Robert F. Kennedy Jr. says his cousin Michael Skakel was railroaded in the Martha Moxley murder case and convicted largely because of an inflamed media, led by author Dominick Dunne.

In the. . . Atlantic Monthly on newsstands next week, Kennedy also brands Skakel's attorney, Mickey Sherman, a "less-than-zealous defense lawyer" whose interest was "courting the press and ingratiating himself" with Dunne.

Kennedy. . . writes that Dunne began a long vendetta against his rich and powerful family with a Vanity Fair article in 1991.

Dunne kept the spotlight on Skakel by spreading false information about the case and became a "driving force" behind the prosecution, Kennedy says in his article, titled "A Miscarriage of Justice."

Dunne's "objective," writes Kennedy, "has been to link the crime to a 'Kennedy cousin,' whether it be Will Smith, John Kennedy, Tom Skakel or Michael Skakel."

Skakel was convicted last summer of beating Martha to death with a golf club as she left his Greenwich, Conn., home on Halloween eve in 1975. Both were 15 at the time. Skakel is serving 20 years to life.

Kennedy quotes Dunne, whose daughter was murdered in 1982, as saying he has "contempt for the behavior of the Skakel family" and writes that the author "crowed" in Vanity Fair that the "trial has ruined a once-proud family."

Kennedy writes that the Skakel family was "distressed" by Sherman's "seeming lack of attention to the trial, what they saw as his failure to prepare them adequately before testimony."

A Dunne protégé, former Los Angeles Detective Mark Fuhrman, also fueled the media frenzy with false information, the article says.

Attempts to reach Sherman, Dunne and Fuhrman for comment were unsuccessful.

Kennedy, a lawyer and president of the environmental group Waterkeeper Alliance, writes that his support of Skakel is "not out of misguided family loyalty, but because I am certain he is innocent."

-- Anonymous, January 11, 2003