KENNEDY GARBAGE FAILS TO WRIGGLE OUT ON TECHNICALITIES

There appears to have been little questioning of the evidence, just endless and specious legal technicalities. But more technicalities are on the drawing board. Great if you are rich garbage!

The state Supreme Court, in a decision to be released today, has upheld the murder conviction of Kennedy kinsman Michael Skakel. Skakel, 45, is serving a sentence of 20 years to life, and has been in prison since a Superior Court jury in Norwalk found him guilty on June 7, 2002. Skakel was convicted of bludgeoning Martha Moxley to death on Oct. 30, 1975, when both were 15 and neighbors in Belle Haven.

The ruling likely means that Skakel's only chances for freedom in the near future rest with a petition for a new trial filed by defense attorney Hope Seeley last summer, based on newly discovered evidence, or on a habeas petition claiming that Skakel's trial lawyer, Mickey Sherman, did not adequately represent him. An appeal of today's ruling to the U.S. Supreme Court is unlikely to succeed because Skakel's claims rely predominantly on the trial court's interpretation and application of state laws.

Court officials notified lawyers of the outcome of the appeal yesterday afternoon, but the parties do not yet know the court's rationale for rejecting the numerous issues raised on appeal by attorneys Seeley, Hubert Santos and Steven Ecker. The decision is being released one day shy of a year since the case was argued before the state's highest court. Neither Seeley nor Chief State's Attorney Christopher Morano would comment on the decision last night. "I am aware a decision will be released tomorrow," Morano said last night. "I'm awaiting that and don't think it would be appropriate to comment any further." Moxley family members and members of Skakel's family also were notified of the decision.

Dorthy Moxley, Martha's mother, said she had prepared herself for a possible reversal of Skakel's conviction and a second trial, and was thrilled with the court's decision. "Isn't that something," she said. But at age 73, and having crusaded to keep her daughter's memory and case alive, Moxley said she is looking forward to things calming down. "I want Michael to serve his time and that's it," she said. "I just want it all to be quiet and go away. . . I try not to think about it too much, but you can't help but think about it. It's nice to know they upheld the conviction."

In an interview with Greenwich Time last night, Robert F. Kennedy, who has repeatedly proclaimed his cousin's innocence, said "It's a tragedy." Kennedy wrote an article in Atlantic Monthly and went on CBS's "48 Hours Investigates" to defend Skakel. At the time, he told CBS reporter Lesley Stahl, "I'm utterly convinced that he did not do the crime." In his article titled "A Miscarriage of Justice," that ran in the January/February 2003 edition of Atlantic Monthly, Kennedy, a former prosecutor and now a professor of law at Pace University in New York, argued that Skakel's conviction stemed from from a poor job by his attorney and prosecutors who were influenced by celebrities like Dominick Dunne and Mark Fuhrman.

In Skakel's 75-page appeal brief, his lawyers raised numerous challenges, ranging from the admission of tabloid newspapers into evidence to claims of "outrageous" prosecutorial misconduct. Two legal issues have haunted the case since Skakel's arrest in January 2000, at age 39, nearly a quarter-century after the crime. One is the transfer of Skakel's case to adult court on the argument that no appropriate juvenile facilities could accommodate him if he were to be adjudicated delinquent in juvenile court. The defense team contends that that finding was erroneous, and rendered after state officials failed to comply with requirements in place in 1975 that an exhaustive study be conducted of the defendant's family, history and home conditions before a transfer to adult court.

Another compelling issue was whether the legislature had inadvertently put into effect a five-year statute of limitations for prosecuting murder cases at the time Moxley was killed. The prosecution argued that a 1976 bill adopted by the legislature that expressly stated there is no statute of limitations for prosecuting murders cases is a clarifying amendment, not an admission that such a deadline predated the bill.

If Skakel had prevailed on that issue, he could not have been tried a second time. Seeley, in her argument, focused on the statute of limitations issue and the prosecution's failure to turn over to defense lawyers a composite drawing of a man seen by a Belle Haven security guard walking near the crime scene. The defense also challenged the testimony of Skakel's classmates at a school for troubled teens in Maine, where Skakel was sent soon after the killing. The school's "treatment" program at the time involved both physical and verbal abuse, the witnesses said, and some of the self-incriminating statements attributed by witnesses to Skakel occurred while he was in these treatment sessions. "The most damaging evidence presented against Michael Skakel at trial were statements supposedly made by him under conditions of shocking brutality," the brief stated.

Skakel's lawyers also challenged the prosecution's dramatic courtroom use of a tape-recorded interview Skakel did with a ghostwriter in 1997, in which he talks about the night Moxley was killed, combined with projected images of Moxley both dead and alive. Fairfield State's Attorney Jonathan Benedict's final argument at one point drew an audible gasp from the packed courtroom, when Skakel's words were played against the backdrop of a crime scene photo.

Prosecutors in their brief countered that the defense team had misrepresented the final argument. "The state's use of audio and photographic exhibits during argument was a matter of effective advocacy," Supervisory Assistant State's Attorney Susann Gill wrote in her brief to the high court. Gill also rebutted the defense contention that a statute of limitations was ever imposed on murder cases. This issue was viewed by many as Skakel's strongest claim, in part because the court in recent decades has handed down three complex and seemingly conflicting rulings on the topic.

Martha Moxley was struck so hard on the head with a golf iron from a set of clubs owned by the Skakel family that the shaft shattered. She was last seen in the Skakels' driveway not far from her home about 9:30 p.m., hanging around with a group of friends. She is believed to have been killed between 9:30 p.m. and 10 p.m. as she crossed into her side yard. Her body was dragged beneath a large tree in her yard and discovered by a friend about noon the next day.

Skakel is the nephew of Ethel Skakel Kennedy and Robert F. Kennedy, who was assassinated in 1968 when he was running for president. Skakel grew up alongside a bevy of Kennedy cousins, and his murder case drew international media attention. Greenwich police in 1976 drafted an arrest warrant application charging Skakel's brother, Thomas, who was 17 at the time of the crime, with murder. Prosecutors refused to put it before a judge, however, citing insufficient evidence. Moxley's murder remained unsolved for nearly a quarter-century. Skakel is being held at the MacDougall Correctional Institution in Suffield

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