(Court
TV) —
Michael Skakel's lawyers have filed their latest brief in support of a bid
to overturn the Kennedy cousin's 2002 murder conviction for the 1975 death
of 15-year-old Martha Moxley.
Skakel's appeal attorneys Hope Seeley and
Hubert Santos urged the Connecticut Supreme Court to throw out the murder
conviction on the grounds of prosecutorial misconduct and an expired statute
of limitations, which they say should have prevented Skakel's prosecution
more than 20 years after the crime occurred.
Skakel, a nephew of the late
Robert F. Kennedy, is now serving a prison sentence of 20 years to life for
brutally beating his young neighbor to death with a golf club outside her
affluent Greenwich, Conn., home when he was 15 years old.
His attorneys
raised the issue of the expired statute of limitations when he first went to
trial, claiming that Connecticut's then-evolving statute of limitations for
murder set a five-year limit on prosecutions in 1976.
Prosecutors
argued that the state didn't recognize a statute of limitations for
prosecuting murders. The issue was put off as a post-conviction
matter.
"The state's flawed analysis should be rejected in its
entirety," Skakel's lawyers wrote. "Statutes cannot be rewritten in the
guise of 'interpretation' as the state wishes to do here."
Skakel's
defense also restated its claim that prosecutors "exceeded the bounds of
fair advocacy" during closing arguments.
Among other things, Skakel
complains that Prosecutor Jonathan Benedict improperly combined audio of
Skakel's voice, photos of a smiling Martha, and crime scene images showing
her lying face down under a tree on her family's Belle Haven
estate.
The defense claims the montage effected an unfounded argument
that Skakel masturbated on the victim's body.
Skakel also claims that
Benedict improperly called him a "killer" and a "spoiled brat," and accused
his family of a cover-up during his closing arguments.
His defense
continues to maintain that the case should not have been transferred from
Juvenile Court to Superior Court on the grounds that the lower court did not
properly investigate the matter.
"If the Juvenile Court had known that
the defendant had grown up in a dysfunctional family with an abusive,
alcoholic father ... that the defendant suffered from a severe learning
disability and alcoholism himself, that he lived a productive life helping
others ... the court would have been in a better position to designate the
defendant under the supervision of the juvenile system," his attorneys
wrote.
But prosecutors have called the transfer "the only reasonable
route," noting that Skakel was 40 at the time of his arrest.
The court
will hear oral arguments before making a ruling. A date has yet to be
set.
Court TV wire services contributed to this story.
Full
coverage of Michael Skakel case
