It seemed odd this morning that a celebrity criminal defense lawyer was controlling the story of the arrest of a suspect in the Moxley murder.

The Grand Jury completes its long investigation and the state's attorney, acting on the testimony gathered, announces this morning that an arrest is imminent but that the name of the arrestee can not be revealed, as he was a juvenile at the time of the crime. However, the defense attorney, Mickey Sherman, apparently had the full scoop already. In fact, he had previously tipped off his client, Michael Skakel. Thus, when the local arresting authorities arrived at Skakel's Florida home they discovered that he had already departed, in order to travel in his own fashion back to Connecticut for his arrest, according to Sherman.

In an ordinary arrest of a murder suspect, the prosecution presumably tries to avoid alerting the arrestee. Typically, the police go surround the house, bang on the door and shout "Police! We have an arrest warrant for Michael Skakel." They handcuff him and bring him to police headquarters for processing. The "processing" for a man charged with murder usually does not allow him to post bail and go home within an hour or two. In contrast the procedures followed in this case elevate and dignify Skakel and Sherman, and diminishes the police, the prosecutor and the judge. It is a flashback to the deferential treatment extended to OJ (removing the handcuffs, the ridiculous chase, etc.) and to the treatment of the Skakels in the days following Martha's murder (don't offend Rush with a search warrant, etc.)

Let's hope that from here through the trial, the process proceeds objectively and aggressively, from the people's perspective.

Presumably Littleton (the recently hired tutor) will be the prosecution's star witness, since he was granted immunity. The likely murder scenario: Upon learning that his brother got from Martha what Martha been denying him, Michael grabs a golf club off the porch and chases the girl toward her house, and commits the murder. Tommy and Littleton are partial, late-arriving witnesses to this, and probably help drag Michael back to the Skakel house. And they participate in the cover-up. Littleton feels his hands are dirty and the full story would make him look very bad. Thus the situation in effect blackmails him into silence. He will still be a very shaky witness, but possibly the jury will feel that any normal person who found himself in a similar situation would be badly shaken, but still capable of rendering an accurate picture of the truth.

There are so many ironies to this whole case, but the most recent irony and one probably representative of all the rest, is the fact that an arrest probably wouldn't have occurred but for the involvement of the disgraced OJ detective Mark Fuhrman. Until Fuhrman came along, Michael was at best the secondary suspect. Fuhrman is a very un-Greenwich person, and he was condescendingly stonewalled by the Greenwich Police Chief. The irony is that Mark Fuhrman has now helped the Town of Greenwich recover its self esteem!

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