The Connecticut Supreme Court has finalized a ruling that reinstated the murder conviction of Kennedy cousin Michael Skakel.
The court on Monday released a final, edited version of a decision announced in December.
Skakel’s request for justices to reconsider that decision remains pending.
The decision said Skakel had adequate legal representation, blocking his attempt to get a new trial in the killing of a Martha Moxley in 1975.
A lower court overturned the 2002 conviction, citing mistakes made by Skakel’s trial lawyer.
Skakel had spent 11 years behind bars for the 1975 killing of Moxley. Both were 15 years old and neighbors in Belle Haven at the time of her death. But a judge in 2013 reversed his conviction, ruling that poor judgment, financial distractions and mistakes by Skakel’s defense lawyer, Michael Sherman, cost him a fair trial.
In December 2016. The state Supreme Court has ruled that Michael Skakel received a fair trial when he was convicted in 2002 of killing Martha Moxley.
While other legal matters are still pending, the ruling could send Skakel back to prison.
Heir to a coal and mining fortune, an relative of the country’s first political family, Skakel had been receiving high profile help to stay a free man. Robert Kennedy Jr., a cousin of Skakel and a law professor, published a book this year that laid out a legal case that Skakel was innocent of the crime. “Michael Skakel didn’t have anything to do with killing Martha Moxely,” Kennedy said following the publication of the book, “Framed.”
Much of the 2002 murder trial focused on what Skakel later told classmates at a private rehabilitation center/school in Maine about the killing, as well as his statements to an author writing about the night of the murder. The case has generated morbid fascination for decades.
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