Michael Skakel

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Michael Skakel

Michael Skakel, born September 19, 1960, was convicted of murdering Martha Moxley in 2002. Skakel's father is the brother of Sen. Robert F. Kennedy's widow, Ethel.

Martha Moxley was found dead on October 31, 1975 on her family's property in Greenwich, Connecticut, after having been bludgeoned with a golf club, a 6-iron soon determined to belong to the Skakels. Initially, the murder remained unsolved, though a cloud of suspicion hung over the Skakel home. Ken Littleton also became a prime suspect. When William Kennedy Smith was tried for rape in 1991, information surfaced that he knew more about the Moxley case, resulting in renewed investigation to the then, "cold case". In 1993 author Dominick Dunne, father of murdered actress Dominique Dunne, published A Season in Purgatory, a fictional story loosely based on the murder of Martha Moxley. Mark Fuhrman's book Murder in Greenwich named Skakel as the murderer in 1998.

In June of 1998 a rarely invoked one-man Grand Jury was convened, and after 18 months (in June of 2000) Michael Skakel was indicted for the murder of Martha Moxley. In a highly publicized trial, Skakel was convicted for the murder of Martha Moxley on June 7, 2002, and received a sentence of 20 years to life in prison. Skakel's alibi was that at the time of the murder he was at his cousin's house. The jury also heard part of a taped book proposal, in which Skakel admitted to masturbating in a tree that night, but not to killing Moxley. Prosecutors took words from this proposal and overlayed them on graphic images of Martha Moxley's dead body in a computerized presentation shown to jurors during closing arguments. Skakel's defense insists that his words were taken out of context.

In January of 2003, Attorney Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., Skakel's cousin, wrote a controversial article in The Atlantic Monthly entitled "A Miscarriage of Justice," insisting that Skakel's indictment "was triggered by an inflamed media, and that an innocent man is now in prison". He presents an argument alleging that there is more evidence suggesting that then-twenty-three year old Skakel family live-in tutor, Ken Littleton, killed Moxley. He also credits the pursuit of Skakel to Dominick Dunne.

Subsequently, there have been attempts to overturn the conviction. In November 2003, Skakel’s lawyers filed an appeal claiming that the trial should have gone to Juvenile Court, that the statute of limitations had expired, and that there was misconduct on part of the prosecution. These appeals were all rejected by the Connecticut State Supreme Court on January 12, 2006. Skakel has since retained attorney Ted Olson, who on July 12, 2006 filed a petition for a writ of certiorari on behalf of Michael Skakel before the United States Supreme Court. On November 13, 2006, the Supreme Court declined to hear the case, without comment.^[1]

A two week hearing is currently scheduled for mid-April 2007 in order to determine whether a new trial should take place based on the allegations of Gitano Bryant, as well as other arguments.