A man convicted in a deadly Connecticut home invasion in 2007 is set to go before a judge in a bid to win a new trial, contending his trial lawyers weren't provided with backup police recordings after authorities said a lightning strike destroyed the originals.
Joshua Komisarjevsky was convicted of murder and other crimes along with Steven Hayes for slaying a woman and her two daughters at a Cheshire home. Killed were Jennifer Hawke-Petit and her daughters, 11-year-old Michaela and 17-year-old Hayley. Hawke-Petit's husband, William Petit, was severely beaten but survived.
Cheshire police said the recordings were destroyed in a lightning strike at the police station in 2010, before Komisarjevsky's trial. But backups of the recordings were found in 2014 at Cheshire Town Hall.
Komisarjevsky's appellate lawyers said the recordings would have helped prove a defense theory that the police response to the home invasion was inadequate, giving reason to question the credibility of officers who testified for the prosecution.
Prosecutors said nothing in the recordings warrants a new trial.
The defense and prosecution will argue their cases before New Haven Superior Court Judge Jon Blue on Tuesday.
Komisarjevsky and Hayes were sentenced to death, but the state Supreme Court last year abolished the death penalty for the men on Connecticut's death row.
