The trial of Joshua Komisarjevsky, one of the men accused of killing a Connecticut mother and her two daughters, is set to begin in the spring, but Komisarjevsky is doing everything he can to delay that process with a flurry of pretrial motions. One of those requests is to remove New Haven Superior Court Judge Jon Blue from his trial.
Blue presided over the trial of Komisarjevsky's partner in the home invasion, Steven Hayes, who was found guilty and sentenced to death; Komisarjevsky's lawyers say that Blue has a “lack of objectivity and unsuitable temperament,” and repeatedly made comments about him while presiding over Hayes' trial
Among other things, Komisarjevsky's lawyers want to move the trial out of the New Haven judicial district because of “prejudicial publicity.” And they have also asked for alternate seating to allow the defense to sit next to the jury and directly across from the witness stand, which is usually reserved for the state. The Courant decodes the request: "Boiled down, they want to engage in eye to eye combat with "an unimpeded, unobstructed and uncluttered 'face to face' confrontation with the witnesses against him. Or put another way, they want to force people — including family members of the mother and daughters he's accused of torturing and killing — to look into the face of one of the last people their loved ones likely saw before they died."
Back in October, one woman described meeting Komisarjevsky in court: "I thought I was looking at the devil...My skin crawled. My hair stood on end...That was my reaction. [He had] dead eyes. Completely dead eyes."
