The Bishop and the Butterfly: Murder, Politics, and the End of the Jazz Age
    jollyroger's picture

    Getting value for your criminal defense dollar--when a million dollar lawyer lays down and dies

    By jollyroger on Fri, 10/25/2013 - 5:24pm |

    Post conviction relief based upon inadequate assistance of counsel is notoriously hard to achieve.

     

    Appellate atrocities abound: Lawyers who were observed to sleep during large stretches of the trial have been found adequate, at least at the initial level of review.

     

    Likewise lawyers confirmed to have been drunk.

     

    What I am saying is that a successful appeal based on lousy lawyering is an uphill fight.

     

    Most often, when a lawyer is retrospectively found to have been so incompetent as to force a reviewing tribunal to overturn a verdict and grant a new trial (at the cost of the state's interest in vindicating the finality of a prior verdict) that lawyer was poorly paid, perhaps appointed to represent an indigent defendant.

     

    This makes astonishing the story of Michael Skakel, who has just been granted a new trial based upon the incompetence of his lawyer who received 1.2 million dollars as compensation for crashing and burning.

     

    One is ineluctably drawn to wonder how a Kennedy, plugged into a network of the best lawyers in the country, could have chosen so poorly.

     

    It is perhaps cynical to say, but a truly great lawyer is one who walks a guilty defendant out the door--acquittal for an innocent client is more or less to be expected.  (Get me Mr. Johnny!)

     

    Skakel, who had an air tight alibi that was ineffectively argued to the jury, appears to have been innocent, and his cousin, Robert Kennedy Jr. has named someone he contends was the real killer.

     

    Sometimes you do not get what you pay for.

    Comments

    Nice piece, Jolly. It does seem that in a case as cold as the one on which he was tried that more concrete evidence would have been required. And of the various inadequacies it seems that the failure to frame reasonable doubt would be the worst one.

    But isn't the situation of Sherman interesting. "Yeah, go ahead and trash me, the main thing is to get Skakel out of jail."


    by Oxy Mora on Fri, 10/25/2013 - 9:02pm

    I heard Bobby's boy (RFKjr.) on the radio also detailing that Sherman failed to prep the alibi witnesses by refreshing their memories via review of their original statements and police reports from the night of the murder.

     

    \Thus, on the stand, they were reduced to inability to recall the details of that night, when Skakel was in their company watching the premiere of Monty Python's Flying Circus on TV.

     

    Edited to add: unencumbered by any research, I am prepared to lay odds that this is the largest fee ever paid for representation subsequently found to be so inadequate as to furnish the basis for a successful appeal.

     

     


    by jollyroger on Sat, 10/26/2013 - 1:34pm

    Re the third party culpability defense---in this case two prospects, Littleton and brother Thomas. Not my field obviously but if they can now use a psychological profile of Littleton (previously sealed) it seems that unless there is a direct evidence re Martha Moxley that a new can of worms has been opened for Skakel as to his  own psychological state of mind at the time---which might not do him a whole lot of good.


    by Oxy Mora on Sat, 10/26/2013 - 3:53pm

     his  own psychological state of mind at the time

     

    Well, who among us has not lingered in a tree peeping into the window of a teen age girl while fondling hims--um, never mind.


    by jollyroger on Sat, 10/26/2013 - 6:56pm