Cheshire Killer Steven Hayes Files Motion to Vacate Death Sentences

Nearly three months after the Connecticut State Supreme Court ruled that the death penalty violates the state’s constitution, convicted Cheshire killer Steven Hayes is asking a judge to vacate his death sentences and to impose a sentence of life in prison without the possibility of parole, according to the Hartford Courant.

The Courant reports that Hayes’ attorneys filed a five-page motion in New Haven Superior Court on Thursday, saying that his six death sentences are now “unconstitutional and must be corrected.”

Hayes is the first to file what is expected to be a wave of resentencing motions filed in state court by attorneys for the state’s 11 death row inmates, according to the Courant.

State lawmakers got rid of the death penalty in 2012, but made it so that inmates already on death row would be executed. The provision was added after the trials of Cheshire home invasion killers and rapists Hayes and Joshua Komisarjevsky.

Hayes and Komisarjevsky were both convicted, in separate trials, with felony murder and sentenced to death for the 2007 killings of Jennifer Hawke-Petit and her children, Michaela, 11, and Hayley, 17.

Just over a month before the state Supreme Court made its ruling that barred all executions, Hayes had requested waive his appeals and proceed to execution.

However, that request was denied by a Superior Court judge.

Read the full story on Hayes’ latest motion at the Hartford Courant here.