Peter Navarro
Dr. Collins
Writing 2
30 November 2017
Opening Statement
It was a warm summer night in the cosy town of Cheshire, Connecticut. Kids were starting to head home after a long day of playing and enjoying their summer break. Suddenly, one of the houses set ablaze, there was so much smoke that you would’ve thought that the entire block was on fire. Slowly a figure appeared from the smoking house, a man who was beaten and covered in blood. He slowly walked, struggling to make his way to his neighbor’s house to calling 911, trying to collect himself and catch his breath he whispered “Fire… Fire… Help… There’s men… They broke in… He set it… My daughters… My wife… Help…” A few minutes passed and a couple of cars with blue and red flashing lights pulled up in front of the house along with an ambulance and a firetruck. Firefighters worked tirelessly to put out the blaze, while police detained two other men who emerged from the house. After the fire was out and the smoke had cleared police officers recovered the mangled, torched bodies of what looked like two small children and a woman. There were signs of sexual abuse on the bodies of the woman and the smaller child. The Steven Hayes triple-murder trial would be one that would shake the very foundations of the Connecticut judicial system.
In an official report from the Cheshire Police department: “Officers found Dr. William Petit's wife, Jennifer Hawke-Petit, and their two daughters, Michaela, 11, and Hayley, 17, dead in separate, second-story bedrooms. Jennifer and Michaela had been sexually assaulted. Petit, a prominent physician, was himself beaten, tied up and left for dead in the basement as the two parolees used gasoline to set the home ablaze” (Jost).
An eleven year-old girl. She was in fifth grade. She wasn’t even old enough to watch a PG-13 movie by herself. She was raped. They raped her. They raped her mom. These monsters beat her family in front of her; they strangled her, her older sister, strangling her mom to death while her dad barely escaped with his life. They doused her mom’s body in gasoline then set the house ablaze. The perpetrators were booked and processed, held without bail and awaited their trials. Hayes’ trial was first. After three and a half weeks, the trial was less than halfway finished when prosecutors and defense lawyers presented evidence and arguments of whether or not Hayes should receive capital punishment or life without the possibility of parole. Two and a half more weeks and the jury rendered their verdict: guilty on all six of the capital felony counts along with 10 counts of related to the home invasion murders that Hayes was charged with. Hayes was condemned to death.
His sentence produced something astonishing: “Americans' support for capital punishment even in a politically and socially liberal state such as Connecticut, where the Democratic-controlled legislature voted in May 2009 to abolish the death penalty in future cases” (Jost). A poll later taken in Connecticut showed that residents actually favored the use of the death penalty numbered 2:1 (Dieter). One of the jurors even explained to reporters that the crime“was just so heinous and just so over the top and depraved… Here is a case where somebody doesn't deserve to remain on the face of the Earth” (Beach). This trial wasn’t about using someone as a scapegoat, but about fairly trying and sentencing the accused legally and accordingly. It was about administering justice for two little girls and their mom, and making sure that those who committed some of the most heinous crimes in the country would answer for their actions.
Those who break those laws are legitimately undermining civil society. We have to symbolically respond, if not we accept the undermining of law. And thus the United States reserves its right to enforce and carry out the death penalty to punish individuals whose crimes have been deemed so heinous they have no chance at rehabilitation and rejoining society. A balance must be kept within society in order to maintain peace. This means delivering a punishment that is constitutionally equivalent to the crime committed.
Closing Statement
Those who break the laws are legitimately undermining civil society. We have to symbolically respond, if not we accept the undermining of law. And law is the only thing that holds society together. Without it we are no better than animals. Socrates understood this, he was unjustly convicted and still accepted his fate. He didn’t try to run away, he knew what not running meant, and he stayed anyways. In such dialog with Crito, Socrates explains his moral choice, by saying that “Nobody must be unjust, or commit an injustice as a response to another injustice”. He clarifies that the “unjust” in his circumstances would be breaching the laws that he chose to respect by being a citizen of Athens. The laws of his nation, he says, “have been like parents to him, by granting to his life a system of protection”. Therefore, he has to respect such laws, even if now they seem to be unfair and against him. Socrates’ choice sacrifices his individual interest and belief for the interest of the community, he gives up his truth (the unfair sentence based on allegation of facts that never happened) to protect the supremacy of the “positive laws” and of “justice”. Socrates spent his life dialoguing with the people of Athens in order to teach and to forge values, but when the sentence of the court rejects those values
and sentences him to death on the basis of false allegations, he surrenders to the community’s will. It seems that, in order to permit plurality and diversity of thoughts to live together, the system needs a very strong formal structure: the laws enacted by the nation and the interest of the community have to prevail over the moral sphere and the individuals’ interests.
Opponents of the death penalty argue that the costs of trials like this are too high, they want to put a price on life. They want to tell perpetrators that their lives aren’t worth it. The reason trials are so expensive is in order to protect the accused. If funding would be cut in these cases, the amount of mistrials would skyrocket. The defense allocated for the defendant wouldn’t be as strong as it should be. Everyone is equal in the eyes of the law. Everyone should receive a fair trial. Every trial should have enough funding to ensure enough time for the trial to be conducted with complete transparency. Every victim and their family deserves to know that the legal system is doing everything in it’s power in order to make sure that offenders receive the right punishment for their crimes. Every innocent person who is accused of the wrong crime deserves to be freed. They don’t deserve a rushed, underfunded trial that renders the wrong verdict. Every monster convicted of their crime deserves to have adequate funding for their execution in order to make sure it is done as humanely as possible, even though sometimes they don’t deserve it. Every offender deserves to have the right amount of funding to ensure that they aren’t arbitrarily convicted. The death penalty is a tricky topic, but two things are for sure. The death penalty is reserved for monsters who committed the worst crimes. And that everyone, no matter what crime they commit, they should receive a fair and properly funded trial. You know. The day we start putting a monetary value on someone’s life, we’re no better than those who owned slaves.