Opinion ID: 2273504
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 21

Heading: The State's Theory Concerning the Petitioner's Masturbation Story

Text: During closing argument, the state's attorney also argued that the reason the petitioner told people that he had gone back outside on the night of the murder and masturbated in a tree next to the victim's house was that he feared that his semen might one day be identified in a crime lab, or even that, one day, someone might surface who had actually seen him [in the victim's yard]. The state's attorney further asserted that, by the early 1990s, every criminal investigator on the planet was totally attuned to this miraculous new [DNA] technology, and, of course, that would include the [private investigators] that the Skakel family had hired to assist them in the defense, [namely] Sutton Associates. According to the state's attorney, the word `masturbation' . . . [did not] come up until 1992 or thereabouts. . . . You didn't have to be a fly on the wall when [Sutton] came into the picture in 1992 to understand why the defendant soon was serving up his bizarre tale of masturbation in a tree to his friend, [Andrew] Pugh, and later to . . . Hoffman. [112] As with the arguments of the state's attorney about Elan, the evidence adduced at trial was not all consistent with the arguments of the state's attorney about the masturbation story, and some of the evidence directly contradicted it. For example, Michael Meredith, another former Elan student, testified that, in the summer of 1987, he resided at the Skakels' house while working with the petitioner on a class action lawsuit against Elan. Meredith learned about the victim's murder for the first time that summer in a conversation with the petitioner. According to Meredith, the petitioner instigated the conversation, stating that, I presume you know about [the victim] and her murder. And I want you to know, unequivocally, that I am innocent of that. If you are curious about the details, I want to tell you what happened so you know from me. In the course of the ensuing conversation, the petitioner told Meredith that, on the night of the murder, he had climbed a tree outside the victim's house and masturbated. Meredith testified that his sense was that this was not the first time that the petitioner had done such a thing. In light of Meredith's testimony, which the state never discredited, the state's theory with respect to why the petitioner claimed to have masturbated outside the victim's home on the night of the murder lacked persuasive force. Because the petitioner had recounted his story to Meredith several years before the petitioner's family hired Sutton, and many years before the advent of DNA technology in criminal investigations became popularly known, the state's claim that the petitioner had invented the story has little, if any, weight. Thus, this theory, no less than the state's attorney's argument that personnel at Elan had been informed by the Skakel family that the petitioner was involved in the victim's murder, reflects the relative weakness of the state's case against the petitioner.