Michael Skakel as a previous bid for parole was denied at McDougall-Walker Correctional Institution in Suffield, Conn., on Oct. 24, 2012.
After 11 years behind bars for the 1975 murder of Martha Moxley, Kennedy cousin Michael Skakel was released on Thursday, with bail set at $1.2 million.
Skakel, a nephew of Robert F. Kennedy, was convicted of murdering Moxley with a golf club in 1975 when they were 15-year old neighbors in Greenwich, Connecticut, NBC reports. That verdict was overturned last month on the grounds that Skakel did not get good legal representation.
Nobody was arrested for Moxley’s murder for almost 25 years, until acquaintances of Skakel began to come forward saying that he had confessed the crime to them. One ex-classmate said that Skakel had told him, “I’m going to get away with murder because I’m a Kennedy.” That classmate died of a heroin overdose before he testified at trial. Skakel was convicted of Moxley’s murder in 2002.
After multiple appeals, Skakel argued that his lawyer, Mickey Sherman, didn’t adequately represent him. Connecticut Superior Court Judge Thomas Bishop agreed, and wrote in his ruling that Sherman’s mistakes during the trial were “significant and, ultimately, fatal to a constitutionally adequate defense.”
Sherman is now in prison for tax evasion.
[NBC]