A lawyer for Mayor Billy Kenoi has filed a number of pretrial motions in Kenoi’s felony theft case, most seeking to dismiss the indictment or specific charges contained in the indictment.
According to the court records, Honolulu attorney Todd Eddins filed three motions Aug. 8 to dismiss the indictment returned March 23 against the mayor, as well as a motion seeking dismissal of the two felony theft charges.
Kenoi also is facing two misdemeanor theft charges, plus three counts of tampering with a government record and a single count of making a false statement under oath, all misdemeanors.
The charges stem from a yearlong investigation by the state attorney general’s office into the mayor’s misuse of his county credit card, also known as a pCard. The investigation started after West Hawaii Today reported Kenoi used his pCard to pay an $892 tab at Club Evergreen, a Honolulu hostess bar.
Kenoi is scheduled for trial Oct. 10 in Hilo before Honolulu Circuit Judge Dexter Del Rosario. All Big Island judges who were on the bench when the mayor was indicted recused themselves from hearing the case.
One of the motions to dismiss the indictment is based on “violation of the defendant’s right to a fair and impartial grand jury proceedings,” while another is “based on violation of (Kenoi’s) due process rights,” according to court records.
The motion to dismiss the two second-degree theft charges, both Class C felonies that carry a possible five-year prison term upon conviction, are “based on failure to provide adequate notice as to the terms of the charges,” court records indicate.
Another motion filed by Eddins seeks to strike “surplusage.” Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines the term as a “matter introduced in legal pleading which is not necessary or relevant to the case.”
In total, the mayor tallied almost $130,000 in charges on the credit card between January 2009 and March 2015.
Kenoi reimbursed the county for $22,292 in personal charges between those dates. He later paid back approximately $9,500 more after Big Island newspapers published their stories examining his pCard use.
Kenoi is nearly finished serving two four-year terms as mayor, the legal limit for consecutive terms as the county’s chief executive. He will be succeeded in December by former Mayor Harry Kim, who took 51.6 percent of the votes in a 13-candidate primary election Saturday night to win the office outright.
A hearing on all the motions is scheduled for 1 p.m. on Sept. 16 in Hilo, according to Del Rosario’s staff.
Eddins, who said in March that Kenoi “is going to fight these flimsy allegations all the way,” didn’t return a Monday afternoon phone message seeking comment by press time.
Email John Burnett at jburnett@hawaiitribune-herald.com.
