Conn. man faces death sentence in home invasion - Washington Post

NEW HAVEN, Conn. -- Several jurors who condemned a Connecticut man to death for a deadly home invasion have shown up for his sentencing, saying they wanted to see the process through.

New Haven Superior Court Judge Jon Blue is expected to pronounce Steven Hayes' sentence Thursday morning. Hayes was convicted in the 2007 killings of a Cheshire woman and her two daughters. Jurors are not required to be there.

Juror Paula Calzetta says she showed because she wanted to follow through to the very end. Joel Zemke, the jury foreman for the guilt phase, says he feels he's part of "something bigger."

Some jurors say they took advantage of counseling that was offered to them.

Ian Cassell, the foreman for the penalty phase, says the counseling helped him deal with the aftereffects.

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Jury Slow to Agree on Sentence for Murderer - Wall Street Journal

NEW HAVEN, Conn.—The same jury that quickly convicted Steven Hayes of killing a mother and her young daughters is having a harder time deciding on his sentence.

The jury completed its third day of deliberations Sunday and is expected to continue deliberations Monday. At issue is whether Mr. Hayes gets life in prison or the death sentence.

Judge Jon Blue had asked the 12 men and women to deliberate through the weekend in hopes of streamlining the case.

The jury's notes during the weekend suggested the group was divided over whether there were mitigating factors that impaired Mr. Hayes's mental state during the killings. If the jury finds that there were, Mr. Hayes will receive a life sentence. A unanimous decision from the jury is necessary for the sentence.

The judge asked the jurors for permission to attend his local church for about a half hour. Then around lunchtime, when the jury said it wanted to continue its deliberations over pizza, Judge Blue offered to go pick up the order himself.

The oddities were just the latest in the two-month-old trial, which saw Mr. Hayes convicted in October.

Another defendant in the killings faces trial next year.

Just last week, Judge Blue gave a stern warning to the lone remaining alternate juror after she wrote a flirtatious note that was intended for a court marshal, but was intercepted by a clerk. The trial began with six alternates.

The trial's proceedings have been watched closely throughout the state, prompting most of the 20 or so news reporters covering the case to use Twitter to send minute-by-minute updates from the courtroom.

The jury took about five hours in early October to determine Mr. Hayes's guilt in 16 of the 17 charges he faced in the deaths of Jennifer Hawke-Petit and her two daughters in 2007.

Write to Chris Herring at chris.herring@wsj.com

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Failed Times Square bomber Faisal Shahzad gets life in prison sentence - Los Angeles Times

An artist's rendering of convicted Times Square bomber Faisal Shahzad during his sentencing hearing in New York. (Reuters / October 5, 2010)

During his sentencing Tuesday to life in prison, Faisal Shahzad — a Pakistani immigrant who gave up a secure suburban life in America to become a terrorist for Islam — was unapologetic about his botched attempt to kill dozens of people in Times Square last spring.

After a federal judge declared that he would never leave prison, Shahzad smiled faintly, held up an index finger and declared, "Allah Akbar."

U.S. District Judge Miriam Goldman Cedarbaum did not bother to review parole possibilities because she said there were none.

"You appear to be someone who was capable of education," she said later, "and I do hope that you will spend some of the time in prison thinking carefully about whether the Koran wants you to kill lots of people."

As he did throughout the half-hour sentencing, Shahzad, 31, interrupted her to press his religious viewpoint: "The Koran gives us the right to defend, and that's what all I'm doing."

On May 1, on a bustling corner of Broadway in the theater district, Shahzad parked an SUV loaded with three homemade bombs and tried to set them off. When his attempt fizzled, he returned by train to suburban Connecticut, where he'd been living off and on since he moved to America to attend college. Authorities tracked Shahzad through the vehicle and the keys he left dangling from the ignition, and two days later he was arrested at JFK International Airport aboard a plane that was about to take off for the Middle East.

At one point Tuesday, Cedarbaum asked whether Shahzad hadn't taken an oath of allegiance to the United States when he became an American citizen a year before the bombing attempt.

"I did swear, but I did not mean it," Shahzad said. "Human-made" laws, he elaborated, were corrupt and meant nothing to him because he abided by "sharia," or Islamic law.

"I see," the judge said, "You took a false oath?"

"Yes," Shahzad said.

Shahzad's beard and hair, spilling out from under a white prayer cap, had grown long and bushy since he last appeared in court in late June and announced his desire "to plead guilty 100 times over." Again, Shahzad lectured the judge and a packed courtroom about his guilt: "If I am given 1,000 lives, I will sacrifice them all for the sake of Allah fighting this cause, defending our lands, making the word of Allah supreme over any religion or system."

He went on to explain how Muslims would never accept having Western forces in their countries fighting on a "pretext for your democracy and freedom." The past nine years of war, he said, had achieved nothing except to awaken Muslims to defend their "religion, people, honor and land."

The son of a retired Pakistani air force marshal, Shahzad grew up mostly in a secular, upper-middle class neighborhood in Karachi, Pakistan's largest city. He came to the United States in 1998 as an undergraduate student, and over the years attained many of the trappings of what many here consider a successful life — two university degrees, a wife and two small children, a house in the suburbs, credit cards and a job as a junior financial analyst.

But the U.S. military presence in Muslim countries and perceived insults by Westerners toward Islam apparently had begun plaguing Shahzad, according to reports of what he told investigators, and he became increasingly religious. He returned last winter to his native Pakistan, first to spend time with family in Peshawar and later to attend terror camp in the volatile Waziristan region, where he learned to make bombs.

After he returned to America, he left his job, allowed a house he owned in Shelton, Conn., go into foreclosure and sent his young family to live in Pakistan with his parents. Living in a rundown neighborhood in Bridgeport, Conn., he began monitoring via the Internet a crowded corner in Times Square where he planned to blow up his vehicle. He told police he'd hoped to kill at least 40 people on the first try, and that if hadn't been caught he would have kept trying to blast through crowded areas in New York City until he was arrested or killed.

Toward the end of the hearing Tuesday, the judge, who had commented with obvious disgust on Shahzad's lack of remorse, explained the appeal process to him. He nodded and again smiled at her before plainclothes officers handcuffed him and escorted him out of the courtroom.

geraldine.baum@latimes.com

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