He has “ held oh so delicately the life of my daughter in my hands, and yes, I can be quite cold and calculated,” he writes.
Some wonder, he continues, how this can be? “Would it be easier to view me as a mindless barbarian … to see me as the embodiment of sanctimonious evil?”
Then the writer, Joshua Komisarjevsky, answers his own question: “But of course it would ….
Context … such a powerful tool!” Will it be powerful enough to save a killer’s life?
In Superior Court on Church Street this week, a portrayal of Komisarjevsky, a persistent but invisible participant in the trial of Steven J. Hayes, was organized and presented to the jury in the form of prison journals and a letter penned after his arrest for his role in the triple murders of the Petit family in Cheshire.
His co-defendant, Hayes, has already been convicted for his part in the murders of Jennifer Hawke-Petit and her daughters Hayley and Michaela. The jury is now considering whether to sentence him to death. Hayes’ attorneys are trying to use the powerful tool Komisarjevsky writes of to structure a context that could save Hayes’ life.
As has happened so often during this trial, something familiar and ordinary — black and white Mead Composition books that children favor for school journals – was given a new context when court clerk, Edjah Jean-Louis, read aloud 34 pages from Komisarjevsky’s writings, filling Courtroom 6A with a seeming stream of consciousness that was, at times, disturbingly articulate and, at others, poetically unintelligible.
Patrick Culligan, one of Hayes’ defense attorneys, introduced the writings Wednesday, as well as testimony from a forensic psychiatrist and an evaluation from a clinical social worker, in an attempt not to excuse Hayes’ criminal behavior but to expand the context that the jury will consider when it deliberates on an appropriate sentence.
By weaving parts of Hayes’ background and history into a whole, Culligan and Thomas Ullmann, Hayes’ other defense attorney, are trying to prevent their client from being defined solely by the horrendous events of July 23, 2007. It is an obstacle of possibly insurmountable proportion.
In attempting to characterize an event in the context of something more like a full-length motion picture rather than a single snapshot, the defense elicited testimony from forensic psychiatrist Paul Amble about Hayes’ multiple suicide attempts both before and after his most recent incarceration, his struggle with alcohol and drug addiction beginning at the age of 9, his inability to hold down a job due to the addiction and repeated incarceration, and his troubled family relationships. Also, an evaluation of Hayes prepared by a licensed clinical social worker, Miriam Berkman, added evidence of serious learning disabilities, sexual abuse by a babysitter, and “a dependence on others to organize his thinking and behavior. “ Strands of remorse, guilt, hopelessness, and battered self-esteem, whether believed by jurors or not, were woven into a larger context.
Amble’s own context for evaluating Hayes was strictly to determine back in March of this year if Hayes was competent to stand trial. So he resisted prosecutor Michael Dearington’s efforts this week to pin him down on whether the suicide attempts were genuine or merely a means to garner sympathy from a jury.
Dearington’s aim is to keep the jury focused on the snapshot and to restrict the relevant circumstances that inform the crimes, committed by Hayes against the Petit family, to the context of what happened on the night of July 22 and the morning of July 23, 2007.
As for the introduction of Komisarjevsky’s writings, Judge Jon C. Blue, who is presiding over the Hayes trial, allowed them because Hayes is “fighting for his life, [and] is allowed great latitude in the matters he can bring before the jury.” Blue understands the need for contexture in a capital case. Throughout the trial, the defense team has portrayed Hayes in the context of the petty, incompetent crook controlled by the calculated, cold-blooded predator, Komisarjevsky, who writes of himself, “I am the dark angel’s messenger … sowing the seeds of psychological terror.” In Berkman’s evaluation of Hayes, she reports that he told a parole board in 2001 that “I need someone to tell me what to do.”
If any of the jurors believe that it was indeed Komisarjevsky who assumed the role of Hayes’ instructor, then perhaps they will find a context that will spare him his life.
Previous installments of the Petit Trial Court Diary:
• Day One: Deceptive Calm
• Day Two: It Was All About “The Girls”
• Day Three: Defense Strategy Emerges: Spread The Blame
• Day Four: Pieces Fall Into Place
• Day Five: Numbers Tell A Story
• Day Six: Suffering Takes Center Stage
• Day Seven: A Gagged Order
• Day Eight: A Quilt & A Puppet Theater Bring Home The Horror
• Day Nine: It’s About Specific Intent
• Day Ten: The Notes Told The Tale
• Day 11: To Save A Life, Lawyers Must Humanize Alleged Monster
