UNDATED (WTAQ) – In the wake of Friday’s decision by a federal judge overturning Brendan Dassey’s conviction in the 2005 murder of Teresa Halbach, Dassey’s first attorney is talking about it.
Len Kachinsky represented then 16-year-old Brendan Dassey when investigators questioned him about the murder for which his uncle Steven Avery was also accused and later convicted of.
At the time, Dassey was pulled out of school and Kachinsky allowed officers to interview his teenage client without him in the room. Before Dassey went to trial, Kachinsky was removed by the trial judge.
Dassey and his uncle Steven Avery were convicted in separate trials of killing Halbach, who had traveled to Avery’s family’s Manitowoc County salvage yard to take photos of a minivan for sale. The 25-year-old Halbach was working as a freelance photographer for Auto Trader magazine.
In a decision overturning Dassey’s conviction, Federal Judge William Duffin called Kachinsky’s work “indefensible,” although he said that was not the reason for the conviction being overturned.
Kachinsky told FOX 11 he was “surprised” by the ruling and that, “When a motion to suppress is appealed, usually the finding of the trial judge, in this case (Manitowoc County Judge Jerome Fox), is usually upheld unless it’s clearly erroneous.”
Dassey’s confession was called into question nationally with the release of the Netflix series “Making A Murderer,” which included parts of the videotaped confession.
