High court won't take case of Kennedy cousin Michael Skakel
By JESSICA GRESKO, Associated Press
Jan 7, 2019 9:12 AM CST
FILE - In this Feb. 24, 2016, file photo, Michael Skakel leaves the state Supreme Court after his hearing in Hartford, Conn. The Supreme Court is leaving in place a decision that vacated a murder conviction against Kennedy cousin Michael Skakel. The high court on Monday declined a request from the state...   (Associated Press)

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court announced Monday that it is leaving in place a decision that vacated a murder conviction against Kennedy cousin Michael Skakel.

Skakel was convicted in 2002 of the 1975 bludgeoning death of Martha Moxley, who lived across the street from the Skakel family in Greenwich, Connecticut, and whose body was found in her family's backyard. Both Skakel and Moxley were 15 at the time of her death.

The high court's refusal to hear the case means that a 2018 decision by Connecticut's highest court throwing out Skakel's conviction will stand. Connecticut's highest court based its decision on Skakel's attorney's failure to seek out an additional alibi witness.

Though it would be difficult, the state could retry Skakel, who is a nephew of Robert F. Kennedy's widow, Ethel Kennedy. The state has not said how it would proceed if the Supreme Court declined to intervene.

Skakel's case has spent nearly two decades winding its way through the court system after he was charged in 2000 with Moxley's killing. After a jury convicted Skakel, he argued that his lead trial lawyer did an inadequate job representing him, including by failing to contact an additional witness who could confirm his alibi for the time of the killing.

Skakel says he was watching an episode of the "Monty Python" television show at his cousin's house at the time Moxley was killed. Moxley was beaten with a golf club that belonged to Skakel's mother.

Prosecutors told the Supreme Court that if Skakel "had been provided the assistance of an attorney who undertook only half the efforts his defense team undertook in this case, he still would have been afforded far better representation than that provided for the typical criminal defendant."

Skakel served more than 11 years in prison before being freed on $1.2 million bail in 2013 when a judge overturned his conviction, citing errors by his lead trial lawyer Michael Sherman, who has defended his work.

But Connecticut's Supreme Court reinstated Skakel's conviction in December 2016, ruling 4-3 that Skakel was adequately represented. That decision didn't last.

The Connecticut Supreme Court justice who wrote the majority opinion, Peter Zarella, retired immediately after the decision's announcement, and Skakel asked that the decision be reconsidered. A new justice, Gregory D'Auria, sided with the three justices who had previously dissented and in May reversed the court's original decision. It is that ruling that the Supreme Court left in place, turning away the case without comment, its usual practice when it declines to hear a case.

D'Auria and his colleagues' ruling was based on Sherman's failure to seek out the additional witness who could confirm Skakel's alibi.