"If you spend $1 million on your defense lawyer, how can you credibly claim you didn't even get the constitutional minimum, effective assistance of counsel?"

"Cynics will say, the way to do that is: 1. Get convicted because a well-paid lawyer wasn't able to persuade a jury to see reasonable doubt, and 2. Pay more money for more lawyers and persuade a judge of what you need to overturn the conviction. And super-cynics will add: 3. Be a Kennedy."

That's what I wrote about Michael Skakel back in October 2013.

This morning I see — in the NYT — "Connecticut Court Reverses Murder Conviction of Michael Skakel."

[I]n a lacerating dissent, Justice Carmen E. Espinosa argued that more than anything else, Mr. Skakel had benefited from his wealth and prominent connections. She wrote that other convicted criminals “would undoubtedly be thrilled to receive such special treatment.”

“Unfortunately for them, the vast majority do not share the petitioner’s financial resources, social standing, ethnicity or connections to a political dynasty,” Justice Espinosa wrote. “Nor do their cases share the same ‘glam’ and celebrity factor as this cause célèbre.”

Mr. Skakel, who was 15 at the time of the killing, was not arrested until he was in his late 30s. He was sentenced to 20 years to life for the murder. Mr. Skakel was released in 2013, after spending more than a decade in prison. A judge had vacated the original sentence, finding that Mr. Skakel’s trial lawyer had not provided effective representation.

Then, in 2016, the Supreme Court reinstated the conviction, disagreeing with that judge’s finding. The high court, acting on a request from the defense, decided to review its own decision. In the interim, the makeup of the court changed with the retirement of the justice who wrote the majority opinion in the last ruling....

BUT: The majority opinion in the new case was written by Justice Richard N. Palmer. I've never thought about the relationship among the justices on the Connecticut Supreme Court before this morning, but I just ran into this passage, written by Palmer in 2015 (and quoted at Above the Law in "Judge Benchslaps Fellow Jurist In Awesomely Feisty Footnote/Whoa, these judges probably shouldn't sit next to each other on the bench at court"):

Rather than support her opinion with legal analysis and authority, however, [Justice Espinosa] chooses, for reasons we cannot fathom, to dress her argument in language so derisive that it is unbefitting an opinion of this state’s highest court. Perhaps worse, her interest lies only in launching groundless ad hominem attacks and claiming to be able to divine the (allegedly improper) personal motivations of the majority. We will not respond in kind to Justice Espinosa’s offensive accusations; we are content, instead, to rely on the merits of our analysis of the issues presented by this appeal. Unfortunately, in taking a different path, Justice Espinosa dishonors this court.