Prosecutors Want to Try Cheshire Suspects Together

Arguments will be made Thursday on the Cheshire home invasion case

The state's judicial system has to maintain the delicate balance of providing a fair trial for the suspects in the triple fatal Cheshire home invasion and sparing members of the Petit family the ordeal of more than one proceeding.

Prosecutors will argue in Superior Court on Thursday that the two suspects in the case should be tried together, but they are making the unusual request that each of the men, Joshua Komisarjevsky and Steven Hayes, has his own jury, the Hartford Courant reports. The two men are charged in the 2007 killings of Jennifer Hawke-Petit and her two daughters, 17-year-old Hayley and 11-year-old Michaela.

Jeffrey A. Meyer, a professor at Quinnipiac University's School of Law, told the Courant that this kind of trial is rare.

"The use of dual juries appears to be fairly unusual but far from unprecedented and, in general, has been approved in courts outside of Connecticut as an alternative to conducting separate trials of co-defendants whose defenses are antagonistic to one another," Meyer told the Courant.

Meyer said dual juries could pose several challenges for attorneys, including the need for a larger courtroom, which is expected to attract strong attention from the public.

A gag order prohibits both sides from speaking publicly about the case.
 

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