A lawyer for Kennedy cousin Michael Skakel told a panel of judges that his client's 20-year to life prison sentence for killing his teen neighbor in 1975 was excessive.
Skakel was convicted in 2002 of beating Martha Moxley, 15, to death with a golf club in wealthy Greenwich.
"I didn't commit this crime," Skakel told the judges Tuesday. "Give me a polygraph, I've passed three tests."
Skakel's lawyer told a three-judge panel on Tuesday that Skakel was 15 at the time and would have been tried in juvenile court where the maximum sentence would have been four years.
"People looked at Michael Skakel they looked at him as having committed a murder at that age, when according to the jury, he committed the murder as a child," said Hubert Santos, Skakel's attorney.
Prosecutors said the sentence was appropriate and pointed out he could have been tried in adult court in 1975.
"Look at all the years he was running around while we were such a mess trying to find out what happened. Why should he get out now?," said the victim's mother, Dorthy Moxley.
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"I've said it before. I pray for Mrs. Moxley everyday, every single day. And I actually pray for her daughter everyday. Please let the truth come out," Skakel said.
The judges did not immediately rule.
