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Rich Defendant Convicted of Murder Claims Incompetent
Counsel – Let Him Out
[Update: Mr. Skakel has been released on bond. Can't have the rich and privileged in jail with the common criminals, can we?]
One of the truly
awful legacies of conservative justices on the Supreme Court is the failure
of convicted felons facing the death penalty to get new trials because they had
incompetent lawyers defending them. Yes,
those accused of capital crimes are entitled to representation, but all too
often that representation is inadequate, inexperienced and in some cases just
plain incompetent. Yet the claim for
relief is usually turned down by the courts and more often than not the
convicted is executed or forced to serve a long jail sentence.
Of course these rules
do not apply if one is rich, despite the fact that being rich means being
able to hire the best attorneys available and so that defense should almost
never be allowed on an appeal. But this
is not reality, as the case of Michael Skakel illustrates.
Mr. Skakel is in the news for two reasons. The first is that he is, erroneously, linked
to the Kennedy family. Mr. Skakel is
related to the woman who married Robert Kennedy, and thus the lazy press
constantly refers to him as a Kennedy or Kennedy relative when he is not. But it makes a good story and sells
newspapers so the error persists.
The second reason why Mr. Skakel is in the news is
that despite having the money to hire the best attorney for his defense in
being accused of murder, he is now successfully appealing
that conviction on the basis of inadequate counsel.
The
family’s perseverance and deep pockets — Mr. Skakel’s grandfather was an
industrial magnate — have brought Mr. Skakel to a pivotal moment: Last month, a
judge in Superior Court in Rockville ,
Conn. Stamford
How did he do this?
Money of course, lots of money.
STAMFORD, Conn. — Since Michael C. Skakel’s conviction in
2002 in the 1975 murder of his Greenwich neighbor Martha Moxley when they were both 15, Mr. Skakel and his family have spared no expense
in their efforts to clear his name.
They hired expensive lawyers, private investigators and expert
witnesses, one at $250 an hour. They fired Mickey Sherman, the defense lawyer
who failed to win his case in 2002, and hired Hubert J. Santos, a prominent Hartford United States Tampa , Fla. ,
and Spain
Now while we are personally disposed towards
believing Mr. Skakel guilty of murder, because in his original trial he had a
more than adequate defense counsel,
Mr. Skakel and his supporters spent more than $2 million on his defense
in the first trial, according to court records.
we really don’t know or care if he is able to buy his way to
a new trial and possible acquittal. If there really is not enough evidence to convict him, he is entitled to be set free. What
is important here is the distinction between money and poverty, between being
successful at claiming inadequate counsel, despite spending millions on his defense, for a rich person who gets a new
trial and being unsuccessful at claiming inadequate counsel for a poor person
who gets executed.
But it may be that if Mr. Skakel is acquitted he will
spend the rest of his life trying to right the wrongs of the not so wealthy who
cannot afford adequate counsel. Maybe he
will devote his wealth to providing indigent defendants facing the death
penalty with the same quality of defense that he has for himself. But probably his reaction to such suggestions
is that he did not get special treatment, that any poor defendant on death row
in Texas has the freedom to spend millions on a claim of inadequate
representation. Yeah, we’ll go with
that one.
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