After a three-week trial, a jury of seven women and five men on Friday found 40-year-old Kalani Lono Kaohimaunu not guilty of second-degree murder for the Thanksgiving 2015 shotgun slaying of 39-year-old Keola Penovaroff in Hilo.
Following about 5 1/2 hours of deliberations on Thursday afternoon and Friday morning, the jury also found Kaohimaunu not guilty of carrying a firearm in the commission of a felony.
“I am disappointed, but the jury has spoken. We will respect their decision,” Deputy Prosecutor Joseph Lee, lead prosecutor in the case, said afterward. “I’ve been doing this for almost 32 years. You always hope they come back in your favor. But you know, I learned long ago to never be surprised by a jury verdict.”
The state’s only evidence tying Kaohimaunu to the scene of the crime was Venus Mitchell, girlfriend of the slain man.
Mitchell testified that in the late evening of Nov. 26, 2015, Kaohimaunu entered the property his mother owned and Mitchell rented at 143 West Kawailani St., got out of a sedan, shot Penovaroff and drove away.
Mitchell, by her own admission, had been smoking methamphetamine with Penovaroff prior to the shooting, but said despite that, she was 100% certain Kaohimaunu was the shooter.
“I think she did wonderfully. I really do,” Lee said of his primary witness. “She came out, she was honest about everything. And I believe she was credible.”
Kaohimaunu didn’t testify during his trial. His attorney, Aaron Wills, presented two witnesses — Kaohimaunu’s maternal uncle, Michael O’Shaugnessy, and Avery Kahookaulana-Sulprizio — who testified Kaohimaunu was at O’Shaughnessy’s Thanksgiving party in Kalapana at the time of the shooting.
Wills was successful in painting Mitchell as an unreliable witness. In addition, Wills told jurors Mitchell wanted payback against Kaohimaunu’s mother, Kathie, and had “motive to lie,” because Kathie Kaohimaunu had won an eviction lawsuit the prior day against Mitchell, a single mother of two, and Mitchell’s mother, Bonnie Mitchell Fox.
“They had that trial, they lost, and the very next day the shooting happened,” Wills said. “Now, I don’t know who did the shooting. But I think Venus was just angry at that time. She was angry at Kathie, angry at this whole situation. And her boyfriend’s dead.
“And I think, out of anger, whatever, she said it was Kalani that did it.”
Wills is the sixth attorney to represent Kaohimaunu since he was arrested and charged shortly after the homicide.
Wills said his client at least twice rejected a plea deal for manslaughter because he wasn’t about to settle for 20 years in prison for something he didn’t do. Kaohimaunu’s original bail was $1 million. It was later reduced to $750,000, but Kaohimaunu remained incarcerated until his acquittal.
“Because he went through five attorneys, this took awhile,” Wills said. “And because this happened during COVID, he sat in pretrial detention for nearly seven years. I don’t know another case of a guy who sat that long without a trial.
“He’s angry, obviously, because he was incarcerated for this long. And I think he’s going to have to get over that to have a normal life now.”
Wills said there are always seeds of doubt about the defendant once he assumes a case, but the doubt subsided after he went over the 1,500-some pages of discovery, which also included about 30 videos.
“Once I looked at it, I did believe in his innocence. And I told him that repeatedly before we got into the trial,” he said.
According to Wills, his client was put behind bars after a substandard investigation.
“They believed Venus Mitchell’s story from the beginning,” he said. “They never really looked into … how could you be in two places. They never looked into how you can eliminate certain theories. They just went with the theory that Venus was telling the truth.”
Despite the acquittal, Wills said justice hasn’t been completed in this case.
“We’re happy for Kalani, because he was wrongly accused,” he said. “What we’re not happy about is this: Mr. Penovaroff’s killer is still out there.
“We believe this investigation was sloppy, and we also believe it was lazy. We believe the way this thing was described as, ‘There was this drug activity and this was drug dealers killing drug dealers, and who cares? And we’ll just blame a guy who’s got a felony on his record who looks like he did it.’”
Kathie Kaohimaunu and Keoni Kaohimaunu, Kalani Kaohimaunu’s brother, declined to comment after the verdict.
The Tribune-Herald wasn’t able to determine if there were any family members of the victim in the courtroom.
Email John Burnett at jburnett@hawaiitribune-herald.com.