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.

But just because you paid a million dollars doesn't mean your lawyer was any good. Michal Skakel picked a TV-talking-lawyer-head. And maybe that's exactly the screw-up a Kennedy would make — mistaking superficial appearance and fame and money for competence.