'Making A Murderer' Lawyer/Human Garbage Len Kachinsky Had A Shithead Response To Brendan Dassey Being Freed From Prison
WBAY – Len Kachinsky represented Dassey when he was convicted in the 2005 murder of freelance photographer Teresa Halbach in Manitowoc County. Dassey’s uncle, Steven Avery, was also convicted. Avery is currently appealing his own case.
The main reason why U.S. Magistrate Judge William Duffin ruled Friday to overturn the conviction was because of Dassey’s confession to raping and murdering Halbach. Duffin ruled the confession was involuntary because investigators made false promises to him, telling him he had nothing to worry about, and because of his young age and intellectual difficulties.
Kachinsky said he was pleased with the ruling once he found out why it was made.
“In the sense that that was an instance that I preserved for appeal, before I was off the case, I was in sense gratified because the fact that that was the basis for magistrate judge Duffin’s decision, it shows that I did my job,” Kachinsky said.
In case you’ve forgotten your Making A Murderer history since that initial binge watch, here’s a list of the various misdeeds from Len Kachinsky while serving as Brendan Dassey’s lawyer during his murder trial, via Uproxx:
-Over e-mail, Kachinsky and [Kachinsky’s private investigator Michael] O’Kelly agreed that O’Kelly would interrogate Brendan on May 12, 2006 – the same day on which Kachinsky expected to (and did) lose his motion to suppress Brendan’s March 1 confession – because the blow of loss would render Brendan more vulnerable.
-Kachinsky canceled a scheduled visit with Brendan to make Brendan feel more “alone” for the O’Kelly interrogation.
-The same day the judge denied the motion to suppress the March 1 confession, O’Kelly falsely told Brendan that he had failed a polygraph test.
-After O’Kelly got the written “confession” from Brendan on May 12, he called Kachinsky who immediately arranged for Brendan to undergo a second uncounseled police interrogation the next day.
-Most of the above actions by Kachinsky and O’Kelly were not discovered until Brendan’s post-conviction evidentiary hearing.
Now I admit that I may not know the intricacies of being a defense lawyer no matter how much Making A Murderer or The Night Of that I watch but a lot of this seems pretty straightforward. “Don’t intimidate your mentally deficient client into making a written confession to a crime he didn’t do” seems like more of a common sense situation than one you need to have passed the bar for. But it really was a comedy of errors of Kachinsky stacking the deck against his own client to the point where he shouldn’t get one second of deluding himself into thinking that he helped even a little bit. He treated that poor kid like scum and deprived him of his American right to a fair trial and all the awful things in the world can’t happen to Len Kachinsky for violating his duty to Brendan Dassey.
That said, Len Kachinsky is right, just not in the way he seems to think. He didn’t directly help Brendan Dassey in any way. But indirectly his incompetence and weaselly vibe helped people around the globe, including the federal judge overturning the conviction, see how fucked up the system can be and in particular how awful it was to this one poor kid. It probably would have been more helpful to just have a competent lawyer in the first place but if Brendan Dassey were going to get railroaded, at least he got railroaded in cartoonishly evil fashion so he could eventually get out. When God closes a door, he has a scumbag lawyer open a window 10 years later.
Tangential question I thought about this weekend too: Brendan Dassey is going to make a shitload off of a wrongful imprisonment lawsuit, I’d assume, he’s technically famous and a sympathetic character to millions of people around the globe…is his life now better than it would have been if this whole thing never happened? Based off the show, I can’t imagine he was going to be living a life of luxury and personal fulfillment in that world he was living in if he didn’t go to jail. And while obviously no one wants to be wrongfully imprisoned for over a decade, particularly for the awful crime of murdering and sexually assaulting a woman, he’s got some real momentum on his side for the second half of 2016 and beyond. All I’m saying is fuck Len Kachinsky but also maybe things happened for a reason here.