The Register Citizen (Torrington, CT)
Connecticut Supreme Court overturns Skakel verdict
The long and convoluted path of the state of Connecticut vs. Michael Skakel took another dramatic turn Friday, when the state’s highest court reversed its own decision and negated his murder conviction, allowing him to remain free.
Skakel was facing the possibility of immediately being sent back to prison. But a split decision by the Supreme Court ruled that Skakel did not receive a fair trial in the murder of Greenwich teenager Martha Moxley, and that an alibi witness should have been called during his trial.
The 4-3 ruling paved the way for a new trial for Skakel, but it is unclear whether that will occur. It has been nearly 45 years since the murder and even Moxley’s mother on Friday signaled that she might be done with the emotional turns of the never-ending case. It is possible that the saga of the Moxley murder, perhaps the most infamous crime in Greenwich history, is over — and that its final note will be one of uncertainty.
The court on Friday stated that “inadequate performance (by Skakel’s trial attorney) resulted in prejudice to the petitioner sufficient to undermine confidence in the outcome of his criminal trial.”
The justices decided that a failure by his lawyer Michael Sherman to locate and call an alibi witness, in particular, “constituted deficient performance.”
The witness, Dennis Ossorio, is said by Skakel’s defenders to have established convincing proof that he was miles from the scene of the crime at the time it was committed.
The court reversed itself from a previous decision in late 2016, when it determined that Skakel had received a fair trial. Justice Peter T. Zarella resigned shortly after writing that majority decision, and he was replaced by justice Gregory T. D’Auria who voted in the opposite direction.
The judges concluded that Skakel “is entitled to a new trial at which he will have the benefit of Ossorio’s alibi testimony.” It will be up to the Office of the State’s Attorney to decide whether to retry the 43-year-old case. Jonathan Benedict, the prosecutor in the original trial, retired almost 10 years ago.
A statement released by Mark Dupuis at the Division of Criminal Justice said, “We are reviewing the court’s opinions and have no comment at this time.”
Dorthy Moxley, mother of Martha Moxley, said Friday she was unsure at this point whether she would approve of a retrial.
“It’s a disappointment and a surprise. This is not the best day,” Moxley said.
She has contended with the high-profile legal drama associated with the murder of her 15-yearold daughter for more than four decades. She was a persistent spur in the side of investigators, prodding them to reopen the case in the 1990s after it had gone cold, and she was a constant and stoic presence at nearly every court proceeding during the many years following Skakel’s arrest.
Skakel could not be reached for comment after the court’s decision was announced.
His attorneys in a joint statement said the court did the right thing in overturning the conviction.
“Today’s ruling makes clear that Michael Skakel spent 11-and-a-half years unjustly imprisoned in violation of the Constitution. To be absolutely clear: Michael Skakel is innocent of this crime,” wrote the attorneys, Hubert Santos, Michael Fitzpatrick and Roman Martinez.
“As the Court has now definitively held, Michael Skakel’s conviction violated his Sixth Amendment constitutional right to counsel,” the attorneys wrote. “Mr. Skakel’s trial counsel failed to investigate the key alibi witness who later confirmed that he was far from the Moxley home at the time the murder took place. That failure prevented the jury from fairly considering all of the evidence in Mr. Skakel’s case.”
Skakel, a cousin to the Kennedy family, was arrested in 2000 for the the 1975 murder of Martha Moxley, a popular Greenwich High School sophomore and his neighbor in the wealthy waterfront enclave of Belle Haven. He was convicted in 2002, but that seeming endpoint only kicked off a series of complicated legal challenges that has kept the case alive ever since.
In 2013, following unsuccessful appeal attempts, a judge overturned the conviction, agreeing with Skakel’s assertion that he received poor representation during his murder trial. Skakel was released from prison after posting $1.2 million bond while awaiting a new trial.
But in 2016, the Supreme Court overturned that decision and reinstated the conviction. Skakel was allowed to remain free pending his appeal of that decision. He has been living in the Bedford area of northern Westchester County, N.Y.
The murder has been the subject of countless newspaper and magazine articles, novels, true crime books, a cable television movie, and most recently a book by Skakel’s cousin, Robert Kennedy Jr., who insisted Skakel was innocent and sought to point suspicion at several others who lived in or visited Belle Haven at the time.
Moxley was beaten with a golf club and stabbed with its broken shaft in her yard on the night before Halloween.
Skakel also was 15 at the time of the murder. During the quarter-century between the killing and his arrest, several others, including Michael’s older brother Tommy, were considered suspects.
The decision from the Supreme Court on Friday made specific reference to Ossorio, who in a 2013 court proceeding said he was with Skakel and others watching “Monty Python’s Flying Circus” at the backcountry Greenwich home of his cousin, Georgeann Skakel Dowdle, at the time of the murder. Ossorio, now 77, lives in Rye Brook, N.Y. Sherman professed ignorance of Ossorio at the time of the murder trial in 2002.