April 8, 2006

Attorneys on the defense

High-profile cases put lawyers under the microscope

TOWN OF MENASHA-Attorney Len Kachinsky, like all criminal defense lawyers , knows the harsh glare of the public spotlight.

Kachinsky, whose law offices are in Appleton , encountered many people who were outspoken in their disdain for his client when he was a candidate for Winnebago County Circuit Judge and represented Thomas Blake, who killed a young woman in his Neenah apartment in March 2005.

But Kachinsky has no regrets about providing legal representation to a reviled client. And he wants the public to understand that taking on an unpopular case doesn't mean a defense attorney is a bad person. "Sometimes you just do what you have to do. It was as much a call to duty as when I was called up by the Army Reserve three times to serve during wartime".

"Even the most unsavory clients need competent legal counsel" said Appleton attorney Len Kachinsky. "As an attorney, I'm very much oriented to due process."

Kachinsky has been appointed to represent Brendan Dassey, the teenager charged with his uncle, Steven Avery, in the killing, sexual assault and mutilation of Halbach.

Halbach, a 25-year-old freelance photographer from St. John in Calumet County, disappeared Oct. 31 after taking a photo of a minivan Avery had for sale at his family's salvage yard west of Mishicot.

Kachinsky said his wife did not want him to take the public defender appointment to represent Dassey because of the lurid nature of the Halbach slaying. "But Barb got over it," Kachinsky said.

Janine Geske, a former Wisconsin Supreme Court justice who now is a law professor at Marquette University in Milwaukee, said unpopular defendants need effective legal representation.

Defense attorneys are obligated to force prosecutors to do their jobs, said Geske, who was a circuit court judge in Milwaukee for 12 years.

"If you talk to a defense lawyer," she said, "it's not whether he likes the defendant or not, it's about requiring the state to prove its case beyond a reasonable doubt."

Geske said people often get upset when a defendant who has confessed to a crime pleads not guilty and goes to trial. "When they plead not guilty, it means 'prove it.' It doesn't mean 'I didn't do it,'" Geske said.

Geske added that when high-profile defendants receive competent legal assistance, the chances of the case being overturned on appeal are lessened.