Defendant In 3 Killings Seeks to Give Guilty Plea.

One of the two men charged in a 2007 home invasion in Cheshire, Conn., in which a woman and her two daughters were killed, has asked a judge to allow him to plead guilty on the condition that he receive a sentence of life without parole rather than the death penalty. In a motion filed on Friday, lawyers for the defendant, Joshua Komisarjevsky, told Judge Jon C. Blue of State Superior Court in New Haven that although their client had ''meritorious defenses,'' he was offering the conditional plea ''primarily to avoid another lengthy, expensive and emotionally charged trial that will undoubtedly cause extreme mental anguish to the Petit and to the Hawke families, to the community at large and to his own family, friends and supporters.'' [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]