Michael Skakel New Trial Hearing to be Televised

By Jeralyn, Section Crime in the News
Posted on Fri Apr 13, 2007 at 01:04:15 PM EST
Tags: Michael Skakel (all tags)

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Michael Skakel's hearing on a Motion for New Trial begin Tuesday in Connecticut. Court TV will be televising it. The hearing is expected to last two weeks.

The hearing will center on a 2003 interview in which Gitano "Tony" Bryant reportedly implicated two friends in the 1975 bludgeoning of 15-year-old Martha Moxley in Greenwich.

Lawyers for Skakel, 47, the nephew of Ethel Kennedy, must prove Bryant's account surfaced after the trial and likely would have changed the verdict.

Robert Kennedy, Jr., and Skakel's original defense lawyer (and good TalkLeft pal) Mickey Sherman will be witnesses.

I expect there will be a lot of evidence presented about documents withheld by the prosecution in discovery.

TalkLeft's past coverage of the Skakel case is here. I think there was a paltry amount of evidence against him, most of which came from non-credible sources.

Take for example, Gregory Coleman, the dead drug addict who for all intents and purposes was allowed to testify from the grave.

More...

....the evidence in the case came from an unreliable, dead drug addict who waited 20 years before coming forward with his story about Michael having told him he could get away with murder because he was a Kennedy, and then came forward to the media, not the police, and then who acknowledged at a pre-trial hearing he was high on heroin at the time of his grand jury testimony, that his memory wasn't trustworthy and who was dead of a drug overdose by the time of trial so he wasn't able to be cross-examined (while his prior testimony was orally read to the jury by the lawyers role-playing the parts of questioner and witness as the transcript of his testimony was rolled on the giant overhead screen like it was a movie--really, we were there that day).... from a former suspect (the tutor) who had been granted immunity...and from other similarly unreliable witnesses whose testimony of purported confessions was disputed by other witnesses....

It will be an interesting hearing, from a legal as well as factual perspective.

My chronology of news articles on the case from 2002 is here; 2001 is here.

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Michael Skakel New Trial Hearing to be Televised | 12 comments (12 topical)

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Didn't he say (none / 0) (#1)
by bx58 on Fri Apr 13, 2007 at 04:04:37 PM EST

he was masturbating in a tree? To cover any DNA trails.

Did Mickey come up with that one?

i hope (none / 0) (#2)
by orionATL on Fri Apr 13, 2007 at 04:36:06 PM EST

skakel gets a new trial. from kennedy's version of the previous attempt at bringing justice to the death of martha -----(?),

i came away with the impression that his cousin skakel was railroaded.

in fact it struck me that the charge and trial o skakel was a particularly blatant unfair prosecution,

conducted years after the murder, involving missing evidence, unreliable snitches, and other marks of a prosecutorial set-up.

i also recall that kennedy was not at all complementary about one of skakel's defense attorney, claiming the attorney seemed more concerned with the publicity surrounding a notorious murder than in defending his client.

whether that was your pal or not i have no recollection.

at any rate, the guy is asking for a new trial, not for a pardon. i hope the judges grant him one.

i can't remember where i read robert kennedy, jr.'s account of his personal relation to his cousin, the kind of household the cousin was raised in (rich, dissolute), and skakal's legal problems,

it may have been in the atlantic some years ago, but it was compelling enough reading for me to recall some of the above details from memory (though how accurately i can't say).


That's my pal (none / 0) (#3)
by Jeralyn on Fri Apr 13, 2007 at 04:37:51 PM EST

and I can tell you Kennedy's statements about him are not true. He put everything he had and more into defending Skakel.


: I know, just bustin chops (none / 0) (#6)
by bx58 on Fri Apr 13, 2007 at 05:01:52 PM EST

It sounds preposterous and it shows the lengths people will go to nowadays to avoid any DNA linkage. Do you think he's guilty?

: mypalmickey (none / 0) (#11)
by TheJusticeClub on Sat Apr 21, 2007 at 03:33:18 AM EST

Thanks for taking care of the TalkLeft banning on my moniker and ip, Jeralyn.
If you will allow me, I strongly disagree with you. I, too, was in touch with Mickey before and during and after the trial of Michael Skakel; my personal assessment[knowing Mickey] is in complete agreement with Mr. Kennedy's assertions of Mickey Sherman.
This was/is an easy case. There was no reason whatsoever for Mickey to lose this case except that he was given into by the very elements that hung Michael Skakel as an innocent man: Mickey's allure with the media hype, his cringing at being massed out as a "schmuck" by the hysterical public and wanting to endear himself to the politico's of Dorthy Moxley and Nick Dunne.
These are the very elements of the Salem witch trials.
The idiotic politics in this case is frightening! The lead investigator, Frank Garr, would not approach his findings earlier because he did like someone who was responsible in the state and didn't trust him because he worked on the campaign of President John F. Kennedy in the 50's--if that's not unreasonable political bias, nothing is!
My source is Levitt's book: if anyone read this fatuous romance novel; a love story between two men: Garr and Levitt, it is clearly and proudly stated that Garr is a Rudy Gullianni man and will "do anything" to get him elected.
NO PHYSICAL EVIDENCE links Skakel to the murder of Martha Moxley. But doesn't the state have physical evidence of an asian--or american indian-- hair(per Dr. Henry Lee's testimony and joke with Mickey at the trial)--and wasn't an african american hair found at the scene within Martha Moxley's clothing or something to that effect and never tested?
If I understand correctly, the two men being investigated right now are of african american and asian/indian decent, are they not?
How could the State's attorney deny looking into this evidence connecting these men, and go forth with persecuting Skakel knowing this?
Mickey was too close with many if not all the players on the prosecution. He should have recused himslef as Skakel's attorney. If he had, an innocent man would not be behind prison walls, but raising his own son.
I know it deeply hurt(s) Mickey that I have my feelings and view point of the way he handled this precedent setting investigation, case and trial. He has told me that. At least Mickey knows exactly how I feel.
This case and trial was about more than Martha Moxley or Michael Skakel or Mickey Sherman for goodness sake . This case and trial was about children. I feel Mickey has not only failed Michael Skakel's son the privilege of being raised with his father, but all of our children have been failed everywhere in a very great sense when this trial was moved out of juvenile court to adult court. Just over a year ago, we stopped putting our children on death row after nearly 350+ years of killing them when we treated them like adults. When are we going to stop trying them as adults in this country.
I think 15 year old Michael Skakel is innocent. Nothing proves to me he murdered the 15 year old girl.

comment (none / 0) (#4)
by orionATL on Fri Apr 13, 2007 at 04:38:17 PM EST

in a tree on the opposite side of the house from the one where the girl was murdered at.

as i recall (see comment below).


good lord, jeralyn (none / 0) (#5)
by orionATL on Fri Apr 13, 2007 at 04:49:59 PM EST

i looked at some of the links you provided for "crimelynx" and skakel.

where do you find time to breath and sleep?

: they were at different times (none / 0) (#8)
by Jeralyn on Fri Apr 13, 2007 at 08:24:21 PM EST

I concentrated on Crimelynx from 1996 through 2003, when I changed TalkLeft into a blog. Actually, I sleep 7 hours a night -- but thanks for noticing the time that went into the links!

TL (none / 0) (#7)
by ding7777 on Fri Apr 13, 2007 at 07:56:46 PM EST

Did you email, inmyhumbleopinion?

: of course (none / 0) (#9)
by Jeralyn on Fri Apr 13, 2007 at 08:25:32 PM EST

She and I disagree about Skakel, but she knows the court proceedings in that case as well as anyone.
And yes, to answer someone above, I think he is innocent...that he did not kill Martha Moxley.

mr. skakel was convicted (none / 0) (#10)
by cpinva on Sat Apr 14, 2007 at 01:41:24 AM EST

not on the strength of the state's case against him, but because the victim was a sweet young girl, horribly murdered, and mr. skakel was/is a dissolute young man.

like scott peterson, someone had to pay. whether they were proved to be guilty or not was irrelevant. that they were both scumwads sealed their fates with their respective juries.

were either actually guilty of the crimes they were accused of committing? beats me. based on the evidence presented at trial, i'd have to say no. but then, look who was sitting on the juries.

Judge Sees No Reason For New Skakel Trial (none / 0) (#12)
by inmyhumbleopinion on Fri Oct 26, 2007 at 04:32:16 AM EST

Judge Sees No Reason For New Skakel Trial

By LYNNE TUOHY | Courant Staff Writer
October 26, 2007

A Superior Court judge has found it simply unbelievable that three African American teens were roaming the gated Greenwich community of Belle Haven, unnoticed by bands of other teens cavorting on Halloween eve, and that they likely bludgeoned to death 15-year-old Martha Moxley 32 years ago.
In his ruling Thursday at Superior Court in Stamford, Judge Edward R. Karazin Jr. rejected Kennedy cousin Michael Skakel's bid for a new trial, saying there was no truly new or credible evidence to upset a jury's verdict five years ago that Skakel killed her.

more...

Skakel Loses in Effort to Gain a New Trial

By ALISON LEIGH COWAN
Published: October 26, 2007

STAMFORD, Conn., Oct. 25 -- Michael C. Skakel, who was convicted five years ago of killing a neighbor, Martha Moxley, in 1975 when they were both teenagers in Greenwich, suffered a further setback on Thursday when a state judge denied his bid for a new trial.
The judge, Edward R. Karazin Jr. of Stamford Superior Court, concluded that newly discovered evidence suggesting an alternate theory of the homicide would not have produced a different outcome at trial.

Skakel bid for new trial is denied

By Zach Lowe
Staff Writer

Published October 25 2007, 11:09 AM EDT

STAMFORD -- A judge has denied Michael Skakel's bid for a new trial after an April hearing in which the Kennedy cousin's attorneys claimed two other men may have killed 15-year-old Martha Moxley in Greenwich in 1975.
Judge Edward Karazin Jr. dismissed the claim that enough credible evidence surfaced after Skakel's 2002 conviction to merit a new trial. The decision was released Thursday morning.
Skakel's attorneys had to prove the evidence was so hard to find that a capable attorney could not have discovered it before the first trial. A judge would then have to rule the new evidence likely would have produced a different verdict.
Karazin rejected Skakel's claims on both counts.