Brian McDonald

Thomas Ullman told the court today that his client, Steven Hayes, is suicidal (no kidding?) and being held in inhumane conditions in McDougall-Walker Correctional's infirmary. Apparently, the lights is the infirmary are on 24 a day. Hayes is also wearing some sort of restraining garment and being denied his meds. (more…)

after six days of punishment for being a minion of Macmillan publishing, In the Middle of the Night again has a "buy" button on its Amazon.com page. thank you, Amazon, for teaching me a valuable lesson. from now on I promise to write books that can only be read on Kindle.

steven hayes is due back in court monday. the judge said he would then "make an initial assessment" of hayes' competency, and from there will decide when jury selection will resume. one connecticut columnist called the circumstance surrounding hayes' reported suicide attempt as "increasingly vague." i'll be surprised if the facts of that event are made public on monday. but i think it would be a mistake for officials not to do so. like most imposed secrecies, the gag order's byproducts are speculation and mistrust. (more…)

there's a court hearing scheduled for today to decide how and when to proceed with accused triple murderer steven hayes's trial and his competency to do so. i won't be shocked if hayes' defense team tries to use his physical and mental condition to postpone. when details become available, i'll pass them on.

in the meantime, i'm getting a real charge out of amazon.com's way of punishing macmillan, which is really just punishing hundreds of authors most (more…)

according the the hartford courant, hayes is recovering from his suicide attempt in Macdougall-Walker Correctional's infirmary. the paper also reported that jury selection will begin again next week.

if the comment section on online newsstories is a barometer, then public anger toward hayes and komisarjevsky is still at a fever pitch.

you still can't buy In the Middle of the Night directly from Amazon.com. Because of an ebook dispute btwn Amazon and Macmillan, the parent company of St. Martin's True Crime, the giant online bookseller has removed the "add to shopping cart" link on all Macmillan titles including In the Middle of the Night. During the (more…)

to those in charge of keeping the lid on this story: all you had to do is give the press a medical update and you would have sidestepped much speculation and an enormous two-day news cycle. sheeesh!

just as an aside, because of a spat between Amazon.com and Macmillan, the parent company of (more…)

citing the gag order, officials are denying the people of Connecticut information on the medical condition and circumstances surrounding the suicide attempt of a prisoner whose trial they are paying for

citing the gag order, the Connecticut Department of Corrections is refusing to answer questions about the handling of their highest profile prisoners, (more…)

still very little out of newsrooms in connecticut on the status of steven hayes, lots of coverage, little new info. one story does report that he is supposed to recover and that the jury selection has been postponed for at least two days.

just as a point of interest, up until his hospitalization, hayes was a resident of MacDougall-Walker Correctional, the (more…)

citing the gag order, officials are withholding information about hayes' condition and the circumstance of his apparent overdose on medication. somebody in some newsroom has to know somebody in the hospital to get this story out. come on gang!