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Skakel prosecution faced uphill battle

Michael Skakel in court

(CNN) -- A jury's decision on Friday that Michael Skakel is guilty of murder in the killing 15-year-old Martha Moxley signalled the end of an uphill battle for the prosecution to win that conviction. (Full story.)

The first hurdle was to get the case moved from juvenile court, where it originated because Skakel was 15 at the time of the slaying, to adult court. In juvenile court, Skakel would have faced a maximum sentence of four years in a rehabilitative facility.

Skakel's attorneys challenged the judge's ruling transferring the case, but the Connecticut Supreme Court upheld it.

The transfer required that the charge against Skakel be murder, rather than a lesser manslaughter charge.

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Another problem for prosecutors was that there were no eyewitnesses or physical evidence to link Skakel to the crime. And with memories clouded after more than a quarter-century, several early witnesses failed to back up their previous statements.

Many, if not all, prosecution witnesses were reluctant to testify. Skakel family friend Mildred Ix took the stand and recanted her 1998 grand jury statement that Michael Skakel's father had confided in her that his son thought he might have killed Moxley during a drunken binge.

One of the prosecution's strongest witnesses, was John Higgins, who claimed Skakel had confessed to him during a late-night conversation at the Elan school for troubled teen-agers back in 1978.

There also were serious investigative missteps after the body was discovered about 12:30 p.m. on October 1, 1975, that some say prevented Moxley's killer from being brought to justice earlier.

Elliott Gross, Connecticut's chief medical examiner at the time, was too busy to view the victim's body at the crime scene. Instead, he had it brought to the morgue, where he performed the autopsy the next day. This key decision may have thwarted Gross's ability to determine a more precise time of death -- rather than the broad window of 9:30 p.m. to 5:30 a.m., his ultimate conclusion.

Forensic evidence may have been lost -- first when the killer moved the body under a tree to hide it, and then when police brought the body to the morgue.

Hours after Moxley's body was discovered, Greenwich detective James Lunney discovered a golf club in the nearby Skakel home that came from the same set as the murder weapon. Yet because Skakel's father, Rushton, was out of town, the police decided to wait for his permission, rather than get a search warrant for a formal search of the home and vehicles.

And although the murder weapon was traced to their home, police did not immediately take individual statements from all the Skakel children.

According to the police report, the first statement Michael Skakel gave about his actions the night of the murder was on November 2.

Meanwhile, only Tommy Skakel -- the last person to be seen with Martha alive -- was considered a suspect by police.