By Randall Beach
Register Staff

NEW HAVEN — Superior Court Judge Jon C. Blue today denied all three motions by Steven J. Hayes’ lawyers, who had sought to bar the death penalty from being used in the Cheshire triple homicide.

Hayes’ defense team had argued that Gov. M. Jodi Rell’s language while vetoing a bill that would have abolished the death penalty violated due process. The lawyers noted Rell mentioned Dr. William Petit Jr., the lone survivor of the 2007 home invasion, in her veto message.

Attorney Patrick Culligan also said the legislators’ passage of the bill last year to eliminate the death penalty showed capital punishment no longer “comports with contemporary standards of decency in Connecticut.”

See more on the defense team's arguments here.

But Blue said the action of a legislature, which was then vetoed, “is insufficient to justify a judicial finding that societal endorsement of the death penalty no longer exists in Connecticut.”

Hayes is scheduled to go on trial Sept. 13. If the jury convicts him on capital felony, the jurors would then decide whether he should be executed. Co-defendent Joshua Komisarjevsky is due for trial next year.

The defense attorneys had sought to preclude the second phase of Hayes’ trial, the punishment decision, arguing the state’s death penalty law violates state and federal constitutions.

But Blue said, “Unhappily for the defendant, all of the grounds have been rejected by either the Supreme Court of the United States or the Supreme Court of Connecticut.”

Read Judge Blue's rulings here:

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