Kennedy nephew sues Nancy Grace for slander over 1975 murder

A report by The Hollywood Report said Michael Skakel has sought legal action against talk show host Nancy Grace, a legal commentator and Time Warner Inc for defamation in relation to a high-profile murder case. Michael Skakel, who is a nephew of Robert F Kennedy, claimed in the lawsuit that the episode wherein Grace interviewed Beth Karas over the trial of Skakel in relation to the murder of 15-year-old Martha Moxley in 1975, made damaging comments against the plaintiff. THR said Skakel is awaiting a potential retrial of the murder case to happen in November after serving 11 years in prison. He was reportedly freed in January this year after a court declared his 2002 sentencing as wrongful.

Grace, who has a show on HLN, interviewed Karas about the Moxley case, whom she has heavily covered for the longest time, THR said. She asked, "Isn't it true that the Kennedy cousin apparently was up in a tree masturbating trying to look into [Moxley's] bedroom window?"

To which Karas answered, "Well, his DNA was found yes ... up in the tree."

Grace followed up with the following statements, and was quoted, "Beth, I love the way you put it so delicately. His DNA, you know, it was sperm, there I said it, and so he places himself there up in a tree masturbating looking down at her window, and, whoa, she [Moxley] turns up dead within a couple of hours."

THR noted that the 2002 trial did not mention any DNA evidence at all at the crime scene.

US District Judge Vanessa Bryant reportedly ruled in Skakel's favor and said that the plaintiff's case did not warrant a refusal considering that the statements that were said in Grace's interview of Karas regarding the 2002 Moxley trial were prima facie false.

On the other hand, Bryant is undecided whether to deem Skakel as a public figure to file the lawsuit under a law that allows public figures to file defamation claims. She stated, "While Skakel was convicted of murder, he was allegedly so convicted absent any DNA evidence linking him to the crime. Grace's and Karas's comments are not merely a gloss on Skakel's conviction; their statements imply that hard, unfeeling, scientific, and direct evidence linked Skakel to the scene and conclusively corroborated his guilt, when such scientific certainty did not exist."

Tags

1975 Martha Moxley murder retrial, Nancy Grace, Michael Skakel

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