Three years to the day after a judge sentenced Michael Skakel to 20 years to life for killing a teenage neighbor in 1975, lawyers for the Kennedy cousin filed a motion Monday for a new trial based on information the defense obtained after Skakel's sensational month-long trial.

Connecticut's Supreme Court has yet to rule on numerous issues raised by Skakel at an appellate hearing in January, but under state law, the defense had a three-year window after the conviction in which to seek a new trial based on newly discovered evidence, defense attorney Hope Seeley said.

Martha Moxley

The new petition focuses mostly on statements by Gitano "Tony" Bryant, a private-school classmate of Skakel's in Greenwich, Conn., about two of Bryant's friends in 1975. According to Bryant, a cousin of NBA star Kobe Bryant, his friends were walking around Greenwich's exclusive Belle Haven neighborhood with golf clubs on Oct. 30, 1975, the night 15-year-old Martha Moxley was savagely beaten to death with a golf club.

Characterizing Tony Bryant as a "reluctant witness," the defense motion goes on to quote him as saying that one of his friends was "obsessed" with the popular blond girl with a pretty smile and stated that he "wanted to go caveman on her."

Story continues

advertisement

After Martha's partially clad body was discovered under a low-hanging tree branch on her parent's property, police traced the broken golf club found at the crime scene to a set of clubs once owned by Skakel's mother. By his own admission, Michael Skakel was devastated by his mother's 1972 death from cancer and the dysfunctional family life that led him to begin abusing alcohol at a young age.

The defense has long maintained that the Skakel boys often left golf clubs lying around Rushton Skakel's estate, and the new motion quotes Bryant as saying that his friends, who have not been publicly identified, grabbed clubs off the lawn and were using them as walking sticks. One said, "I got my caveman club."

Bryant said he left Belle Haven by train and did not witness the attack on Martha, according to the new defense filing. It was unclear from the petition how the defense learned about Bryant's claims.

During the trial, defense attorney Mickey Sherman tried to convince jurors that Skakel was across town at his cousin's house when Martha was killed and that the Skakel's new live-in tutor, Kenneth Littleton, was deeply troubled and had made incriminating statements to his wife over the years that followed the killing.

Prosecutors argued successfully at the trial that Skakel may have killed Martha because she either rejected his advances or because he was jealous that she preferred his older brother, Thomas Skakel. For years, police tried to build a case against Thomas Skakel, and one investigator even drafted an arrest warrant application.

Michael Skakel, now 45, was charged with murder in January 2000 based largely on statements from former students of a Maine school for troubled teenagers that Skakel admitted his involvement in the killing. Since going to prison in 2002, Skakel has been trying to get his conviction overturned on the grounds that Connecticut law in 1975 set a five-year statute of limitations for prosecuting non-capital murder cases.

Prosecutors contend that legislators never intended to limit the time in which someone could be charged with murder.

The new petition also repeats a complaint by Skakel's defense team that prosecutors withheld a composite sketch of a young man seen walking around Belle Haven the night of the killing. Prosecutors maintain that the sketch resembles a neighborhood youth whose whereabouts were confirmed. The defense believes the sketch resembled Littleton and was therefore exculpatory evidence that should have been turned over by the prosecution during the discovery process.

Stamford Superior Court Judge John Kavanewsky will consider the motion for the new trial while Skakel awaits word from the state Supreme Court. When he sentenced Skakel to 20 years to life in prison for a particularly "vicious" murder, Kavanewsky said jurors got it right.

"The defendant has been living a lie about his guilt. Most importantly, this defendant accepts no responsibility and expresses no remorse to the present day," Kavanewsky said at the time.

Prosecutors did not return calls for comment.