Brian McDonald

to all

i read in the connecticut papers the other day that, in an attempt to delay the trial, a defense attorney for steven hayes told the court that my book quotes Joshua Komisarjevsky as saying that steven hayes spread the gasoline that would kill Michaela and Hayley Petit. the lawyer called this information "predjudicial" as it had not been previously reported in press. now middle age has already crept up on me, but i was pretty certain my book doesn't contain such a quote from joshua. luckily i still have one of the few unsold copies. so just to be certain, i went back and checked. much to my relief, i wasn't suffering from a senior moment. the quote doesn't exist in the book. in fact, the book doesn't even contain the implication of whether it was hayes or joshua who spread the gasoline. maybe the lawyer was just fictionalizing the account.

in the end, the judge denied the motion to delay the trial and in january of next year justice in connecticut will begin to grind

as far as i know, In the Middle of the Night has still not sold through its initial printing of 65,000 books (worldwide). According to the U.S. Census Bureau, a little over 3.5 million people live in Connecticut--850,000 in New Haven County alone. although the local publicity surrounding the book's release and the Cheshire Public Library controversy was intense (and a lot of the time misleading, see post below), the number of people who have actually read the book is a small percentage of even a local jury pool. using the book as an excuse to delay the trial is nothing more than a defense lawyer exaggerating the book's influence to his, and his client's, advantage.