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Cousin, can you spare a dime for our brother's appeal? That's the grim message dispatched by Skakel siblings Stephen and Julie, who are urging friends and family to send letters of support and "discreet" donations to their convicted killer brother Michael. "Michael's best (if only) hope is his legal appeal to the state Supreme Court," states Stephen Skakel, Michael's closest brother and the youngest of Rushton Sr.'s seven offspring, in a widely distributed e-mail. "Thanks so much to those who contributed in the past. ... Please assume that Michael's financial resources for appeal are non-existent at this time," he adds,...

Michael Skakel's siblings have scuttled defense attorney Mickey Sherman's appellate game plan, and they have hired prominent Hartford lawyers Hope Seeley and Hubert Santos to appeal Skakel's June 7 conviction for the murder of Martha Moxley in 1975. Sherman remains on the legal defense team and will argue at Skakel's sentencing on July 19. But Santos and Seeley, too, are expected to argue several motions, including one for a sentence that does not involve incarceration. They have brought on board Clinton Roberts, a former probation officer who is a respected consultant on alternatives to incarceration. Seeley confirmed Friday that their...

STAMFORD -- The jury that convicted Michael Skakel of murder last week was improperly inflamed by gruesome photos of the victim paired with Skakel's comments to an interviewer, his attorney argued Wednesday. The verdict should be thrown out and a new trial held, defense lawyer Michael Sherman argued in papers filed in Stamford Superior Court. "This was a case in which the prosecution used cumulative, graphic and gruesome photographs of the victim to shock and inflame, rather than to inform," Sherman wrote. "It was a case in which the prosecution sought maximum dramatic effect, dazzling the jury not with reliable...

NORWALK -- A guilty verdict in the Michael Skakel murder case had seemed as improbable as the likelihood that a vivacious teenaged girl could be bludgeoned to death within the confines of a gated Greenwich community. But as the handcuffs tightened audibly on Skakel's wrists and several of Martha Moxley's childhood friends sobbed softly but uncontrollably, the weight of reality dropped. The toll was heavy and harsh, the grief fresh. Skakel, 41, the father of a 3-year-old son, was led off to prison to await his sentencing on July 19 for the 1975 murder of the girl he had a...

NORWALK -- Prosecutor Jonathan Benedict has been getting high praise for his closing argument Monday that wove the disparate pieces of the state's case against Michael Skakel into a tight mosaic - one that gave skeptics pause and the jurors enough fodder to carry them into a fourth day of deliberations today. "I doubt the jury was as impressed as the press," Benedict said during an interview Thursday. But Benedict's words clearly resounded with the jury: Within an hour of his making that statement, the jury sent out a note saying it wanted to hear again the second - and...

NORWALK -- Thomas Skakel - long a prime suspect in the killing of Martha Moxley in the eyes of police and the public - walked tentatively down the courtroom aisle Wednesday and embraced his younger brother, defendant Michael Skakel. They hugged for a matter of seconds, then chatted amiably for a minute or two. The strongest bonds they share may be the Skakel name and the weight of suspicion each has borne. Suspicion of duplicity in a heinous crime. "I think they love each other, but they're not close," said Emanuel Margolis, Tommy Skakel's lawyer and, on this day, stage...

NORWALK -- "We're all passengers on this ship. God knows where it's going." Defense attorney Mickey Sherman made that observation at the start of jury selection in the Michael Skakel murder case in April - which seems like a millennium ago. Tuesday the ship was adrift, waiting for a jury's actions to end the voyage. Both sides in the case have played out their hands, and on the first day of deliberations Tuesday they lapsed into wait-and-see mode. For Sherman, that meant endless pacing and idle chitchat, and admitting to nervousness and nausea. "How's Michael coping?" he was asked. "A...

NORWALK -- Defense attorney Mickey Sherman in his final arguments to the jury Monday said the state has been playing "investigative musical chairs for 27 years" in its efforts to pin the murder of Martha Moxley on somebody, until it finally put Michael Skakel into the defendant's chair. Prosecutor Jonathan Benedict used Skakel's own words in an effort to convince jurors that Skakel for years has been "spinning" alibis for his whereabouts and any possible link to the crime scene, including an elaborate tale of the night's events in a taped interview in 1997 for a book Skakel hoped to...

NORWALK -- Did he do it? Lawyers on both sides of the Michael Skakel murder trial will argue that question to a jury that could begin deliberating Skakel's fate as soon as this afternoon. Prosecutor Jonathan Benedict will tell the jury of six men and six women that Skakel's own words - in admissions to the crime and conflicting statements about his whereabouts the October 1975 night Martha Moxley was killed - are enough to convict him. Defense attorney Mickey Sherman will assail the credibility of the state's witnesses and emphasize Skakel's alibi that he was about 20 miles away...

NORWALK -- Prosecutors in the Michael Skakel case Thursday sought to give the jury a fallback option that would soften the penalty for a murder verdict. But hours later they withdrew their request that the jury be instructed on the possible role of extreme emotional disturbance in the brutal attack on Martha Moxley. Defense attorney Mickey Sherman said the prosecutors' actions telegraphed a lack of confidence in their case. Prosecutors countered that they wanted to give the jury the widest latitude possible, but realized they would run the risk of unprecedented appellate issues if they pursued that course. The day's...

NORWALK -- Witnesses on the final day of the defense case in the Michael Skakel murder trial fixed the time of Martha Moxley's death at approximately 10 p.m. and placed Michael Skakel at a cousin's house 20 miles away at that same time. But what would seem a triumphant end to a defense based on actual innocence was marred by imprecision - of both memory and science. Skakel's brother John Skakel parted ways with other relatives who vividly remember Michael Skakel's coming along on the drive to take his cousin Jimmy Terrien home and to watch "Monty Python's Flying Circus"...

NORWALK -- Witnesses on the final day of the defense case in the Michael Skakel murder trial fixed the time of Martha Moxley's death at approximately 10 p.m. and placed Michael Skakel at a cousin's house 20 miles away at that same time. But what would seem a triumphant end to a defense based on actual innocence was marred by imprecision - of both memory and science. Skakel's brother John Skakel parted ways with other relatives who vividly remember Michael Skakel's coming along on the drive to take his cousin Jimmy Terrien home and to watch "Monty Python's Flying Circus"...

NORWALK -- The defense in the Michael Skakel murder trial brought back a prosecution witness Friday in an effort to shake her contention that Skakel did not leave Belle Haven with his brothers and cousins the night Martha Moxley was killed. The effort met with scant success. Andrea Shakespeare Renna did not depart from her assertion that Skakel was not in the car with Jimmy (Terrien) Dowdle, Rushton Skakel Jr. and John Skakel when it left the Skakel driveway at about 9:30 the night of Oct. 30, 1975. What defense attorney Mickey Sherman was able to put before the jury,...

NORWALK -- Michael Skakel's defense against the charge he murdered Martha Moxley began Wednesday with family members supporting his alibi and his attorney propping up the family's former tutor as the more likely killer. Skakel's oldest brother, Rushton Skakel Jr., and their cousin, James Dowdle, testified that Michael left the Skakel home with them about 9:30 p.m. the night Moxley was last seen alive, and drove about 20 minutes away to Dowdle's home to watch "Monty Python's Flying Circus." Rushton, who was 19 at the time, said they returned home about 11:15 p.m. Two factors are crucial to the success...

NORWALK -- Michael Skakel told a therapy group at the Elan School in Maine that his brother had stolen his girlfriend and fooled around with her sexually, and that he truly didn't know whether he - Michael - had killed Martha Moxley, a witness testified Friday. "He didn't know what happened that night," said Elizabeth Arnold, a former classmate of Skakel's at Elan. "He was very drunk and had some sort of a blackout. He didn't know if he had done it or if his brother [Tommy] had done it." Arnold then offered the strongest testimony the jury has heard...

NORWALK -- The setting is a porch at nighttime, sometime in the late 1970s. Two teenage boys are on sentry duty to prevent students from escaping a school that no one seemed to like. One of the boys, Michael Skakel, begins to talk as if to himself, working through his recollection of the events of the night Martha Moxley was killed in 1975. The other teen, John Higgins, remains silent. In fact, he remained silent about the events of that night for much of the next two decades. "There was a party of some kind or another and he related...

NORWALK -- "Bride or groom?" a court insider asked a reporter walking into the courtroom where the Michael Skakel murder trial is unfolding. It was an odd attempt at humor for a proceeding so grave. Yet the marriage metaphor was correct in one respect: the seating. As with most big weddings, there are sides for the two families. And as with most big trials, there are sides for the accused and the accusers. The Norwalk Courthouse is no different. The Skakel family has its allotted seats; so does the family of Martha Moxley, the girl Skakel is accused of murdering...

NORWALK -- Prosecutor Jonathan Benedict wants to know if prospective jurors would hesitate to convict Michael Skakel of murder because he was just 15 at the time Martha Moxley was bludgeoned to death 26 years ago. Defense attorney Mickey Sherman wants to know if they've seen the movie classic "Twelve Angry Men." The first day of jury selection in the Skakel case ended Tuesday with two jurors chosen and a sharpened image of the hurdles both sides have to overcome. It also highlighted how calculation and gut instinct meld when choosing which strangers will decide a case. At first blush,...