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CNN Live Today

Jury Deliberates Over Skakel Verdict

Aired June 04, 2002 - 11:06   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.
DARYN KAGAN, CNN ANCHOR: We move now to Norwalk, Connecticut. That is where jury deliberations started last hour in the murder trial of Kennedy cousin Michael Skakel. He is charged with killing neighbor Martha Moxley in 1975, when they were both 15.

Our Deborah Feyerick has been covering the trial and she joins us now live from Norwalk, Connecticut -- Deb, good morning.

DEBORAH FEYERICK, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Daryn.

The waiting game begins. The jury: six men, six women, weighing all the evidence that they've heard over the last four weeks. Michael Skakel is in the courthouse as the clock ticks down.

The defense thinks the verdict is going to be pretty quick, perhaps one day. But the prosecutors say no. They think that they gave the jury a lot to think about during their closing arguments. They think the verdict will come after several days.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

FEYERICK (voice-over): In closing arguments, Michael Skakel's lawyer had a strong message for the jury.

MICKEY SHERMAN, DEFENSE ATTORNEY: He didn't do it. He doesn't know who did. He wasn't there. He never confessed.

FEYERICK: As he has throughout the month-long trial, Mickey Sherman again pointed out there's no physical, no forensic evidence. And that the alleged motive, jealousy over his brother's relationship with Martha Moxley, was sketchy at best.

SHERMAN: They played investigative musical chairs. First they tried to see if that chair fit Tommy Skakel. They brought an arrest warrant for him. Then they went to Ken Littleton. God knows who else they want. And when the music stopped, Michael Skakel is sitting in the defendant's chair.

FEYERICK: Skakel's lawyer warned jurors they may feel compelled to help the Moxley family get closure. "But," he repeated, "Michael Skakel didn't do it."

Prosecutors, in their closing arguments, relied on Michael Skakel's own words placing him at the crime scene. Tape recordings taken for his book proposal. In it Skakel himself seems to undermine his own alibi, saying he remembers that his sister's friend had gone home. Something which happened after he supposedly left to go to his cousin's house.

JONATHAN BENEDICT, PROSECUTOR: He would not have known that Andrea had been taken home yet, because the alibi ride in the car had left before Andrea Shakespeare and Julie Skakel had gone on their little journey across town.

FEYERICK: Though Skakel never links himself to the Moxley murder, prosecutors show Skakel seems to describe taken a path (ph), placing him at the major points of the crime scene. From the front of the Moxley home, where she was first hit, to the trees toward which Skakel said he was throwing rocks after hearing a noise. "The motion," said the prosecutor, "like someone hitting another person with a golf club."

The prosecutor argued Skakel concocted this story fearing he may have left DNA evidence behind or that someone may have seen him.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

FEYERICK: Prosecutors say that Skakel's alleged confessions are signs of a guilty conscience, and that's something that the jury can consider when deciding their verdict. However, the defense says whatever Michael Skakel may have said was said under great duress while he was at a drug rehab school, where "abuses took place," in his words -- Daryn.

KAGAN: Deb, what about this jury? Are they sequestered?

FEYERICK: No, they're not sequestered. They come at 10:00, they leave at 5:00. They have a lot of evidence that they need to consider.

Again, it's been four weeks, and prosecutors really did a good job of sort of tying all the pieces together. And that's exactly what you want during a closing argument, because here they've sat through documents and transcripts and pictures. And it's sometimes hard to make sense of it all.

But yesterday, the prosecutors, in very broad strokes, said, look, this is what happened and this is why. And those transcripts, the tapes of the book proposal, could prove vital because Michael Skakel basically says that that night he followed a very similar path that the alleged killer took as well. And so the jury is going to have to consider that very, very carefully.

KAGAN: Deborah Feyerick, in Norwalk, Connecticut, thank you so much.

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