place.
“I was really crying, crying for the loss,” he said, before choking up during the news conference.
Petit said he will never get closure — despite the death sentence — because his kids “had a great future” and their deaths remain a “huge void in my life.”