Late last week it was announced that Brendan Dassey’s conviction in the death of Teresa Halbach had been overturned. Convicted in 2007, Dassey was sentenced to life without parole for 41 years for first-degree intentional homicide, second-degree sexual assault and mutilation of a corpse. As those of you who’ve seen Making a Murderer know, Dassey’s confession came only after interrogating officers made false promises and essentially coerced a confession out of him, throwing out any desire to find out the truth and looking to get a quick arrest instead.
It didn’t help that his defense attorney, Len Kachinsky, is possibly the biggest bag of dicks to ever be dropped off in the back of a sex shop. Not only did he blatantly not give a shit about his client, but a writ of habeas corpus from Dassey’s lawyers list a slew of complaints against him in regards to his case:
• Over e-mail, Kachinsky and 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.
• Previously, O’Kelly had sent an email to Kachinsky stating that Brendan’s family was “truly where the devil resides in comfort. I can find no good in any member. These people are pure evil…A friend of mine suggested ‘This is a one branch family tree. Cut this tree down. We need to end the gene pool here.’ “
• 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.
Despite Kachinsky’s seemingly intentional incompetence, U.S. Magistrate Judge William Duffin’s decision to overturn Dassey’s conviction was, according to WBAY, “because investigators made false promises to him, telling him he had nothing to worry about, and because of his young age and intellectual difficulties.”
While technically they didn’t overturn it because of Kachinsky, Judge Duffin noted in his 91-page decision that “Kachinsky’s misconduct was indefensible” and that his “conduct was inexcusable both tactically and ethically. It is one thing for an attorney to point out to a client how deep of a hole the client is it. But to assist the prosecution in digging that hole deeper is an affront to the principles of justice that underlie a defense attorney’s vital role in the adversarial system.”
OOOH…BURNED.
Yet when WBAY took the time to seek out Kachinsky and ask what he thought of Dassey’s overturned conviction, he had the balls to say this:
“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.”
Translation: I helped get Dassey’s conviction overturned by being so incompetent that I was unable to get his initial confession, which even a first-year law student should have been able to do, thrown out of court. Never mind that the confession is what got him convicted in the first place, no – it’s all me. Me me me me me. I did a good job and I deserve a cookie.
As for when we’ll be seeing Branden’s uncle, Steven Avery, getting popped outta jail, his defense attorney seems to think it’s only a matter of time – we’ll just have to wait until season 2 of Making a Murderer premieres to find out the details.