My friend, Cindy.

The man accused of killing five people, including two police officers, over five weeks last year wants to be released on bail.

Barring that, Dontae Rashawn Morris wants to be able to communicate with family. He had been kept in isolation at the county jail for months, unable to have visits, calls or letters from family and friends, his lawyer said.

A hearing is slated for June 10.

In a recent motion, defense attorney Byron Hileman said he can communicate with his client, but that it is "inhumane" that jail officials barred Morris from speaking with family.

Hileman said jail authorities told him Morris "is suspected of trying to influence witnesses via three-way phone conversations." He also said prosecutors told him there are recorded calls involving Morris that the state or police view as suspicious.

Hileman said he hasn't been allowed to hear the recordings but has concluded the suspicions are "driven by the punitive attitude of the Tampa Police Department. Those 'suspicions' are based on ambiguous and highly cryptic references in the calls susceptible of multiple interpretations which may or may not be viewed as suggestive, but are certainly not definitively incriminatory."

Police declined to discuss Morris' case specifically, although agency spokeswoman Laura McElroy said "cutting off or limiting communication is a technique that we've used in the past when we believe it's necessary to protect the safety of a witness."

Jail officials eased restrictions on Morris on May 20, the same day Hileman filed his motion. Since then, Morris' mother and grandmother have visited him, Hillsborough County sheriff's Col. Jim Previtera said today.

Morris, 25, has been held without bail since his July arrest, days after police Officers Dave Curtis and Jeffrey Kocab were gunned down during a traffic stop in East Tampa, a crime that sparked the city's largest-ever manhunt.

Morris, who spent time in prison for drug and other offenses, also is charged with first-degree murder in the slayings of Derek Anderson, Harold Wright and Rodney Jones in the weeks before the officers were killed.

Hileman said that isolating his client in jail was wearing upon his emotional stability and appeared to be based on the police department's "collective rage" against Morris.

"The intensity of the departmental anger toward this defendant has helped create a pervasive and noxious miasma throughout the Tampa Bay area contaminating the objectivity of nearly the entire community," he wrote.