Skakel v. Comm'r of Corr.

325 Conn. 426

159 A.3d 109

Michael SKAKEL

v.COMMISSIONER OF CORRECTION

SC 19251

Supreme Court of Connecticut.

Argued February 24, 2016

Officially released December 30, 2016^**

Susann E. Gill, supervisory assistant state's attorney, with whom were James A. Killen, senior assistant state's attorney, and, on the brief, Kevin T. Kane, chief state's attorney, John C. Smriga, state's attorney, Leonard C. Boyle, deputy chief state's attorney for operations, and Jonathan C. Benedict, former state's attorney, for the appellant-cross appellee (respondent).

Hubert J. Santos, with whom was Jessica M. Walker, for the appellee-cross appellant (petitioner).

Palmer, Zarella, Eveleigh, McDonald, Espinosa, Robinson and Vertefeuille, Js.^*

ZARELLA, J.

In 2002, a jury found the petitioner, Michael Skakel, guilty of the 1975 murder of his neighbor, Martha Moxley (victim). After previous unsuccessful attempts to overturn his conviction, including two appeals to this court, the petitioner filed the habeas petition that is the subject of this appeal. In that petition, he principally claimed that his criminal trial counsel provided such inadequate representation that he was denied his constitutional right to have the effective assistance of counsel for his defense. The habeas court agreed with the petitioner on some of his claims and rendered judgment granting the petition. The respondent, the Commissioner of Correction, has appealed from the habeas court's judgment. Because we conclude that the petitioner's trial counsel rendered constitutionally adequate representation, we reverse the judgment of the habeas court and remand the case to that court with direction to render judgment denying the petition.¹

IFACTUAL BACKGROUND AND HABEAS COURT PROCEEDINGS

The facts relating to the petitioner's criminal conviction, as the jury reasonably could have found them, are set forth in detail in this court's decision on his direct appeal. See State v. Skakel , 276 Conn. 633, 640–53, 888 A.2d 985, cert. denied, 549 U.S. 1030, 127 S.Ct. 578, 166 L.Ed.2d 428 (2006). Our discussion here highlights the facts most relevant to the present proceedings and is based on our recitation of the facts in the petitioner's direct appeal, as supplemented by the record from the petitioner's criminal trial and the habeas proceedings.

AState's Case Against the Petitioner

On October 31, 1975, the body of the fifteen year old victim was found lying face down under a large pine tree on her family's Greenwich estate. Id., at 642, 888 A.2d 985. She had numerous injuries to her head and neck, and her pants were unbuttoned and pulled down, along with her underwear, below her knees, although the medical examiner found no evidence of semen present in her pubic region. Id., at 642–43, 888 A.2d 985. She had been attacked elsewhere on the Moxley property, near the driveway, and then dragged to the pine tree where she was later found. See id., at 642, 888 A.2d 985. Police found broken pieces of a golf club nearby on the Moxley property. Id. An autopsy revealed that she had been attacked with the golf club, and authorities believe that it broke apart during the assault and that part of the club's shaft was used to stab the victim. Id., at 644, 888 A.2d 985.

The victim had last been seen alive at about 9:30 p.m. the night before, October 30, 1975; see id., at 641, 888 A.2d 985 ; which was the night before Halloween, commonly known as "mischief night ...." (Internal quotation marks omitted.) Id., at 640, 888 A.2d 985. The victim's mother had reported her missing in the early morning hours of October 31, after the victim failed to return home the previous night.²

Id., at 641–42, 888 A.2d 985. The medical examiner could not establish a precise time of death, but he believed that the victim more likely was murdered closer to when she was last seen alive at around 9:30 p.m. on October 30, than when her body was found at about noon the next day. Id., at 643, 888 A.2d 985. He testified, however, that the findings from the autopsy were consistent with a broad time span, including from 9:30 p.m. on October 30, to 1 a.m. on October 31.

The petitioner, who was also fifteen at the time of the murder, lived with his father and six siblings in a home across the street from the victim.³ See id., at 640 and n.4, 888 A.2d 985. The petitioner and some of his siblings, including his older brother, Thomas Skakel, had been seen with the victim at various times on the night of October 30, 1975. Id., at 640–41, 888 A.2d 985. That night, the petitioner had gone out to dinner with his siblings and the family's recently hired live-in tutor, Kenneth Littleton. Id. at 640, 888 A.2d 985. They returned to the Skakel home at about 9 p.m. Id. The petitioner, the victim, other Skakel siblings and neighborhood friends spent some time in the Skakel driveway until about 9:30 p.m., when the petitioner's older brother used a family car to drive a cousin, James Terrien,⁴ to his home, where they planned to watch a television show. Id., at 641, 888 A.2d 985. The petitioner told the police a few weeks after the murder that he also had gone along to the Terrien house to watch the show. Id., at 645, 888 A.2d 985. He further claimed that, upon returning to his home at about 10:30 or 11 p.m., he went inside his home and did not leave for the rest of the night. Id.

Despite their efforts in the years after the murder, including extensive investigations into whether Thomas Skakel or Littleton was involved, the police were unable to connect anyone to the murder and did not make any arrests. See id., at 639, 888 A.2d 985.

Nearly twenty-five years after the murder, however, the state charged the petitioner after a grand jury investigation. Id. The state's case against the petitioner consisted primarily of circumstantial evidence and numerous, incriminating statements made by the petitioner himself. See generally id., at 639–52, 888 A.2d 985.

The state presented testimony from witnesses who testified that the petitioner had made statements in the years after the murder implicating himself in the crime. A few years after the murder, the petitioner's family sent him to the Elan School in Maine (Elan), a residential treatment facility for troubled adolescents. See id., at 646, 888 A.2d 985. One of his fellow residents at Elan, Dorothy Rogers, testified that the petitioner told her that his family had sent him to the school because they were afraid he had committed the murder and wanted him away from the investigation in Greenwich. Id., at 647–48, 888 A.2d 985. Another resident, Gregory Coleman, relayed that the petitioner once confided in him while they were at the school that he had killed a girl with a golf club in a wooded area, that the golf club broke apart during the attack, and that he had returned to the scene later and masturbated over the girl's body. Id., at 648, 888 A.2d 985. Two other residents, Elizabeth Arnold and Alice Dunn, testified that, in another instance, the petitioner had been questioned during a group therapy session about his involvement in the murder, and he told the group that he or one of his brothers might have committed the crime. See id., at 648–49, 888 A.2d 985. Arnold recalled that the petitioner also had told the group that, on the night of the murder, "[h]e was very drunk and had some sort of a black-out," that he had discovered that "his brother had fool[ed] around with his girlfriend," and that he was not in "his normal state" that night. (Internal quotation marks omitted.) Id., at 649, 888 A.2d 985.

With respect to motive, the state argued at trial that the petitioner had become enraged after seeing the victim flirting with his older brother, Thomas Skakel, on the night she was last seen alive. See id., at 651–52, 888 A.2d 985. Friends who knew the petitioner and the victim around the time of the murder confirmed that the petitioner had feelings for the victim and had grown resentful of Thomas Skakel, who had developed a flirtatious relationship with the victim. Id., at 651, 888 A.2d 985. Friends of the victim also testified that, on the night the victim was last seen alive, they saw the victim engaging in flirtatious horseplay with Thomas Skakel near the Skakels' driveway, shortly after others had left for the Terrien home, and they did not see her again after that. Id., at 641, 651–52, 888 A.2d 985. Although the petitioner had told the police that he went along to the Terrien home, the state presented testimony from a neighborhood friend who testified that the petitioner had stayed at the Skakel property. Id., at 645 and n.9, 888 A.2d 985.

The state also presented evidence that the petitioner had lied to the police about his activities on the night of the murder. Several years after leaving Elan, he separately told two people that, on the night the victim was last seen alive, after returning home from watching television at the Terrien home, he had left his house, climbed a tree on the victim's property, and masturbated while watching the victim through her bedroom window, contradicting his statements to the police that he had remained inside all night and suggesting that he had seen the victim after returning from the Terrien home sometime after 11 p.m.⁵ Id., at 645, 649–50, 888 A.2d 985. The petitioner reiterated many of these details in a recorded statement that he gave to an author helping the petitioner as a ghost writer for an autobiography. See id., at 650–51, 888 A.2d 985. In that recording, the petitioner described his actions on the night of the murder in detail, in contradiction to his earlier statements to others that he could not remember what had happened that night. See id. He stated that, after returning from watching television at the Terrien home, he could not sleep and was sexually aroused, so he "snuck out" of his house and, after trying to spy on a woman who lived in the neighborhood, eventually went looking to "go get a kiss from [the victim]." (Internal quotation marks omitted.) Id., at...