HARTFORD, Conn. (AP) — Kennedy cousin Michael Skakel’s conviction for a 1975 murder was the result of a myriad of poor decisions by his trial lawyer, who failed to tell jurors that his brother might have committed the killing, Skakel’s appellate attorney told the Connecticut Supreme Court on Wednesday. 
 
 Outside the courtroom, Skakel’s cousin Robert F. Kennedy Jr. repeated previous statements he has made about evidence showing two other men killed teenager Martha Moxley, who was bludgeoned to death with a golf club in the wealthy Greenwich neighborhood where she and the Skakel family lived at the time. 
 
 Prosecutors went before the state’s highest court Wednesday to argue that Skakel’s 2002 murder conviction should be reinstated. 
 
 Skakel, 55, a nephew of Robert F. Kennedy’s widow, Ethel, had been sentenced to 20 years to life in prison. But a judge in 2013 ordered a new trial after finding that defense attorney Michael Sherman failed to adequately represent his client. 
 
 Skakel, now free on $1.2 million bail, sat next to Kennedy Jr. in the gallery of the courtroom during the arguments. Skakel declined to comment. 
 
 It’s not clear when the court will issue its decision. 
 
 Prosecutor Susann Gill told the justices that Sherman, who has defended his work, did a competent job investigating and trying the case, and that Skakel’s appellate lawyers have not met the high burden under case law to prove ineffective counsel. She also stood by the state’s position that there was “substantial” evidence that Michael Skakel killed Martha Moxley. 
 
 Gill noted that Sherman put together a defense team that included other lawyers and several investigators. 
 
 “This was far from a slipshod defense,” Gill said. “This was a well-planned … well-thought-out defense. Mr. Sherman pulled in a lot of resources and presented a coherent defense.” 
 
 “DID NOT GET A FAIR SHAKE” 
 
 Hubert Santos, Skakel’s appellate lawyer, said Sherman made numerous poor decisions, including not focusing on Skakel’s older brother, Thomas Skakel, as a possible suspect. 
 
 “This defendant did not get a fair shake,” Santos told the court. “The weight of the evidence is that Tommy Skakel killed Martha Moxley.” 
 
 Santos also said Michael Skakel had an alibi on the night of the killing at 10 p.m., the time that he said evidence shows Moxley was killed. He cited testimony that Michael Skakel and some relatives left the neighborhood at about 9:30 p.m. to go to his cousin’s house 20 minutes away to watch a Monty Python movie. 
 
 Santos accused prosecutors of moving the time of the killing to an undetermined time between 9:30 p.m. on Oct. 30, 1975, and 5:30 a.m. the next day, in response to Skakel’s alibi. Prosecutors deny that. 
 
 LACK OF EVIDENCE 
 
 Santos also said there was no forensic or physical evidence linking Michael Skakel to the killing. 
 
 Thomas Skakel’s attorney has previously said that his client had nothing to do with the slaying. 
 
 Thomas Skakel was an early suspect in the case, because he was the last person seen with Moxley. Santos said Thomas Skakel admitted to investigators hired by his father that he had a sexual encounter with Moxley in which he unbuttoned her jeans and pulled them down between 9:30 and 9:55 p.m. on the night of the killing. Moxley was found dead the next day with her pants pulled down. 
 
 “I WANT HIM BACK IN JAIL” 
 
 But prosecutors have said that highlighting Thomas Skakel’s relationship with Moxley actually would have bolstered their argument that Michael Skakel killed her in a jealous rage. 
 
 Michael Skakel, who like Moxley was 15 years old at the time of the killing, had admitted to two women that he was aware his brother had sexual contact with Moxley the night of the murder and told one woman that is what triggered it, prosecutors wrote in court documents. But prosecutors say the trial defense rightly decided not to focus on Thomas Skakel because there wasn’t sufficient evidence. 
 
 After the hearing, Moxley’s mother, Dorthy Moxley, 83, said the appeal process has been frustrating. 
 
 “I’ll just be glad when it’s over,” she said. “I want him back in jail.” 
 
 Copyright 2016 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. ||||| HARTFORD — Prosecutors asked the state Supreme Court on Wednesday to send Michael Skakel back to prison, saying the judge who reversed his murder conviction in 2013 was wrong when he concluded that poor judgment and other errors by Skakel's original lawyer cost him a fair trial. 
 
 Skakel is accused of beating his teenage Greenwich neighbor, Martha Moxley, to death with a golf club in 1975, when both were 15 years old. A jury returned a surprise guilty verdict in 2002 and he was sentenced to 20 years to life in prison. 
 
 It was the third time the Supreme Court has heard argument — Skakel lost the first two times — on a case that has been the subject of 40 years of continual investigation and litigation. Skakel became a tabloid staple because of his connection to the Kennedy family and the glimpse his trial provided at life among the well-to-do in a gated Greenwich community. He is a nephew of Ethel Skakel Kennedy, widow of Sen. Robert F. Kennedy. 
 
 Dorothy Moxley, Martha's mother, attended the arguments and again faced a phalanx of television cameras as she walked into the court lobby, after more than an hour of often arcane legal argument, this time about whether Skakel was wrongly convicted of clubbing her daughter to death because his first lawyer bungled the defense. 
 
 "I'm sure Michael is the young man who swung the golf club." Moxley said, from within a crush of cameras. "There is absolutely no doubt in my mind about that. If you sat at the trial like I did and listened to all the testimonies … Michael got a fair trial. 
 
 Michael Skakel Rick Hartford Prosecutors wants Michael Skakel to return to prison because they say the judge who reversed his murder conviction in 2013 did so after concluding erroneously that mistakes by Skakel's original lawyer cost him a fair trial. Prosecutors wants Michael Skakel to return to prison because they say the judge who reversed his murder conviction in 2013 did so after concluding erroneously that mistakes by Skakel's original lawyer cost him a fair trial. (Rick Hartford) (Rick Hartford) 
 
 "I'm pleased that today is over and I look forward to going home and resting." 
 
 Moxley is smaller and more frail than when she faced the horde of reporters in Stamford when Skakel was convicted and sentenced. Skakel, also present at the Supreme Court Wednesday, appeared remarkably unchanged after more than a decade in prison. 
 
 Before the hearing, Skakel chatted with cousin Robert Kennedy Jr., who is writing a book about the case. Afterward, they escaped the crowd of reporters by ducking through a side door. 
 
 Three years ago, Skakel's new lawyer, Hubert Santos, convinced Superior Court Judge Thomas Bishop that Skakel probably would have been acquitted at the trial in 2002 but for numerous oversights, missed opportunities and tactical errors by original trial lawyer Michael Sherman. 
 
 Bishop found that Sherman "was in a myriad of ways ineffective." He wrote that "the defense of a serious felony prosecution requires attention to detail, an energetic investigation and a coherent plan of defense capably executed. Trial counsel's failures in each of these areas of representation were significant and, ultimately, fatal to a constitutionally adequate defense." 
 
 Prosecutors appealed and in recent months the parties presented the high court with hundreds of pages of arguments dissecting Sherman's motives, preparation and trial decisions. 
 
 Prosecutors assert that Bishop misapplied the law as it pertains to defining an effective legal defense, a Constitutional guarantee. In a defense of Sherman's trial strategy — including his choice of some witnesses and his efforts to locate others — the prosecutors accuse Bishop of impermissible second-guessing. 
 
 Assistant State's Attorney Susan Gill told the justices Wednesday that Skakel's new defense team may disagree with some of Sherman's tactical trial decisions, but that doesn't make Sherman wrong. 
 
 Much of her argument focused on criticism that Sherman failed to present Skakel's brother Thomas to the trial jury as a credible suspect and Sherman's failure to locate an independent witness who, years later, would corroborate Skakel's alibi — that he was watching television with siblings and cousins at the time of the murder. 
 
 Gill said Sherman made a reasonable tactical decision to present jurors with only one alternate suspect, the Skakel family tutor. She said Sherman was unaware of the existence of the alibi witness. 
 
 Sherman won repeated pretrial victories and worked diligently on the defense, hiring three associate lawyers and investigators from across the country, Gill said. 
 
 "This was far from a slipshod defense," Gill said. "This was a well-thought-out, well-planned defense." 
 
 Justice Richard N. Palmer was the court's most pointed questioner, interrupting Gill repeatedly and at times sounding skeptical of Sherman's defense. 
 
 "Would you agree you are talking about quantity, not quality of the work?" Palmer asked at one point. 
 
 Santos hammered Sherman, as he did during a long hearing four years ago that resulted in Bishop's ruling. He said Sherman's failure to tell the jury that the police considered Thomas Skakel a suspect was an inexplicable lapse. He said when Skakel pleaded with Sherman to find the alibi witness, Sherman "didn't give him the time of day." 
 
 He said Sherman was paid about $450,000 — in addition to a $1.2 million fee — to cover expenses, but used the $450,000 to buy frivolous personal items, such as a motorcycle. 
 
 Santos complained that Sherman became so consumed with the celebrity associated with the case that he neglected the defense. Sherman was recorded telling a meeting of defense lawyers, "When I get a case like this one, my objective is to have fun," Santos said. 
 
 "When you cut through all that happened here — and there are a lot of specifics — this defendant did not get a fair shake," Santos told the justices. 
 
 Should the court rule for Skakel, the prosecution will have to decide whether to retry him. If the ruling goes against Skakel, he will likely return to prison. 
 
 He was imprisoned from his conviction in 2002 until Bishop's ruling in 2013. ||||| Photo 
 
 HARTFORD — More than 40 years after 15-year-old Martha Moxley was found beaten to death near her home in Greenwich, Conn., a lawyer for the man convicted in the killing laid out a litany of reasons that his client, Michael C. Skakel, “did not get a fair shake” during his 2002 trial. 
 
 Mr. Skakel, a relative of the Kennedy family, was convicted of the murder and sentenced to 20 years to life. But he was released from prison after 11 years in 2013, when a judge ruled that his lawyer at the time, Mickey Sherman, had not provided an adequate defense and that Mr. Skakel should be retried. 
 
 On Wednesday, state prosecutors said that Mr. Skakel, 55, did not deserve a new trial and that his conviction should be reinstated. Defense lawyers argued that the 2013 decision should stand. 
 
 Hubert Santos, a lawyer for Mr. Skakel, told a panel of six Connecticut Supreme Court justices that Mr. Skakel’s older brother, Thomas Skakel, was the most likely perpetrator of one of the state’s most notorious crimes. “The weight of the evidence is that Tommy Skakel killed Martha Moxley,” Mr. Santos said. “That’s what Greenwich police believed for 10 years.” 
 
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 But the police did not have enough evidence to charge Thomas Skakel with the crime, Mr. Santos said. 
 
 On Wednesday, a now-familiar cast of characters surrounding the case convened in a courtroom to rehash arguments about the believability of witnesses, timelines, alibis and a lack of physical evidence linking Michael Skakel to the murder.
– More than 40 years ago, 15-year-old Martha Moxley was found beaten to death near her home in the exclusive community of Belle Haven in Greenwich, Conn. On Wednesday, the lawyer for Kennedy cousin Michael Skakel, who was convicted in 2002 of murdering her, told a panel of six Connecticut Supreme Court justices that his client "did not get a fair shake," the New York Times reports. The justices must decide whether Skakel, 55, a nephew of Ethel Kennedy, was denied his right to a fair trial. "The weight of the evidence is that Tommy Skakel killed Martha Moxley," attorney Hubert Santos told the court, referring to Michael Skakel's older brother, who had been a prime suspect in the 1975 murder. It's the third time the Supreme Court has heard arguments in the case, the Hartford Courant reports. Santos contends that Skakel's previous lawyer failed to provide an adequate defense. In 2013, he convinced a lower court justice that Skakel likely would have been acquitted if not for tactical errors by Michael Sherman (who was later sent to prison for dodging federal taxes). Since then, Skakel has been free on $1.2 million bail, per the AP. On Wednesday, prosecutor Susann Gill argued that Skakel had received a "well-planned, well-thought-out defense," which included four lawyers and several investigators. “This was far from a slipshod defense,” she said. Moxley's mother, Dorthy, who was in court, says she is convinced Michael Skakel killed her daughter. "I'm sure Michael is the young man who swung the golf club," she told reporters. "There is absolutely no doubt in my mind about that," adding, "Michael got a fair trial." If the justices agree with Santos, prosecutors must decide whether to retry Skakel, per the Courant. If they rule for the prosecution, he will likely go back to prison.