LovelyPigeon said:
His attorneys raised the issue of the expired statute of limitations when he first went to trial, claiming that Connecticut's then-evolving statute of limitations for murder set a five-year limit on prosecutions in 1976.
Prosecutors argued that the state didn't recognize a statute of limitations for prosecuting murders. The issue was put off as a post-conviction matter.--->>
His defense continues to maintain that the case should not have been transferred from Juvenile Court to Superior Court on the grounds that the lower court did not properly investigate the matter.
"If the Juvenile Court had known that the defendant had grown up in a dysfunctional family with an abusive, alcoholic father ... that the defendant suffered from a severe learning disability and alcoholism himself, that he lived a productive life helping others ... the court would have been in a better position to designate the defendant under the supervision of the juvenile system," his attorneys wrote.
But prosecutors have called the transfer "the only reasonable route," noting that Skakel was 40 at the time of his arrest.
Pretty much sums it all up.
These claims are outrageous and to be expected in a "no-win" appeals case.
First, blueclouds, the
was a loophole in Connecticut law, at the time, which
did put a statute of limitations on murder. It was subsequently fixed through legislature. Raising this is flimsy and strictly a
technicality--in other words, they are not denying Skakel did it, but protesting that the letter of the law, as it was written in 1975, is not being followed.
The second claim of "family dysfunction and learning disabilities" is also malarky.
IF Skakel had either confessed to the crime in 1975 or had been charged and found guilty then, these circumstances may have mitigated his punishment phase. TODAY, they are irrelevant, at best. Ditto his not being tried (at age 41) in juvenile court. It would have been inappropriate to file these charges in juvenile court, given the man's age when charged. He shouldn't benefit from escaping justice for nearly three decades by beingtried in a court designed for children and teens.
This man needs to admit what actually happened that night, expose the cover-up that ensued and the 27 years this poor girl's family wondered and suffered and atone for what he did. Until the appeals run out, expect these lawyers to fire off these softball apellate issues.