State Supreme Court denies Skakel new trial in Moxley murderhttp://http://www.ctpost.com/default/article/State-Supreme-Court-denies-Skakel-new-trial-in-445274.php#page-1The state's highest court denied Kennedy cousin Michael Skakel a new trial Monday for the 1975 slaying of his Greenwich neighbor, Martha Moxley, discrediting evidence that linked two other men to the crime.
In the 4-1 ruling released Monday morning, the state Supreme Court sided with a lower court's 2007 decision to uphold Skakel's conviction, finding that the evidence implicating others in Moxley's death was not strong enough to warrant a new trial.
The court's decision has been pending for more than a year after lawyers for Skakel argued that evidence, including videotaped testimony, pointed to two other men as Moxley's killers.
The videotape involves Gitano "Tony" Bryant, cousin of NBA star Kobe Bryant, who told private investigators hired by Skakel's family that two of his friends bragged about getting Moxley "caveman style" after the murder occurred.
But the high court found no credibility in Bryant's account, according to the ruling.
"There is no evidence, independent of Bryant, to corroborate any significant aspect of his account of the events of the night of Oct. 30, 1975, whereas there is a plethora of evidence to contradict his account," Justice Joette Katz wrote for the majority.
In their ruling, the court agreed with prosecutors that it was hard to believe no one would have noticed the three Bronx, N.Y., teenagers in the largely white, private community the night of the murder.
"These three young men did not look like the average 14- or 15-year-olds who would have blended into the crowd," wrote Katz. "Particularly not in an area that was described by one witness as `a fairly lily-white community.' "
Bryant and one of the teens he implicated are black. The other teen implicated has been described as mixed race with Asian ancestry. All three have all asserted their Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination since Bryant gave the videotaped statement.
Senior Assistant State's Attorney Susan Gill, who argued against the granting of a new trial, said she hoped the ruling would spare "the Moxley family from any further ordeal," in a statement released Monday. "Despite numerous claims of newly discovered evidence, the majority of the court has found nothing that undermines its confidence in the guilty verdict rendered by the jury in 2002," Gill said.
However, Skakel's Hartford-based attorneys, Hubert Santos and Hope Seeley, criticized the ruling and vowed to continue fighting for Skakel's freedom.
"We are disappointed that the Connecticut Supreme Court refused to grant a new trial to an innocent man," wrote Skakel's attorneys in a statement. "The jury that convicted Michael Skakel in 2002 simply did not have all the evidence. It is a travesty that the Connecticut courts continue to deny Mr. Skakel's request that the new information be examined and considered by a jury."
"Mr. Skakel's appeals are not over, and we will continue to vigorously pursue both his state and federal habeas corpus actions," the attorneys said.
In a concurring opinion released Monday, two justices wrote that Bryant's statements were "inadmissible hearsay" that would not change Skakel's fate in court.
"None of Bryant's statements that exculpate the petitioner would be admissible, and, therefore, the Bryant evidence could not produce a different result at a new trial," Justice Peter Zarella wrote.
Skakel, a nephew of Ethel Skakel Kennedy, was sentenced to 20 years to life in prison in June 2002 for beating Moxley to death with a golf club on Oct. 30, 1975, when they were 15. Skakel has maintained his innocence.
State Superior Court Judge Edward Karazin denied Skakel's bid for a new trial in 2007 based on the Bryant evidence, ruling it was not credible, sending the case to the state's high court.
Justice Richard Palmer was the sole judge to rule in favor of Skakel on Monday, saying he believed the evidence might have swayed a jury against convicting Skakel. At the March 2009 oral arguments in Hartford, Palmer called the videotape "pretty compelling."
"I reach this conclusion because the evidence that Bryant provided during the course of his lengthy and detailed video-recorded interview satisfies all of the requirements necessary for a new trial," Palmer wrote. "Finally, at the very least, it is likely that this new evidence, when considered in light of the state's thin case against the petitioner, would give rise to a reasonable doubt about whether the petitioner was involved in the victim's murder."
John Moxley, brother of Martha Moxley, said Monday he was "flabbergasted" Palmer sided with Skakel.
Moxley said he was pleased the majority of the court denied the motion for a new trial. "There was no credibility (to Bryant's story), and so I would have been very surprised had they granted the motion," Moxley said.
The justices also said there wasn't enough evidence to support a claim that a book deal affected the outcome. The defense said that the lead investigator in the Moxley case, Frank Garr, and journalist Leonard Levitt entered a book deal during the trial, and that tainted the verdict.
Since his conviction, Skakel has lost numerous bids seeking to overturn his conviction.
In March 2006, Skakel lost an appeal before the state Supreme Court after his lawyers claimed, among other things, that the statute of limitations had expired when he was charged in 2000. That same year, Skakel's lawyer filed a petition with the U.S. Supreme Court asserting that Skakel's due process rights were violated by the state Supreme Court decision. The U.S. Supreme Court denied Skakel's request to review his case in November 2006.
Skakel still has an appeal pending in federal court. He is incarcerated at the MacDougall-Walker Correctional Institution in Suffield.
