Should a defendant who commits murder at age 15 be tried as an adult merely because it took police more than 24 years to catch him?

That's what happened to 43-year-old Michael Skakel, a member of the Kennedy clan who was convicted in 2002 of killing a pretty teenage neighbor in 1975 because she was showing more interest in his older brother.

In fact, Skakel escaped justice for so many years because police in Greenwich, Conn., believed Martha Moxley was murdered by his older brother, Thomas.

Skakel's lawyers will argue Friday in Connecticut's Supreme Court that he had a right to be judged as the deeply disturbed, alcoholic juvenile he admits he was when Martha was brutally beaten to death with a golf club on her family's estate.

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The issue is one of a half-dozen points Skakel's appeals lawyers are expected to argue Friday. Skakel is also seeking to have his June 7, 2002, murder conviction thrown out and hopes to win either his freedom or a new trial.

Skakel's chances of winning his freedom outright are virtually nil, but his lawyers raised some meaty legal issues in court papers filed in advance of Friday's proceedings. Among them, the defense complains that a prosecutor unfairly called Skakel a "killer" and "spoiled brat" during closing arguments.

Martha Moxley was brutally killed in 1975.

After the trial, jurors said prosecutor Jonathan Benedict's summations tied together many pieces that seemed disconnected during the state's case, in which 40 witnesses were called to the stand over four weeks.

In the appeal, however, Skakel's lawyers claim that the defendant, a nephew by marriage of the late Sen. Robert F. Kennedy, did not get a fair trial because of Benedict's high-tech closing argument. Using a projector, crime-scene photos and an author's tape-recorded interview with Skakel, Benedict countered an alibi Skakel offered through family members with a powerful multimedia argument.

The defense claims Benedict improperly combined audio of Skakel's voice with photos of a smiling Martha and crime-scene images showing her lying facedown under a pine tree. On the tape, Skakel talks about masturbating in a tree outside Martha' s home the night she was killed. He told police that he was at his cousin's house that night and went to bed when he got home.

"I woke up to Mrs. Moxley saying, 'Michael, have you seen Martha?'" Skakel told writer Richard Hoffman in 1997. "I'm like, 'What?' ... I was like, 'Oh my God, did they see me last night?'"

Benedict argued that Skakel was worried someone saw him at the crime scene. The defense contends Skakel was only concerned that someone saw him masturbating, and claims prosecutors intentionally misrepresented the audio evidence.

Prosecutor Susann Gill defended her colleague's closing argument.

"What the state argued is that the defendant created a tale of masturbating in a tree on the Moxley property, and told this tale to [four people] ... in order to provide an explanation should his semen ever be found on items connected to this crime," Gill wrote. "This argument simply asked the jury to draw a reasonable inference from the evidence."

Juvenile matter?

The state's Supreme Court will also review Skakel's claim that he never should have been tried as an adult, even though he was 41 when prosecutors finally obtained a warrant for his arrest in January 2000.

Under 1975 state law, 15-year-olds were prosecuted in juvenile court and could be incarcerated until they reached age 21, even for the crime of murder. In other words, if Skakel had confessed to the killing in 1975, he likely would have been treated as a juvenile and served no more than five years at a juvenile detention hall.

Noting that the state's juvenile justice system could not deal with a 41-year-old defendant, prosecutors in 2001 got the case transferred to adult court, where rules and sentencing guidelines for adults apply.

Prosecutor Jonathan Benedict

Skakel, who is serving a 20-year sentence, maintained his innocence and explained to the judge at his sentencing that he was a teenage alcoholic from a dysfunctional family. Those facts and the effect of the death of Skakel's mother from cancer at an early age were all factors a juvenile judge would have taken into consideration in 1975.

"It's true that I didn't have love. Love was not something in my family," Skakel said through his tears at his sentencing hearing. "There was a lot of hardship and enormous amount of pain."

In their response to the appeals brief, prosecutors noted that Martha Moxley likely felt a lot of pain when she was viciously attacked with a 6-iron linked to a set of golf clubs once used by Skakel's mother.

Martha was struck over the head eight or nine times, fracturing her skull. When the club head broke off, Martha's killer thrust the shattered steel shaft into her neck. Bloody handprints on Martha's exposed thighs suggested a sexual assault attempt.

As for whether a murder charge against Skakel would have been transferred to adult court even back in 1975, Gill noted in court papers that a juvenile judge could have legally concluded then that he represented a danger to society and could be incarcerated even after reaching the age of majority.

Statute of limitations

Most of the issues raised by Skakel in his appeal have to do with the way his trial and pre-trial proceedings were conducted, claims of prosecutorial misconduct and whether he should have been tried as a result.

One issue raised by Skakel, however, could have far-reaching legal implications.

After the U.S. Supreme Court struck down Georgia's capital punishment statute as "cruel and unusual," Connecticut, like many states, rewrote its laws. Consequently, a strict reading of Connecticut's murder statute in 1975 suggests that there was a five-year statute of limitations for murder convictions "not punishable by death."

Because he was 15 when Martha was murdered, Skakel could not be sentenced to death. That fact fueled an argument by Skakel's trial lawyer, Mickey Sherman, that prosecuting Skakel more than 19 years after the statute of limitations had expired was illegal.

The state Supreme Court took the unusual step of agreeing to hear that argument prior to the trial but then determined it was premature, and more properly a post-conviction issue.

When Skakel's appellate lawyers address the justices on Friday, they are expected to argue that a 1976 amendment by the Connecticut General Assembly doing away with time limits on murder prosecutions amounted to confirmation that such a time barrier existed in 1975.

"This matter should be dismissed with prejudice because of the expiration of the statute of limitations and the erroneous transfer of the case from juvenile court. Alternatively, this matter should be remanded with an order for a new trial," Skakel's lawyers wrote in their appeal brief.

Gill, the prosecutor handling the appeal for the state, responded in court papers that the legislature's 1976 amendment was a "clarification" of long-standing law and that Connecticut's evolving language in the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court's knockdown of death statutes in 1972 never created the loophole that the state believes Skakel is now trying to exploit.

The Connecticut justices almost never issue rulings from the bench and typically take several months to reduce opinions and orders in writing. Under 1975 law, Skakel could walk free in 2013 if his current appeals fail.