Brendan Dassey’s lousy lawyer could now be looking at jail time
Len Kachinsky will go on trial in December
If you’ve started watching watching Making a Murderer season two, or even if you just watched the first season of the true crime docuseries on Netflix, you’ll recognise Len Kachinsky.
Kachinsky was the lawyer who we saw representing defendant Brendan Dassey, and who some viewers blamed for allowing the teenager to confess to crimes of which some feel he was innocent.
The lawyer was removed from Dassey’s defence team before the case went to trial, but has argued he was not to blame for Steven Avery’s relative ultimately being convicted over the death of journalist Theresa Halbach.
However, more than a decade on from Dassey’s trial, Kachinsky himself could be facing time behind bars.
Kachinsky’s potential imprisonment is nothing to do with the events of Making a Murderer, but instead relates to his time spent as a judge long after the Halbach murder case.
According to the Daily Mail, the 65-year-old will go on trial in December for felony stalking and violating a restraining order, following allegations that he entered his clerk’s office and made cat noises. If found guilty, he could face five years in prison.
The clerk alleges that this was part of a year-long period of harassment, beginning in April 2017, and said in a complaint: “I have become so fearful of him that I am constantly looking over my shoulder to see if the Judge is around”.
The second season of Making a Murderer, which is on Netflix now, focuses on some of the events since the original trial, with interviews with Steven Avery’s new lawyer Kathleen Zellner among others.
Avery is currently serving a life sentence without the possibility of parole for the murder of Theresa Halbach in 2005, as well as a concurrent sentence for a weapons charge. He was represented by Dean Strang and Jerry Buting in the initial case, before hiring Zellner to continue to fight for his sentence to be overturned.
The first season was considered one of the best documentaries on Netflix, and season two builds on the filmmaking of Moira Demos and Laura Ricciardi to bring updates on a case which has drawn huge interest.
(Images: Netflix)
