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American Morning

Court TV Correspondent Discusses Skakel Murder Trial

Aired May 07, 2002 - 08:08   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
PAULA ZAHN, CNN ANCHOR: The Michael Skakel murder trial begins this morning, and the family of the murder victim, Martha Moxley, has been waiting 26 years for this day, a day, perhaps, they thought would never come. And in a Connecticut courtroom, testimony will begin in the trial of Skakel, a cousin of the Kennedy family. He is accused of killing Martha Moxley back in 1975 when they were both just 15 years old.

And CNN's Deborah Feyerick has more now on the long and winding road that has brought Michael Skakel to trial.

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(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

DEBORAH FEYERICK, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): She was an all-American honors student with a bright smile. He is related to all-America royalty, Martha Moxley and Kennedy nephew, Michael Skakel, both 15 years old in 1975. Friends and neighbors hanging out together the night before Halloween, the last night Martha Moxley was alive. She was brutally beaten to death with a golf club, the killer attacking her right outside her posh Greenwich, Connecticut home.

There were suspects at the time, Skakel's 17-year-old brother, Tommy, once though to have been the last person to see Moxley alive; also a Skakel family tutor, Ken Littleton. He moved in with the Skakels the day of the murder. Investigators never had enough evidence to charge either one, and the murder remained unsolved for two decades.

But interest in the case never went away. There were books, movies and TV who done its, like "Unsolved Mysteries."

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: On the night before Halloween, 1975...

FEYERICK: New witnesses came forward, and their testimony pointed to now middle-aged Michael Skakel. He was charged with Moxley's murder. After several hearings, the case moved out of juvenile to adult court. Not charged: the original suspects, Skakel's brother, Tommy, and tutor, Ken Littleton.

Littleton will likely take the stand early on in the trial, prosecutors granting him full immunity. Skakel's defense team is planning on playing tapes they say incriminate the ex-tutor. Littleton's lawyer firing back...

EUGENE RICCO, KEN LITTLETON'S ATTORNEY: It's a strategy that defense, considering the history of this case, is certainly going to do. I mean, it's no surprise the state investigated Littleton in terms of this homicide for years.

FEYERICK: Prosecutors admit investigators recruited the tutor's wife in the early '90s to try to convince Littleton he confessed to the murder during a drunken blackout. The story sounds familiar. At a hearing last year, former classmates testified Skakel confessed that he might have had something to do with the murder, also during a blackout. One of those witnesses saying the word "blackout" was originally used by investigators.

MICKEY SHERMAN, DEFENSE ATTORNEY: The question is, isn't it odd that what they have against Ken Littleton, they seem to have against Michael Skakel.

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FEYERICK: The jury's made up of six men and six women. One's a lawyer, one's a cop. There's even a friend of a friend of Dorothy Moxley's. Dorothy Moxley will be one of the first people on the stand. She's really going to set the scene here and put a human face on this tragedy. She had two kids, one of them brutally taken away from her. She will likely describe that night, the frantic calls at 3:30 in the morning where she dialed Martha's friends, even calling the Skakel household, where she was told Martha had left at about 9:30, saying that she had to do homework.

She may also tell the story of how she heard a commotion, voices at the side of the house where Martha's body was ultimately found, Mrs. Moxley going to the window, turning on the light but seeing nothing, so turning back inside. All of this likely to set the scene as this trial gets under way -- Paula.

ZAHN: All right, Deborah Feyerick, thanks so much for that set up piece. And we're going to talk more about what we all can expect in the Skakel trial in the weeks to come.

With us here in New York, Court TV correspondent Vinnie Politan, who's going to be covering this, as well as from outside the courthouse this morning in Norwalk, Connecticut, CNN legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin.

Good morning to both of you.

VINNIE POLITAN, COURT TV CORRESPONDENT: Good morning.

JEFFREY TOOBIN, CNN LEGAL ANALYST: Hi, Paula.

ZAHN: All right, Jeffrey, before you get into opening arguments, let's quickly set the stage with sort of what suspects have been pointed to over the years, besides Michael Skakel.

TOOBIN: This has been a... ZAHN: The prosecution has looked, you know, at Tommy Skakel and also Kenneth Littleton. Walk us through all that.

TOOBIN: Well, Tommy Skakel and Michael Skakel were both friends of Martha Moxley's. Both apparently were romantically interested -- were interested in her. And Tommy Moxley -- Tommy Skakel was the, apparently, the last person to be seen with her on the night she was murdered.

The tutor, Ken Littleton, he was someone who was brought in to live at the Skakel household. Remember, the mother in the family had died of cancer two years earlier. The father, Rushton Skakel, traveled a great deal. There was not a lot of adult supervision in this house. As, and Littleton was brought in as a tutor and some sort of adult supervision. October 30, 1975 was his first day on the job.

There was also a Mr. Hammond, who lived next door to the murder scene, a student at Columbia Business School who was under suspicion as someone who might have been involved.

Those three suspects were actually investigated in detail and before the prosecutors turned their attention to Michael Skakel.

ZAHN: So, Vinnie, does this all boil down to the battle of confessions, given what Jeffrey just said? You're going to have the defense arguing that Kenneth Littleton actually admitted to killing Martha Moxley and then you've got the prosecution saying oh, Michael Skakel did that, too.

POLITAN: Well, they're not confessions in the traditional sense of the word confession. No one went down to the police precinct, filled out a paper and said I did it. What you have are a couple of different situations.

With the prosecution, they say Michael Skakel was at this Elan School, where he was in drug rehab with a bunch of other people. And they say there was about four people that heard him confess either specifically or vaguely to this murder. Now, the most specific alleged confession, which you might call an alleged admission, came to a man who's no longer alive. And it's not clear if his testimony from a prior hearing is going to come in in this case.

Now, you go to the other side, the defense says this guy Ken Littleton, in these taped conversations with his wife, who's now his ex-wife, admits to having these blackouts and isn't sure if he admitted to the murder or not and it's kind of fuzzy. So it's not clear cut on either side.

But that gives an advantage to the defense because, remember, the prosecution has to prove this thing beyond a reasonable doubt.

ZAHN: And, Jeffrey, I was speaking with Mickey Sherman, the man representing Michael Skakel, earlier this morning and he said essentially what he wants to do in opening arguments today is to tell this jury to be patient and he made it very clear that he knows he's going to get a direct assault from Dorothy Moxley, as well as some other potential witnesses.

What does Mickey Sherman have to do in opening statements today?

TOOBIN: I think Mickey Sherman has to focus on the big picture, which I think actually is fairly favorable from a legal perspective, to his client. There are no eyewitnesses. There is no scientific evidence tying Michael Skakel to this crime scene. These confessions are ambiguous at best.

It is true that the murder weapon, this six iron, came from the Skakel house, but lots of people apparently had access to both that, both the garage where the clubs were kept and the lawn where the clubs sometimes were left.

He's got to point out that there are lots of suspects here and he cannot focus -- and they can't let their sympathy for Dorothy Moxley, who is an extremely sympathetic woman, overcome what he will describe as an absence of evidence.

ZAHN: And, Vinnie, it remains to be seen what kind of judge -- what kind of decisions the judge will ultimately make. And some critical ones have been made so far.

POLITAN: Important decisions...

ZAHN: How will that impact the rest of this case?

POLITAN: A huge impact. It's impacted the case already. Remember, they tried to get him tried as a juvenile because all this happened, allegedly, when he was 15. So now he's being tried as an adult. One decision by the judge.

Now the judge has to decide does all that evidence that implicated Ken Littleton come in? The defense wants it in because they want to point the finger at some other suspect to create that reasonable doubt. The judge hasn't decided yet. If he doesn't let it in, a big blow to the defense.

So this is a case where the judge is going to have a huge impact on the final result, more so, perhaps, than the lawyering that's done in the case.

ZAHN: A final word from Jeffrey Toobin this morning. Mickey Sherman kind of described the zoo like atmosphere outside there today. Why the level of interest in this trial?

TOOBIN: I think the Kennedy name has an enormous significance, even today. It is true Michael Skakel is not a blood relative of the Kennedys. He is an in-law. But I think the fact that this murder took place in such a wealthy community with, involving a family that was closely tied to the Kennedys. And it is true that this case has been a mystery for a very long time and there are many unanswered questions, mysterious threats and I think it's kind of irresistible, personally.

ZAHN: Well, we'll be courting on the two of you to guide us through the process in the weeks to come.

Vinnie Politan, thanks for your first appearance here on AMERICAN MORNING.

POLITAN: Thank you, Paula.

ZAHN: Jeffrey Toobin, always great to have you. He's a permanent part of our team.

TOOBIN: OK, Paula.

ZAHN: Have fun, if you can call it that. I know it's kind of aggressive territory down there with all the reporters trying to stake out a position.

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