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Thread: Kennedy Cousin Michael Skakel's Conviction Vacated in 1975 Slaying of Martha Moxley

  1. #1
    Senior Member CnCP Legend JimKay's Avatar
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    Kennedy Cousin Michael Skakel's Conviction Vacated in 1975 Slaying of Martha Moxley


    Martha Moxley


    Michael Skakel


    HARTFORD, Conn. (AP) -- Kennedy cousin Michael Skakel was granted a new trial on Wednesday by a Connecticut judge who ruled his attorney failed to adequately represent him when he was convicted in 2002 of killing his neighbor in 1975.

    The ruling by Judge Thomas Bishop marked a dramatic reversal after years of unsuccessful appeals by Skakel, the 53-year-old nephew of Robert F. Kennedy's widow, Ethel Kennedy. Skakel is serving 20 years to life.

    Bridgeport State's Attorney John Smriga said prosecutors will appeal the decision.

    Skakel's current attorney, Hubert Santos, said he expects to file a motion for bail on Thursday. If a judge approves it, Skakel could then post bond and be released from prison.

    "We're very, very thrilled," Santos said. "I always felt that Michael was innocent."

    Skakel argued his trial attorney, Michael Sherman, was negligent in defending him when he was convicted in the golf club bludgeoning of Martha Moxley when they were 15 in wealthy Greenwich.

    Prosecutors contended Sherman's efforts far exceeded standards and that the verdict was based on compelling evidence against Skakel.

    John Moxley, the victim's brother, said the ruling took him and his family by surprise and they hope the state wins an appeal.

    "Having been in the courtroom during the trial, there were a lot of things that Mickey Sherman did very cleverly," Moxley said about Skakel's trial lawyer. "But the evidence was against him. And when the evidence is against you, there's almost nothing you can do.

    "I don't care if it was Perry Mason," Moxley said. "The state had the evidence. It was his own words and deeds that led to the conviction."

    In his ruling, the judge wrote that defense in such a case requires attention to detail, an energetic investigation and a coherent plan of defense.

    "Trial counsel's failures in each of these areas of representation were significant and, ultimately, fatal to a constitutionally adequate defense," Bishop wrote. "As a consequence of trial counsel's failures as stated, the state procured a judgment of conviction that lacks reliability."

    Among other issues, the judge wrote that the defense could have focused more on Skakel's brother, Thomas, who was an early suspect in the case because he was the last person seen with Moxley. Had Sherman done so, "there is a reasonable probability that the outcome of the trial would have been different," the judge wrote.

    During a state trial in April on the appeal, Skakel took the stand and blasted Sherman's handling of the case, portraying him as an overly confident lawyer having fun and basking in the limelight while making fundamental mistakes from poor jury picks to failing to track down key witnesses.

    Santos argued that the prosecutors' case rested entirely on two witnesses of dubious credibility who came forward with stories of confessions after 20 years and the announcement of a reward. Skakel had an alibi, he said.

    Santos contends Sherman was "too enamored with the media attention to focus on the defense." Sherman told criminal defense attorneys at a seminar in Las Vegas six months before the trial that one of his goals in representing Skakel was to have a "good time," Santos said.

    Sherman has said he did all he could to prevent Skakel's conviction and denied he was distracted by media attention in the high-profile case.

    Santos contends Sherman failed to obtain or present evidence against earlier suspects, failed to sufficiently challenge the state's star witness and other testimony and made risky jury picks including a police officer.

    Prosecutors countered that Sherman spent thousands of hours preparing the defense, challenged the state on large and small legal issues, consulted experts and was assisted by some of the state's top lawyers. Sherman attacked the state's evidence, presented an alibi and pointed the finger at an earlier suspect, prosecutors said.

    "This strategy failed not because of any fault of Sherman's, but because of the strength of the state's case," prosecutor Susann Gill wrote in court papers.

    The state's case included three confessions and nearly a dozen incriminating statements by Skakel over the years, Gill said. She also said there was strong evidence of motive.

    "His drug-addled mental state, coupled with the infuriating knowledge that his hated brother Tommy had a sexual liaison with Martha, and the fact that Martha spurned his advances, triggered the rage which led him to beat her to death with a golf club," Gill wrote.

    Gill said what Sherman did with his personal time was irrelevant. She said the evidence cited by the defense was not significant and that Sherman had sound strategic reasons for his decisions.

    Skakel, who maintains his innocence, was denied parole last year and was told he would not be eligible again to be considered for release for five years.

    http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_SKAKEL_APPEAL

    Key events in the case against Michael Skakel

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    Administrator Moh's Avatar
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    Skakel Lawyer, in a TV Twist, Is Talk Fodder

    By VIVIAN YEE and ALISON LEIGH COWAN
    The New York Times

    For two decades, when the tribulations of the famous and the notorious have aired on television, Mickey Sherman has been there to talk and talk: about O. J. Simpson, Martha Stewart, Michael Vick, Casey Anthony, Michael Jackson, just to name a few whose legal cases he analyzed for the camera. When Nancy Grace needed help explaining how a man accused of murder had walked free even after the victims’ bodies were found in his backyard, Mr. Sherman was there, making the CNN studio peal with laughter.

    “You get a client with 8 to 12 bodies buried in his yard, and there’s an immediate rush to judgment that he may have done something wrong,” he deadpanned.

    The public’s insatiable appetite for true-crime programming vaulted Mr. Sherman, the assured, accessible and witty defense lawyer from Greenwich, Conn., into the flashy television-personality world of photo shoots and celebrity hobnobbing.

    But now Mr. Sherman is the one whom the talking heads are talking about.

    Last week, a Connecticut judge ordered a retrial for Mr. Sherman’s most famous client, Michael C. Skakel, the nephew of Ethel Kennedy who was convicted in 2002 of killing a neighbor, Martha Moxley, when both were 15 in 1975. In a scathing, 136-page decision, the judge wrote that had Mr. Sherman not done such a poor job defending Mr. Skakel, the jury might have come to a different conclusion.

    “What’s unusual here,” John Berman of CNN said the next morning, “is that the lawyer — Mickey Sherman was a very well-known lawyer. Highly paid. Like I think he made more than a million dollars in this case. You don’t usually see the adequate representation then coming into play with a high-priced celebrity lawyer in cases like this. It is fascinating, fascinating to see.”

    The decision on Wednesday, by Judge Thomas A. Bishop, came about after Mr. Skakel’s new lawyers filed a habeas corpus petition, a Hail Mary gambit with historically slim odds, after they spent 11 years appealing and petitioning judges for a new trial.

    Calling Mr. Sherman’s failures “fatal to a constitutionally adequate defense,” the judge issued an assessment of his performance that might not have seemed out of place on cable TV, three times labeling Mr. Sherman’s lapses “inexcusable.”

    He said Mr. Sherman had failed to argue that a brother of Mr. Skakel’s, who had fallen under suspicion at one point during the long investigation, could have killed Ms. Moxley; that he had not called a witness who could have supported Mr. Skakel’s alibi; that he had not adequately contested one man’s claim that Mr. Skakel had confessed the murder to him, even though there were witnesses available to challenge the claim; and that he had presented a weak closing argument without mentioning the concept of reasonable doubt, among other problems.

    On Friday, two days later, Mr. Sherman said he had yet to read the judge’s decision, but also that he was pleased that his former client, who was sentenced to 20 years to life, might finally leave prison. “I’m not concerned about my future career or business,” Mr. Sherman said. “What concerns me is Michael.”

    Like Mr. Skakel and Ms. Moxley, Mr. Sherman, 66, grew up in Greenwich, though in a decidedly less affluent part of town. A graduate of the University of Connecticut School of Law, he worked as a public defender and prosecutor in Stamford before starting a private practice in 1976. In 1991, a few years after The American Lawyer wrote about Mr. Sherman, the magazine’s publisher, Steven Brill, asked him to appear in a program he was developing that would show trials in their entirety alongside running commentary from veteran lawyers. The pilot would become Court TV, now TruTV. One of its early programs centered on Mr. Sherman’s highest-profile trial before the Skakel case, that of Roger Ligon, a Vietnam War veteran who was charged with murder for shooting someone over a parking dispute.

    As Court TV filmed the proceedings, Mr. Sherman constructed a novel defense, arguing that Mr. Ligon had suffered from post-traumatic stress syndrome. Mr. Ligon was acquitted, cementing Mr. Sherman’s reputation as a defense attorney — and one who recognized what television could do for his business.

    The contemporary cult of the celebrity lawyer was arguably born with the O. J. Simpson murder case in 1994, and made television stars of a half-dozen or more of the lawyers involved. By the time he took the Skakel case, Mr. Sherman was part of that ever-expanding constellation: a fixture on Court TV and other channels, he now counted among his best friends the singer Michael Bolton and the television personality Rikki Klieman, along with her husband, William J. Bratton, the police chief who served in New York, Los Angeles and Boston. Known for his irreverence in the courtroom — he once waved a live lobster in court while defending a fisherman — Mr. Sherman made for good TV, breaking up the tension of dramatic headlines with well-placed jokes.

    And he enjoyed the attention, as Mr. Skakel testified at a court hearing earlier this year. Mr. Skakel said Mr. Sherman called himself a “media whore” who, during trial preparations, took a potential witness to dinner in Chicago with Mr. Bolton and the basketball coach Doc Rivers (The actor Harrison Ford dropped by). Mr. Sherman said last week that he used the celebrities’ presence to entice the potential witness so that he could learn more about how the person might testify. (He was not called to the stand.)

    Mr. Sherman, who was hired in part for his media experience, billed more than $1.2 million for the case.

    “Mickey got distracted by the glitter and the glare,” Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a cousin of Mr. Skakel’s, said in an interview last week. “He was not lifting up every rock, and if he had, Michael Skakel would not be in prison for the last 10 years, and Mickey knows that.”

    After the trial, the limousine that whisked Mr. Sherman from his Connecticut home to studios in New York City continued coming. About a year after the Skakel trial ended in June 2002, he parlayed his growing fame into a paid job as the legal analyst for CBS News, a position he held for several years. Vanity Fair did a photo shoot. His income ballooned to $854,000 in 2004, up from a low of about $96,000 in 1998. So ubiquitous did he become that he had a cameo in the 2006 film “Man of the Year,” as “Talking Head Lawyer.”

    Having separated from his wife, now Judy Jacobson, in 1998, Mr. Sherman finalized his divorce in 2005 and married Lis Wiehl, the legal analyst for Fox News, the next year. At the wedding, which was attended by the television hosts Geraldo Rivera and Dan Abrams, as well as Mr. Brill and the director Barry Levinson, Mr. Bolton sang “When a Man Loves a Woman.” (Mr. Sherman and Ms. Wiehl are now divorced.)

    But he was already running behind on paying his taxes, with debts to the Internal Revenue Service that topped $1 million by the time he was charged and pleaded guilty in 2010 to willfully failing to pay. Documents in the tax case described Mr. Sherman as an inveterate spender, one who friends and family said in letters of support could be all too openhanded with gifts. One of his representatives, negotiating with a tax officer, said Mr. Sherman’s affluent lifestyle required “plenty of cash.” Because he was a high-profile lawyer, the representative added, “image was everything.”

    Mr. Sherman’s license was suspended for a year and he was sentenced to a year and a day in prison, spending about half of that at a minimum-security camp, and a few months at a halfway house. He now uses his prison stint as a selling point. “I am acutely aware of that black cloud that sits above your head and that of your family,” Mr. Sherman’s Web site tells potential clients. “I know all of this because I’ve been there myself!”

    By April 2012, Mr. Sherman was back on television, often dissecting the shooting of Trayvon Martin for Nancy Grace on the cable news channel HLN.

    Mr. Sherman said he understood Mr. Skakel’s need to paint him as ineffective, but in an interview last week, he offered a rebuttal to the judge’s ruling. Mr. Sherman said he had avoided implicating other possible suspects because they could give one another alibis. As for challenging the prosecution witness’s claim that Mr. Skakel had confessed, he said he believed his cross-examination had established the witness as an unreliable drug user.

    Some prominent members of the television legal bar expressed surprise with the ruling, which prosecutors have promised to appeal. “Astonished,” said Jeffrey Toobin on CNN’s “Anderson Cooper 360 Degrees.” “I sat through this trial. Mickey Sherman made some very debatable moves, but this was not outside the realm of normal criminal defense.”

    Last week, Mr. Sherman called the decision “one hundred times worse” than going to prison “because it goes to my fabric as a lawyer.”

    As for the experience of having his own performance scrutinized by Mr. Kennedy, Mr. Skakel’s new legal team and now his fellow talking heads, he sounds philosophical. “They pay people like me to win,” Mr. Sherman said. “So I don’t blame them.”

    http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/28/ny...lk-fodder.html

  3. #3
    Senior Member CnCP Legend JimKay's Avatar
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    State: Court Has No Authority To Set Bail For Skakel

    Even though his conviction was set aside last week, Michael Skakel remains a convicted murderer, and so the court has no authority to set bail for him, attorneys for the state of Connecticut argued in a brief filed in Superior Court in Rockville on Wednesday.

    "Because petitioner stands convicted of murder, and remains in the status of a sentenced inmate during the duration of the automatic stay and the stay pending appeal, this court has neither the statutory nor common law authority to grant bond," the brief states.

    After a string of unsuccessful appeals by Skakel, Judge Thomas Bishop last week granted a habeas corpus petition by Skakel's attorneys and set aside his 2002 conviction for the death of Greenwich teenager Martha Moxley. Bishop ruled Oct. 23 that Skakel's trial lawyer, Michael "Mickey" Sherman, was glaringly ineffective, failing to bring forward information that may have created reasonable doubt in the minds of the jury.

    The judge ordered a new trial for Skakel, a nephew of Ethel Kennedy and the late Robert F. Kennedy.

    Skakel's lawyers followed up with a request for a bail hearing, and the judge responded by asking for briefs from both sides, saying he is not sure he has the authority to consider such a motion. By law, an automatic stay of Bishop's decision setting aside the conviction is in effect to give the state time to file an appeal, which state prosecutors have said they plan to do. Also, a state statute excludes convicted murderers from being considered by the court for bail.

    Skakel attorneys Hubert J. Santos and Jessica M. Santos submitted their brief on Monday, saying that not only does the court have the authority to set a bail hearing for Skakel, but that, "the Petitioner [Skakel] is being held in custody in violation of the Constitution and is therefore entitled to immediate release."

    The state's brief argues that Skakel's request is an "invitation to circumvent the clear policy of this state against releasing those convicted of murder."

    As a convicted murder, Skakel is "specifically excluded from the class of persons for whom post-conviction bond is available," the brief states.

    "Petitioner's audacious, but unsupported assertion that habeas cases are exempt… should be summarily rejected," the state's attorneys wrote.

    Skakel's attorneys argued in their brief that the statute prohibiting a convicted murderer from receiving bail "was never meant to apply under the circumstances of this case. ... The statute applies to those defendants who have been constitutionally convicted of murder by a proceeding worthy of confidence."

    Bishop was not expected to address the brief by Skakel's attorneys until after the state filed its argument.

    Skakel, 53, is about halfway through a prison sentence of 20 years to life. He was convicted of beating Moxley to death with a golf club in 1975 when the two teenagers, both 15 at the time, were neighbors in the posh Belle Haven neighborhood.

    http://www.courant.com/news/connecti...0,643750.story

  4. #4
    AdamSmith
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    Skakel changed his story, and was reputed to tell others later that he had committed the murder.

    Fuhrman's book reopened the case, and in Y2K/2000 Skakel finally was charged with the crime.

    Now we are going though this all over again 40 years after the crime??

    I thought Fuhrman's book already said it all.

    (POSH = port outgoing & starboard home; pertained to cruise line cabins on the Thames.)
    Last edited by AdamSmith; 11-09-2013 at 04:05 AM.

  5. #5
    Vickie
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    I don't know a whole lot about this case, but it makes me wonder if they are going to be able to convict when some of the evidence/witnesses are from so long ago.

  6. #6
    Admiral CnCP Legend JT's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by JimKay View Post
    Even though his conviction was set aside last week, Michael Skakel remains a convicted murderer
    Umm...


    Quote Originally Posted by AdamSmith View Post
    (POSH = port outgoing & starboard home; pertained to cruise line cabins on the Thames.)
    Only if the captain was seriously lost.
    "I have adopted the Italian way of life... I may stab you!"
    — Heidi

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    — Weidmann1939

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    — Weidmann1939

  7. #7
    Senior Member CnCP Legend JimKay's Avatar
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    Originally Posted by JimKay

    Even though his conviction was set aside last week, Michael Skakel remains a convicted murderer
    Quote Originally Posted by JT View Post
    Umm...
    Then he'd be released. Hasn't been released. He was convicted by a jury. That doesn't change simply because a Kennedy-family lawyer may have twisted a judge's arm and gotten him to overturn the justice system. Fatso Skakel is right where he belongs.

  8. #8
    Administrator Moh's Avatar
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    Family’s Tenacity and Wealth Put Skakel at Cusp of Freedom

    By ALISON LEIGH COWAN
    The New York Times

    STAMFORD, Conn. — Since Michael C. Skakel’s conviction in 2002 in the 1975 murder of his Greenwich neighbor Martha Moxley when they were both 15, Mr. Skakel and his family have spared no expense in their efforts to clear his name.

    They hired expensive lawyers, private investigators and expert witnesses, one at $250 an hour. They fired Mickey Sherman, the defense lawyer who failed to win his case in 2002, and hired Hubert J. Santos, a prominent Hartford lawyer. They brought in Theodore B. Olson, a solicitor general of the United States under President George W. Bush, to petition the Supreme Court. They tracked down witnesses in Tampa, Fla., and Spain. They hired lawyers to mount an offensive on news organizations that broadcast misinformation about Mr. Skakel and sued the celebrity news personality Nancy Grace for libel.

    The family’s perseverance and deep pockets — Mr. Skakel’s grandfather was an industrial magnate — have brought Mr. Skakel to a pivotal moment: Last month, a judge in Superior Court in Rockville, Conn., overturned the 11-year-old verdict. On Thursday, when Mr. Skakel appears in a Stamford courtroom for a bail hearing, he could walk free while he awaits a new trial.

    The campaign to free Mr. Skakel is one that very few criminal defendants can hope to marshal. The price is impossible to calculate but has run well into the millions of dollars. Now, some of his supporters say, this round in court may be the last chance he will have, because the case has drained the family fortune.

    “You know the father died broke,” said Anna Mae Skakel, his 76-year-old stepmother, the widow of his father, Rushton. “The trusts are all gone. Everything’s gone.”

    Mr. Skakel’s cousin Robert F. Kennedy Jr. confirmed that resources were running low and that Mr. Skakel had had to sell his small house in the Catskills, near the home of his son. “He couldn’t hold onto it,” Mr. Kennedy said.

    Throughout the original trial and the 11 years of the 20-years-to-life sentence he has served, Mr. Skakel has insisted that he did not kill Ms. Moxley, who was bludgeoned to death with a golf club outside her family’s home. But in the habeas corpus court in Rockville, Connecticut’s forum of last resort for prisoners, his case is unlike just about any other. In many of the 600 or so cases the court handles each year, many petitioners cannot afford to have a lawyer representing them. Often their submissions are in longhand and only a few pages.

    Mr. Skakel, though, was an heir to the family fortune, and he is also connected to the Kennedys: His father’s sister, Ethel Skakel, married Robert F. Kennedy. His life of privilege included shaking hands with Fidel Castro in Cuba and securing an introduction to Mother Teresa, who helped him get a job at a shelter in the Bronx.

    Mr. Skakel and his supporters spent more than $2 million on his defense in the first trial, according to court records. After his conviction, the money and the resources kept coming.

    Since his conviction, his new lawyers have quarterbacked half a dozen appeals in Connecticut’s appellate courts and before its parole board. None succeeded until last month, when Judge Thomas A. Bishop rolled back Mr. Skakel’s conviction on the grounds that Mr. Sherman had deprived his client of his constitutional right to effective counsel by fumbling crucial elements of the defense, and cleared the way for a new trial. Prosecutors say they will appeal that ruling, but Mr. Santos will be in court on Thursday arguing that Mr. Skakel should be freed on bail.

    Asked about the cost of the long-running effort, Mr. Santos and several members of the Skakel family have politely demurred. But wills, billing records and correspondence in court files help fill in the picture.

    Among the influential people Mr. Skakel and his family have enlisted is Stephan E. Seeger, who has focused on suing news organizations for libel. The point, he said, was to reduce the risk that Mr. Skakel, in a new trial, would face jurors who have been affected by spurious reports. The actions he has pursued include the one against Ms. Grace and the producers of her show, which had incorrectly broadcast that Mr. Skakel’s DNA was found at the murder scene. The team also brought in an expert on forced confessions, Richard J. Ofshe, at $250 an hour, to help rebut claims that Mr. Skakel had made damaging admissions while attending the Elan School in Poland, Me., where he was sent in 1978 after a drunken-driving arrest near the family vacation home in Windham, N.Y.

    And then there are the private investigators — at least five, court records show — brought in to revisit aspects of the state’s case during the first trial.

    One of them, Keith A. Weeks, spent “a solid month” in 2005 trying to locate a John Simpson for the defense, according to testimony. Mr. Simpson’s name had been dropped at the first trial by the state’s star witness, Gregory Coleman, as one of three students at Elan who, he claimed, had heard Mr. Skakel make incriminating remarks. Mr. Weeks picked his way through a dozen or so former classmates at Elan, one of whom finally recalled an old girlfriend who knew Mr. Simpson had graduated from Pennsylvania State University. Of the four John Simpsons who had graduated, Mr. Weeks found the one he was looking for in Tampa and elicited testimony that undercut the prosecution’s witness.

    A second name from Elan, “Cliff Rubin,” turned out to be Cliff Grubin, whom Mr. Weeks tracked down on the island of Ibiza, off the coast of Spain.

    Mr. Santos used his findings in Stamford Superior Court in 2007, arguing that Mr. Skakel was entitled to a new trial that would incorporate the new witnesses. While the presiding judge did not find that the witnesses met the test for “newly surfaced” evidence necessary to grant a new trial, Judge Bishop of the habeas court disagreed. Had their accounts been heard earlier, he wrote, there was a “reasonable likelihood” that the government’s star witness would have been “discredited” and the outcome different.

    This expensive legal maneuvering makes many of those following the Moxley murder grumble that they are seeing rich man’s justice at work.

    There have been costs to the state as well, but those are also not totaled. “We don’t assign costs to specific cases,” said Mark Dupuis, a spokesman for the chief state’s attorney’s office.

    The Skakel fortune goes back to Michael’s paternal grandparents, George and Ann Skakel, who died in 1957 in a plane crash, after George had built the Great Lakes Carbon Corporation into a main supplier of chemical coke for blast furnaces. The grandparents created trusts for each of their seven children and directed that leftover assets be distributed to each child’s offspring once that beneficiary died.

    The youngest of the three sons, Rushton, took the helm of Great Lakes when his parents died and was put in charge of all 14 trusts except the two that were for his own benefit, in accordance with the wills.

    “He was the most responsible,” Anna Mae Skakel said.

    Rushton Skakel’s own estate planning, however, captured in the will he drafted in May 1995, indicated that he had some concerns about how the younger generation would handle responsibility. A certain amount was to go to his wife. The remainder would then be divided equally among his seven children — Rushton Jr., Julia, Thomas A., John, Michael, David and Stephen — with the condition that Michael and Thomas would inherit only if they agreed to have their trusts managed by Rushton Skakel’s trustees for the lifetime benefit of each son. Rushton Skakel died in Florida in 2003, mere months after Michael was convicted of murder.

    The millions spent on the first trial were not just from Rushton and Anna Mae’s own pockets. At one point, Ms. Skakel recalled in an interview, she flew to Ireland to ask for a check from Rushton’s sister Patricia Cuffe and came home with $250,000 for the legal defense fund. Thomas A. Reynolds Jr., Michael’s maternal uncle in Chicago, also provided $250,000, Ms. Skakel said.

    Court records show that, to pay legal bills, Rushton Skakel used $150,000 of the money that his first wife, Anne Reynolds Skakel, had left in a trust for the children when she died in 1973. That payment, however, ended up being successfully challenged in 2004 once Rushton died, by a court-appointed guardian who noted that it would have violated the mother’s wishes to help one child at the exclusion of the other six.

    “When I brought the action in Florida, I was told that the funds that would be used would come out of Anna Mae’s share,” Richard J. Slagle, the court-appointed guardian, said on Monday.

    Restitution was made as ordered, so that Michael and his siblings each got $20,000 payment from their mother’s trust. And Michael had received the same $383,000 that his siblings received in final distributions from the grandparents’ trusts by the time they wound down in 2007.

    From their father’s estate in Florida, though, the children got nothing. “You can’t keep writing checks for $50,000, for $25,000,” Ms. Skakel said. “It just adds up.”

    http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/20/ny...m.html?hp&_r=0

  9. #9
    Senior Member CnCP Legend JimKay's Avatar
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    Skakel granted bail as he awaits new Conn. trial

    STAMFORD, Conn. (AP) -- Kennedy cousin Michael Skakel was granted bail Thursday and expected to be released from prison while prosecutors in Connecticut appeal a ruling giving him a new trial in the 1975 slaying of neighbor Martha Moxley.

    Skakel, the 53-year-old nephew of Robert F. Kennedy's widow, Ethel, touched his hand to his chest and looked back at his supporters in the courtroom, his brothers among them, as the judge set bail at $1.2 million. He has been in prison more than 11 years on a sentence of 20 years to life but was expected to be freed shortly after the hearing in Stamford Superior Court.

    As conditions of the bail, the judge ordered that Skakel live in Connecticut and wear a GPS tracking device.

    "He's one of the most recognized faces of America, so he's not going anywhere," defense attorney Hubert Santos said, noting that Skakel always showed up for court appearances. Santos said after the hearing ended that Skakel was "very happy" about the outcome.

    A judge ruled last month that Skakel's trial attorney, Michael Sherman, failed to adequately represent Skakel in 2002 when he was convicted in Moxley's bludgeoning with a golf club in wealthy Greenwich when they were both 15. Judge Thomas Bishop said Sherman failed to locate a witness who backed up Skakel's alibi that he was at his cousin's house the night of the murder and failed to find a man who challenged a star witness's claim that Skakel confessed.

    "This is the first step in correcting a terrible wrong," the Skakel family said in a statement. "We look forward to Michael being vindicated and justice finally being served."

    Outside court, Moxley's brother John and mother, Dorthy, said they disagreed with the bail decision, continue to believe Skakel killed Martha and are confident he will be convicted again at a new trial.

    "I'm disappointed. ... I guess we knew that the day would come," Dorthy Moxley said. "I wasn't completely destroyed, but I wish it didn't happen."

    Added John Moxley, "We have nothing to say to Michael."

    Robert Kennedy Jr., who campaigned to overturn Skakel's conviction, had said this week that he felt "pure joy" that his cousin was expected to be released. Skakel has seen his son only a handful of times since he was sent to prison, he said.

    "Everybody in my family knows that Michael is innocent," Kennedy said Tuesday. "He was in jail for over a decade for a crime he didn't commit. The only crime that he committed was having a bad lawyer."

    Santos, had argued that Skakel should be released immediately, saying that the ruling makes him an innocent defendant awaiting trial and that he was not a flight risk. Santos also argued prosecutors were highly unlikely to win their appeal, a contention prosecutors dispute.

    The case was considered a big challenge for prosecutors because of issues including the age of the crime and the lack of forensic evidence. Michael Skakel was convicted after a trial that focused on testimony that he confessed or made incriminating statements over the years.

    Both Sherman and prosecutors defended his handling of the case.

    Skakel's older brother Thomas was an early suspect in the case because he was the last person seen with the victim, and Bishop said in his ruling that Michael Skakel's defense should have focused more on Thomas.

    http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_SKAKEL_APPEAL

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    Administrator Helen's Avatar
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    Kennedy cousin Skakel granted request to relocate GPS device to fit ski boot

    Kennedy cousin Michael Skakel, who was released from prison last year after he was granted a new trial in the 1975 slaying of a neighbor, has received approval to have a GPS tracking device temporarily relocated from his ankle while he attends his son's ski competition.

    During an earlier ski competition this month, Skakel was unable to accompany his son up the mountain with other parents because his ankle couldn't fit in the ski boot with the bracelet, his attorneys said in court papers. As a result, they said he was required to hike up the mountain alone, which took two to three hours and induced an asthma attack.

    "Thankfully, the defendant had his inhaler, otherwise very serious consequences could have resulted while he was alone on a mountain," Skakel's attorneys wrote.

    When he reached the peak, Skakel received a message from the GPS monitoring company that the charge on his anklet was low and that he would need to return to the lodge to charge it.

    "As a result, the defendant spent the vast majority of his time away from his son, rather than supporting and coaching him, even after having charged the device for the entire previous night and for one hour prior to scaling the mountain," his attorneys wrote.

    Skakel received approval to have probation officials relocate the bracelet on his body later this month so he can ski alongside his son, who is competing in state championships at Lake Placid and high school championships.

    "The defendant would like to be able to provide his son with the proper parental support and coaching during these competitions without inducing another asthma attack or a more serious condition,'" Skakel's attorneys wrote.

    Skakel, the 53-year-old nephew of Robert F. Kennedy's widow, Ethel, had been in prison more than 11 years on a sentence of 20 years to life.

    A judge ruled in October that Skakel's trial attorney failed to adequately represent him in 2002 when he was convicted in Martha Moxley's bludgeoning with a golf club in wealthy Greenwich when they were both 15.

    Prosecutors are appealing the ruling granting him a new trial.

    http://www.torontosun.com/2013/11/21...ed-from-prison
    Last edited by Helen; 07-23-2014 at 08:36 AM.
    "I realize this may sound harsh, but as a father and former lawman, I really don't care if it's by lethal injection, by the electric chair, firing squad, hanging, the guillotine or being fed to the lions."
    - Oklahoma Rep. Mike Christian

    "There are some people who just do not deserve to live,"
    - Rev. Richard Hawke

    “There are lots of extremely smug and self-satisfied people in what would be deemed lower down in society, who also deserve to be pulled up. In a proper free society, you should be allowed to make jokes about absolutely anything.”
    - Rowan Atkinson

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