Kennedy cousin Michael Skakel will try yet again Thursday to convince a judge that he should get another trial for the murder of Martha Moxley, 15, who was killed in their posh Greenwich neighborhood in 1975.
Skakel was convicted in 2002 and sentenced to 20 years to life in prison. Thursday, the man who is arguably Connecticut’s best-known inmate, heads to Connecticut Supreme Court to make his case.
The appeal will focus on a decision a state judge in Stamford made in 2007 when Skakel's bid for a new trial was denied based on a claim that two other men killed Moxley. The judge decided the claim was not credible.
Skakel also challenges the credibility of a star witness for the state who testified that Skakel confessed to him when they attended a private boarding school.
Moxley was bludgeoned to death with a golf club in front of her Belle Haven home the night before Halloween 1975.
For years, suspects were investigated but no arrests were made and the case received national attention.
Mark Fuhrman, of O.J. Simpson trial fame, wrote the book “Murder in Greenwich” in 1998. In it, he wrote that he believed Skakel killed Moxley, the Associated Press reported at the time. The book later became a movie by the same name.
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In 1993, celebrity writer Dominick Dunne wrote “A Season in Purgatory,” a fictionalized account of the murder.
Skakel was arrested in January 2000.
Skakel’s appeal alleges his lawyers never received given two crucial pieces of evidence: a report Greenwich police received that implicates another suspect and statements by a lawyer who said that a key witness for the state had a history of lying.
NBC Connecticut legal analyst Jim Bergenn said he believes Skakel has a good legal argument.
“I think, if I were talking to a jury about these facts, I think they'd be very troubled that somebody else is going to be convicted beyond a reasonable doubt with somebody else who was there at the time and said my friends did it. That to me is pretty persuasive,” he said.
