BY Philip Caulfield DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER  Originally Published:Monday, November 8th 2010, 12:48 PM Updated: Monday, November 8th 2010, 4:15 PM  A jury in Connecticut has condemned Steven Hayes to death.  Hayes was convicted last month of murdering of a Connecticut mother and her two daughters back in 2007.  Hayes was on parole when he broke into a Cheshire, Connecticut home and killed Jennifer Hawke-Petit and her girls, 17- and 11-year-old Hayley and Michaela.  Today, jurors in New Haven Superior Court reached a unanimous decision to give Hayes the death penalty after deliberating for four days.  As they returned the decision, one female juror wiped away tears and others were spotted comforting one another, ABC News reported.  Some members of the victims' family held their heads in their hands as the verdict was read.  Dr. William Petit, Hawke-Petit's husband and the father of the two girls who was beaten with a bat during the invasion but managed to escape, said he was thinking of his wife and daughters as the verdict was read.  "I was crying for ourÂ loss," he said. "Michaela was an 11-year-old little girl, tortured and killed in her own bedroom, surrounded by stuffed animals. Hayley had a great future. She was a strong and courageous person."  "I was glad for the girls that there was justice, because I think it was a just verdict," Petit said. "But mostly I was sad for the loss we have all suffered."  Hayes's lawyers argued that the 47-year-old should have been spared the death penalty because his mental capacity was significantly impaired due to child abuse.  They portrayed him as a bumbling drug addict caught up in a monstrous spiral of events escalated by his co-defendant, Joshua Komisarjevsky.  Lawyers also said Hayes was remorseful and wanted to be executed.  Prosecutors said both men were equally responsible and that the horrific nature of the crime demanded for the death penalty, saying the family was tortured and battered for hours before they were killed.  Hayes was convicted in October of raping Hawke-Petit and then strangling her to death.  Police said that both he and Komisarjevsky tied her two children to their beds, threw gasoline on them and lit the beds on fire.  Komisarjevsky is also accused of sexually assaulting Michaela, the younger daughter.  The girls died of smoke inhalation.  Komisarjevsky, 30, will be tried next year.  Hayes will join nine others on death row in Connecticut. State law allows for execution using lethal injection.  The state has only executed one man since 1960, meaning Hayes will likely spend many years in prison before facing execution.  Petit said he was comforted by the verdict, but said he had felt âinsultedâ when people had suggested that a death penalty verdict would offer him closure.  "There's never closure," he said. "There's a hole. There's a hole with jagged edges. Over time, the edges may smooth out, but the hole in your heart and the hole in your soul is always there."
After more than three days of deliberation, a jury in Connecticut Monday decided to condemn to death a man convicted of a utal home invasion murder of a mother and her two daughters in 2007.