Kennedy cousin Michael Skakel won a stunning legal victory on Wednesday, when a Connecticut judge granted him a new murder trial for the 1975 golf club bludgeoning of a pretty teen neighbor.
Skakel, who has served 12 years of a 20-to-life sentence following his 2002 conviction, could be released on bail as early as Friday.
The ruling called the prosecution evidence weak and circumstantial, and cited numerous defense counsel blunders — but the prospect of him getting off enraged victim Martha Moxley’s family.
“Michael Skakel is as guilty as he’s ever been,” her mom, Dorothy, fumed to The Post at her Summit, NJ, home.
“Even if there is a new trial I feel the same as I always have. I know he’s guilty — he’s confessed it himself,” she said, referring to accounts by Skakel’s former buddies at the Maine behavioral school he attended.
“It’s really mind-boggling,” agreed Moxley’s brother John.
The defense lawyer who tried the case 12 years ago, Michael “Micky” Sherman, was excoriated in the ruling for failing to adequately present alibi evidence or incriminate other former suspects, including Skakel’s brother Thomas and the family’s live-in tutor, Kenneth Littleton.
Skakel has insisted that on the night of the murder he climbed a tree beside the pretty blonde’s bedroom window and masturbated, but had no physical contact with her.
“The judge basically found that the jury did not hear all of the relevant defenses and all of the relevant evidence, and hopefully we’ll have the opportunity to present that at a new trial,” said Skakel’s current lawyer, Hubert Santos.
Prosecutors countered that the trial lawyer was more than competent and that the evidence presented supported Skakel’s conviction.
They plan to appeal to the Connecticut Supreme Court, a process that Santos said could take nearly two years.
Skakel — the 52-year-old nephew of Robert F. Kennedy’s widow, Ethel Kennedy — is currently locked up at a maximum security prison in Suffield, Conn., near the Massachusetts border.
He will file a bail petition in Stamford District Court on Thursday asking Skakel be released on bail while the appeal is pending.
He could be released as early as Friday if a judge agrees to hear arguments that soon.
In a harshly-worded 136-page decision, Stamford Superior Court Judge Thomas Bishop wrote, “It would be an understatement to say that the state did not possess overwhelming evidence of the petitioner’s guilt.”
Bishop added, “The defense of a serious felony prosecution requires attention to detail, an energetic investigation and a coherent plan of defense capably executed.
“Trial counsel’s failures in each of these areas of representation were significant and, ultimately, fatal to a constitutionally adequate defense.”
Santos said his client was relieved by the decision, saying, “His comment was, ‘Thank God.’”