From today's Hartford Courant focusing on the defense proffered by Steven Hayes' attorneys:
http://www.courant.com/community/new...,1526709.story
CITING REPORTS
Hayes Team: No Savings In Executions
By ALAINE GRIFFIN
NEW HAVEN — Steven Hayes’ defense attorneys, in a bid to spare his life, say they have evidence that counters “the popular assumption that the cost of executing someone saves the state money” compared with a life sentence.
They cite reports that offer these statistics: In Tennessee, death sentences in murder cases cost 48 percent more than life sentences.
In Washington state, death penalty cases cost $470,000 more in defense and prosecution costs than non-capital murder cases.
In North Carolina, it costs $2.16 million per execution more than it costs for a non-capital defendant sentenced to life in prison.
These are among the reports that they are expected to put forth today in their fight to convince a Superior Court judge that he should let them use the unusual strategy of arguing economic reasons to keep the convicted triple murderer off death row. The defense claims that sparing Hayes’ life will save the state and taxpayers “many millions of dollars.”
In a legal memo filed Tuesday, the defense lawyers said recent polls show that support for the death penalty “drops off dramatically” when people learn of the cost difference between executions and housing a convicted killer for life.
The defense plans to call an expert who has written a report about what Connecticut spends on executions vs. life sentences. Its memo says the testimony could be “for purpose of mitigation or as support” for Hayes’ pretrial offers to plead guilty “or for re-butting the intuitive common understanding by the public, and therefore jurors that the imposition of the death penalty … is less expensive than life without the possibility of release.”
Today’s hearing is in preparation for next week’s penalty phase, in which jurors will decide whether Steven Hayes, 47, of Winsted, lives or dies for the July 23, 2007, killings of Jennifer Hawke-Petit and her daughters, Hayley,17, and Michaela, 11, during a break-in, robbery and arson at their Cheshire home.
New Haven Public Defender Thomas J. Ullmann and Patrick J. Culligan, head of the state Public Defender’s Office capital defense unit, said they want to use the expert testimony to support Hayes’ repeated offers to plead guilty to the slayings in exchange for a life sentence.
Hayes was convicted Oct. 5 of breaking into the Cheshire home of the Petit family in the middle of the night, beating Dr. William Petit Jr. and tying up the family as he and another man ransacked the home for cash and valuables. Testimony showed that at one point in the break-in, Hayes forced Hawke-Petit to go to the bank to withdraw money. During that time, according to testimony, the second defendant in the case, Joshua Komisarjevsky, sexually assaulted Michaela Petit.
When Hawke-Petit and Hayes returned from the bank, Hayes raped and strangled Hawke-Petit, and the house was doused with gasoline and set on fire as the intruders fled, testimony showed. Hayley and Michaela died of smoke inhalation. Of the 16 counts that Hayes was convicted of, six of those were capital felony charges, making him eligible for a death penalty hearing, which will begin Monday. .
Komisarjevsky, 30, of Cheshire, will be tried next year.
During the penalty phase, jurors will weigh mitigating factors against aggravating factors to determine if Hayes should be sentenced to death by lethal injection. Recent court filings show that the aggravating factors the state intends to prove are that Hayes killed Hawke-Petit and her daughters during the commission of or immediate flight from the commission of a felony — third-degree burglary — and that Hayes committed the murders in “an especially heinous, cruel or depraved manner” and “knowingly created a grave risk of death to another person.”
Testimony about the cost of life in prison vs. death could be a mitigating factor for jurors to consider.
Prosecutors plan to argue against use of the expert testimony on the cost issue.
In legal papers, New Haven State’s Attorney Michael Dearington and Senior Assistant State’s Attorney Gary W. Nicholson say “the evidence of costs of execution is irrelevant and not mitigation evidence and such cost-benefit analysis of the death penalty is a matter of public policy for the legislature.”
Ullmann tried unsuccessfully to use a similar strategy in another capital case six years ago.
In that case, Ullmann filed a motion asking a judge to force the state to accept a plea bargain that would guarantee life in prison instead of a seat on death row for Jonathan Mills. Mills was convicted in 2004 of killing Kitty Kleinkauf, stabbing her more than 40 times, and of fatally stabbing her children Rachael Crum, 6, and Kyle Redway, 4, inside their Guilford home before stealing Kleinkauf’s credit card to buy cocaine.
To bolster his argument, Ullmann claimed that it would be more expensive to sentence Mills to death because a guilty plea would cut 10 to 15 years of legal wrangling and appeals that a death sentence would probably yield.
Judge Jon C. Blue, who is presiding over Hayes’ trial, denied Ullmann’s motion. The jury voted against executing Mills and sent him to prison for the rest of his life.
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An honest discussion can only be had by first exposing false premises'
Can knock 'em back with the best of 'em, too! 
. But I do go on to say that the cost of removing a bread winning parent, or something else I can’t remember member of society should be considered too. Cost of warehousing criminals, AND the cost to society for removing productive people should both be considered. Also, maybe there needs to be guidelines that are varying degrees of Endangerment of a Child. That’s an option too.
