In about 3 months, appellate lawyers for convicted triple-murderer Steven Hayes will file an appeal of Hayes' death sentence to the state Supreme Court.
A ruling will take 4 to 5 years.
After that, barring a reversal by the court, the process settles in for the long haul — a progression of state habeas corpus motions and federal appeals that can raise issues ranging from purported mistakes by the trial lawyers or judge to claims that the death penalty is arbitrary and influenced by the race and economic status of the victim.
Even though Hayes told Superior Court Judge Jon C. Blue on Thursday that he views death as a "welcome relief,'' it could easily be 20 years or longer before Hayes is wheeled into the execution chamber at Northern Correctional Institution in Somers and given a lethal injection.
2 of the 9 inmates currently on Connecticut's death row — convicted killers Robert Breton and Sedrick "Ricky" Cobb — were sentenced to death in 1989 and 1991, respectively, and have yet to exhaust their appeals and federal habeas motions.
Serial killer Michael Ross spent 18 years on death row before he was executed at his own insistence in 2005.
In Connecticut, the initial appeal to the state Supreme Court is automatic and mandatory.
The court must uphold the sentence unless it finds it was the product of passion or prejudice or the evidence fails to support the finding of an aggravating factor.
If the inmate loses there, "the process, in a real sense, starts all over again with the habeas phase,'' said Senior Assistant Public Defender Mark Rademacher, who is handling the appeals of several inmates on death row.
State habeas actions often involve claims of ineffective assistance of counsel. Rademacher noted that Hayes was represented by 2 of the most experienced public defenders in Connecticut, Thomas Ullmann, who directs the New Haven office, and Patrick Culligan, who specializes in capital cases.
"But everyone makes mistakes,'' said Rademacher. "A mistake is not a scarlet letter. What happened on 1 day in court during the trial, I have the luxury of taking 3 days to think about it for the appeal.''
Hayes, 47, enters death row at a time when his fellow inmates are challenging the death penalty in Connecticut on racial grounds. The contention, said Rademacher, is that the race of the victim improperly influences whether a defendant is sentenced to death. Hayes and his accomplice, Joshua Komisarjevsky, are already included in the racial disparity case.
A victory in the race case would mean the end of the death penalty in Connecticut and the conversion of death sentences to life without the possibility of release, Rademacher said. A loss would mean that the inmates would have to pursue their claims individually, which could take years. Hayes was convicted of attacking and killing three members of Dr. William Petit Jr.'s family — his wife, Jennifer Hawke-Petit, and their two daughters, Hayley, 17, and Michaela, 11. Petit, severely beaten, was the sole survivor of the home-invasion robbery, kidnapping, sexual assault and arson. Komisarjevsky is scheduled for trial next year.
Source: Connecticut Now, December 3, 2010
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