Joshua Komisarjevsky found guilty: Connecticut now decides on death penalty

A Connecticut jury has convicted Joshua Komisarjevsky on all 17 charges relating to the murders of a woman and her two daughters in a grisly 2007 home invasion, and must decide whether he should be put to death.

The crimes committed by Komisarjevsky, 31, and his accomplice — who is already on death row for the murders of Jennifer Hawke-Petit and Michaela, 11, and Hayley, 17,  in Cheshire, Connecticut in 2007 — were so unsettling, the Associated Press reports, they "bolstered efforts to keep the death penalty in the state."

Connecticut's death penalty has only been implemented once in the past 51 years, when serial killer Michael Ross was executed in 2005.

(GlobalPost reports: Jury deliberating in gruesome Connecticut home invasion murders)

Komisarjevsky was convicted of capital felony killing, kidnapping, arson and sexual assault, among other charges.

Komisarjevsky and Steven Hayes, both paroled burglars who had met at a halfway house, broke into the Connecticut home of Dr. William Petit and his family, beat Petit with a baseball bat, before Hayes raped and strangled his wife.

Komisarjevsky sexually molested Michaela before she and her sister, Hayley, were tied up. The two died of smoke inhalation after Komisarjevsky and Hayes doused the house in gasoline and set it on fire.

Before assaulting and killing Hawke-Petit, Hayes forced her to go to a bank and withdraw $15,000, the jury in the three-week trial heard, CNN reports.

The AP reports that Dr. William Petit bit his lip and closed his eyes as the verdict was read Thursday.

"I thought from the beginning that he was a lying sociopathic personality and probably at this moment he doesn't think he is guilty of anything," he told reporters outside the courthouse.

CNN reports that Petit's family members wept openly, and that he said:

"I personally felt this case was a case about sexual predation… There is just a huge plague of violence against women in this country."

He added that he wondered what it would have been like "if I had two sons, instead of two daughters."

The penalty phase of Komisarjevsky's trial starts Oct. 24 and could last two months.