An Omaha woman, Bonnie Cosentino-Welsch, has broken years of silence to speak out on excessive drinking by
Edward Poindexter's defense lawyer, Thomas Kenney, now deceased. Poindexter and
Mondo we Langa, then David Rice, were targets of the illegal
COINTELPRO
operation of the Federal Bureau of Investigation in 1970 when they were
charged with the bombing murder of Omaha Patrolman Larry Minard, Sr.
Kenney had been assigned to defend Poindexter.
The clandestine
COINTELPRO counterintelligence operation of the FBI under Director J. Edgar Hoover made Poindexter and Mondo, now known as the
Omaha Two,
targets to be neutralized. The pair were leaders of the National
Committee to Combat Fascism, a Black Panther affiliate group. A FBI
Laboratory report on the identity of an anonymous 911 caller that lured
Minard to his ambush death in a vacant house was ordered withheld by
Hoover to make a case against the two men.
Bonnie had dated Kenney for several months in 1970, and soon learned
of excessive drinking by the young Assistant Public Defender. Bonnie was
recently shown deposition testimony by Kenney, given in 2004, which
revealed his inexperience in defending a capital murder case. Douglas
County Attorney Donald Knowles sought the death penalty for Poindexter
and Mondo.
In a written statement Bonnie said, “Around the second month of
dating Tom, I received some rambling late night phone calls from him,
and it was very obvious to me that he had a drinking problem.”
“Tom Kenney told me in one of these late night, inebriated
conversations that he either "didn't believe Ed", or "didn't know if he
believed Ed." I don't remember his exact wording, but I remember the
emotion I had about his statement at the time. I felt like Ed didn't
have good or even adequate counsel in Tom Kenney, and there was too much
at stake for Ed to have a public defender who was an alcoholic, by my
estimation, coupled with being a person who doubted him.”
“It's impossible to say how much Tom's drinking affected his work
during that time, or how severe his drinking problem was, but I thought,
how could this man be up late at night, be this drunk, and not be hung
over the next day when he was working on this important case?” Bonnie
continued, “I have always felt that Ed was very crippled by the quality
of his legal representation. Tom Kenney was obviously drunk consistently
on week nights, rambling, slurring words at 1 and 2 a.m. I wouldn't
want an attorney handling my case, especially one this serious, who was
up drinking to this degree the night before.”
“Even though I was very concerned about Tom Kenney and his ability to
represent Ed, I didn't know what to do about it at the time, or who to
talk to about it. I did not go to any of Tom Kenney's superiors with my
concerns. I was in my early twenties then and didn't ever get to know
Tom Kenney long enough, or well enough to make any claims about his
ability to do his job. I had no idea about his effectiveness in the
courtroom, or the ability to assess that, even if I had seen him at
work,” explained Bonnie.
Kenney had two supervisors during the time he worked on Ed
Poindexter's case. Public Defender A.Q. Wolf assigned Kenney to
Poindexter's case, along with his regular “heavy” caseload. Kenney was
out of the office at court or visiting prisoners at the jail most of the
time. With no office investigator and limited clerical staff, Kenney
was forced to work on the case in his off hours. Besides law school, the
only training Kenney had was a one-week course at Northwestern Law
School. This was Kenney's first murder case.
Three months before Poindexter's trial, Wolf resigned to become a
judge and former Governor Frank Morrison was appointed Public Defender.
Although Morrison was well liked and an excellent orator, he had no
criminal defense experience. Morrison handled civil matters when he
wasn't holding political office. Morrison told Kenney he would
co-counsel the case.
To the public it seemed like Poindexter had a strong defense team led
by a former governor, in reality, Poindexter was stuck with two
inexperienced novices. The two lawyers failed to raise an objection to a
“unified” trial, where the jury was tasked with determining guilt or
innocence and determining a penalty if guilty based on the same
testimony. Unified trials were later detemined unconsitutional and other
defendants obtained new trials. Poindexter did not get a new trial
because of the lack of objection by his lawyers. Kenney commented on his
failure to object.
“No, we didn't object to it. It was a thing—it was how things were
done, and it never occurred to us to enter an objection. There's—there's
so many issues in this case, and that's one that we missed,” said
Kenney.
Morrison did realize that Kenney needed more time to work on the
rapidly approaching trial and reduced his caseload. Kenney was tasked
with finding expert witnesses, an assignment he failed. Unable to locate
a laboratory or forensic expert, Kenney unwisely decided to become his
own expert. Kenney told of his efforts in the 2004 deposition. Kenney
said gave himself a crash-course on forensic technology by “reading
books, and manuals, and things” to make up for no scientific expert.
“I did all the footwork and stuff, that investigators would have
done.” Kenney said, “I went back to DC and went in their laboratory, and
they showed me how they conducted the experiments, and I looked through
the microscope of the tool mark comparisons....and it was a perfect
match.”
“What I saw matched, but I had no way of knowing what the sources of
the two surfaces of what they were comparing, what they were,” said
Kenney, unaware that the “perfect match” had twenty-five points of
dissimilarity. As a result of Kenney's trip to the ATF Laboratory, he
did not conduct a rigorous cross-examination of Alcohol, Tobacco and
Firearms Division witnesses at the trial. The dissimilarities were only
brought to light because Mondo we Langa insisted his attorney ask about
the test that Kenney had witnessed.
Frank Morrison issued a public apology to Ed Poindexter in 1997 and urged his release from prison.
“In my opinion, it is just as important for the state to protect the
innocent as to prosecute the guilty. As Public Defender of Douglas
County, it was my official duty to represent Ed Poindexter. He told me
then that he was innocent of this crime, and I still believe him. We did
not have the resources in the Public Defender’s office to get all of
the facts in this case.”
Morrison wrote, “I feel both I and the system failed Ed Poindexter.”
Bonnie Cosentino-Welsch remains haunted by the case. “Like many
people, I will always wonder if I could have done anything to help this
situation of horrible injustice.”
