Lawyers for Kennedy cousin Michael Skakel will appear in a Connecticut courtroom Friday to argue that they should be allowed to present evidence that a longtime suspect with a history of psychiatric problems actually killed Martha Moxley in 1975.

Kenneth Littleton, a former live-in tutor for the Skakel family who has immunity from prosecution, failed three polygraph examinations in 1992 and allegedly told his ex-wife in 1991 that he could have blacked out and killed the Skakels' 15-year-old neighbor, a new defense motion claims.

The 18-page motion was filed in Norwalk Superior Court on Wednesday after the final juror was selected for Michael Skakel's upcoming murder trial. A jury of 12 and four alternates will hear evidence starting May 7 from prosecution witnesses who claim that Skakel, 41, admitted to reform school classmates in the late 1970s that he killed Martha with a golf club during a night of excessive alcohol consumption.

Martha Moxley and friends.

Martha, who was friendly with both Michael Skakel and his older brother, Thomas, was beaten so hard over the head that the golf club — a six-iron from a set belonging to the Skakel brother's mother — broke into three pieces. A broken piece of the club's shaft was plunged into Martha's neck as she lay dying on the lawn of her parent's three-acre estate.

Lawyers for Skakel, who denies killing Martha or telling anyone that he did, said that the filing of the motion was timed for after the selection of the entire jury and the administration of their oath not to follow the case in the media. The case has received widespread attention because the victim lived in a wealthy community in Greenwich, Conn., that had previously been immune to serious crimes, and because Skakel is the nephew of Ethel Kennedy and the late U.S. Sen. Robert F. Kennedy.

Skakel's lead attorney, Mickey Sherman of Stamford, said Thursday that all of the direct and circumstantial evidence pointing to Littleton as Martha's killer in the motion comes from the prosecution's 26-year investigation of the brutal murder in the exclusive Greenwich enclave of Belle Haven.

"This is not an investigative process we initiated or had any part in," Sherman told Courttv.com. "All we did is show the judge what the state has already produced for us."

Prosecutors did not return calls Thursday. Littleton's lawyer, Eugene Riccio of Bridgeport, said that his client never confessed to anyone as far as he knew. "Mr. Littleton has maintained his innocence over the years and continues to do so," Riccio said. "I recognize the defense has a legitimate right to do what they are doing, but from our standpoint the evidence you are talking about here is hardly sufficient to establish that Ken Littleton is responsible for this homicide."

Littleton is expected to testify for the prosecution that Michael Skakel, then 15, was underage but nonetheless was drinking heavily during a family dinner at the Belle Haven Club on Oct. 30, 1975. Littleton, according to the defense motion, changed his story four or five times over the years about his own movements after arriving back at the Skakel home from the party.

During one of many interviews with police, Littleton placed himself on the Skakel grounds about the time Martha was known to be there visiting the boys, the defense motion alleged. The motion also claims that Littleton told police during a videotaped interview in the early 1990s that he "could have done it."

If ruled admissible by Judge John Kavanewsky Jr. following Friday's hearing, the defense would point to the evidence as reasonable doubt as to who killed Martha Moxley. Sherman put the prosecution on notice Wednesday that he may call Littleton's ex-wife, Mary Baker, as a defense witness.

According to the defense motion, Littleton told Baker in a taped phone call in 1992 that if he had previously told her things that sounded like he could have killed Martha, that was because people sometimes confess to things they did not do if subjected to "intense psychological pressure" over a period of time.

"... Was I saying similar stuff?" Littleton asked, according to a transcript included in the motion.

"[Something] like uh, 'Oh God, she wouldn't die. I had to stab her through the neck.' Stuff that made no sense to me," Baker said.

She added at one point, "I mean, you convinced me that you did it."

"You think I did it?" Littleton responded.

In another conservation, Littleton is heard telling his ex-wife on the tape that he wanted "to [expletive] screw the Skakels" — a statement that the defense claims shows his motive for testifying against Michael Skakel.

Dispute over transcript

In a separate 26-page motion filed Wednesday, the defense also seeks to bar the prosecution from entering into evidence the transcript of witness Gregory Coleman. Before he died last year of a heroin overdose, the Rochester, N.Y., man admitted under oath that he was high when he testified before a grand jury that Skakel confessed to killing Martha while both were students at Maine's Elan School in the late 1970s.

Noting that Coleman's death makes him unavailable for cross-examination, the defense claims that Skakel's right to confront his accuser would be violated if the jury is allowed to hear his testimony through a transcript. Although Sherman questioned Coleman at length on two occasions under oath, the proceeding was limited to establish probable cause, the defense argues.

Coleman's most-recent testimony — which the defense characterized as a "work in progress" in its motion to bar the transcript — contradicted earlier testimony in several respects. Among other things, Coleman claimed that Skakel told him he killed Martha with "a driver," or one-wood, as opposed to the six-iron actually used.

The motion seeking to bar the Coleman transcript was expected but the amount of detail contained in the documents pointing a finger at Littleton as Martha's killer was not.

Sherman said that once the jury was empanelled, it was appropriate to file the motion.

"A lawyer is an officer of the court and could and should be sanctioned for making a motion of this nature frivolously or without foundation," Sherman said. "It's not a red herring. How do you ignore it when [the police] say he made statements like that?"