Alaina Kelley

But she never believed that it would hold because she knows they have infinite resources.

Now, like Dorothy Moxley, the prosecution was ready when the reversal happened and had already started preparing for a retrial.

Fortunately, however, the prosecution wouldn't have to go that route.

In 2016, the Connecticut Supreme Court overruled the lower court and concluded that Skakel had in fact been given a fair trial, even if he didn't feel as though the lawyer provided the best possible defense.

Okay.

One of the justices wrote in their concurrence, Sherman's defense need not have been the best decision or even a good one.

it need only fall within the wide range of reasonable decisions that a defense attorney might make.

To those who'd been watching the case from day one, the state Supreme Court's decision seemed like an attempt to correct the previous injustice.

But there wasn't much time to celebrate.

In fact, despite having reinstated the conviction, the question of whether Michael Sherman provided adequate representation would be argued back and forth in the state Supreme Court for two more years.

until May 2018 when the court ultimately reversed their original decision, their earlier decision, and agreed with Skakel's complaint that his lawyer had been ineffective and thus he was originally deprived of a fair trial.

Yeah.

To the shock of many.

That proved ineffective when a jury found him guilty and a judge sentenced him to spend the rest of his life in prison.

Securing Skakel's conviction in a lengthy sentence was a major victory for the prosecution, who had to, again, contend with really poor police work, missing evidence, the death of their star witness mid-trial.

But in truth, his conviction was just never a sure bet.

The case, there was a lot of circumstantial stuff and there was a lot of time between...

the crime and when the trial occurred there was just a lot that were a lot working against them yeah now that skakel had once again managed to win a new trial and was out on bail the district attorney needed to decide whether they could feasibly secure the same verdict nearly 30 years later with many of their witnesses having passed away or simply forgotten the important parts of their testimony because they're getting older right that's i don't remember 30 years ago

And everybody's memory is different.

It's like, I don't have a great memory.