(AP) -- A Connecticut judge will consider the request for a new trial from a man convicted in a brutal home invasion triple killing who said recordings of police phone calls that were believed to have been destroyed in a lightning strike would have been crucial to his defense.

Joshua Komisarjevsky was convicted of murder along with Steven Hayes for the deaths linked to the robbery and fire at the Cheshire home of the Petit family in 2007.

Authorities said Hayes strangled Jennifer Hawke-Petit after driving her to a bank and forcing her to withdraw $15,000. Her daughters, 17-year-old Hayley and 11-year-old Michaela, died of smoke inhalation in a fire set at their home shortly before Komisarjevsky and Hayes were arrested after crashing the family's car into police cruisers.

Hawke-Petit's husband, William Petit, was severely beaten but survived.

Prosecutors and Cheshire police said the recordings at issue were initially believed to have been destroyed in a lightning strike at the police station in 2010, before Komisarjevsky's trial. But backups of the recordings were found in 2014 at Cheshire Town Hall.

New Haven Superior Court Judge Jon Blue is scheduled to hear arguments about the police recordings on Tuesday.

The calls include one in which a sergeant and officer talked about intercepting the Petit's car after it had left the bank. Police did not stop the car, and it's unclear if they tried to.

Komisarjevsky's appellate lawyers, Moira Buckley and John Holdridge, said in court documents that the recordings would have helped prove a defense theory that the police response to the home invasion was inadequate -- an effort to question the credibility of police witnesses who testified against Komisarjevsky.

Hawke-Petit's family has been critical of the police response, saying officers waited too long to go into the home and try to save the victims.

Holdridge declined to comment ahead of the hearing. Prosecutor Marjorie Allen Dauster said nothing in the recordings warrants a new trial.

Komisarjevsky and Hayes had been sentenced to death but no longer face execution because the state Supreme Court abolished the death penalty for condemned inmates last year. Both have appeals of their convictions pending before the state Supreme Court.