Dr. William Petit Jr.& Family

[Bailey]

The Hartford Courant

12:50 p.m. EST, February 23, 2010

NEW HAVEN - Jury selection in the case of Steven Hayes, charged in the 2007 home-invasion murders in Cheshire, is on hold indefinitely while the court considers complaints about the defendant's confinement in a prison infirmary.

In a brief court appearance Tuesday morning, Superior Court Judge Jon C. Blue scheduled a hearing for next Tuesday to consider Hayes' condition.

Hayes is one of two men accused of killing Jennifer Hawke-Petit and her two daughters, Hayley, 17, and Michaela, 11, during a break-in and robbery at their Cheshire home on July 23, 2007. Dr. William Petit Jr., Jennifer's husband and the girls' father, was badly beaten but survived.

One of Hayes' attorneys, Thomas J. Ullmann, said Tuesday that Hayes' status in the infirmary at MacDougall-Walker Correctional Institution in Suffield has changed little in the past week. In previous hearings, Ullmann said aspects of Hayes' confinement were "inhumane ... further exacerbating [Hayes'] suicidal condition."

Ullmann has said Hayes was being kept in isolation in a room where the lights stay on 24 hours a day, preventing him from sleeping. He called a safety smock in which Hayes is restrained "one step short of a straitjacket."

"We're all in general agreement that the trial process cannot continue while Mr. Hayes is under the conditions of this general description," Blue said Tuesday, "but none of us have heard evidence of sworn testimony."

Expected to testify at next week's hearing are one or more psychiatrists and personnel at the Department of Correction.

Blue said that although both teams of attorneys have different agendas, "No one here has any interest in delay."

Outside the courtroom, Petit disagreed. He said he believed that concern over Hayes' condition was a delay tactic by the defense. "I don't believe the defense is doing everything in its power to proceed to expedite this matter," Petit said.

He said he was not surprised by the judge's decision but was frustrated by the court's handling of the situation nonetheless.

"Somehow it was OK for the defendants to bind us and beat us...and rape us and torture us and set the place on fire, but you can't be held in a cell with the lights on," Petit said. "Somehow, there is something wrong with that, so that's a little difficult to process in your brain, that somehow there is some comparison to what both of these guys have done, to what the state may be doing."

Jury selection began Jan. 19, and four jurors were selected before Hayes was hospitalized Jan. 30 because of a drug overdose. The judge postponed jury selection two days later, and it has not resumed since.

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