Newsmaker of year: Retiring DA Bill Kenerly weathered all challenges

In his office at the Rowan County Justice Center, Rowan County District Attorney Bill Kenerly is retiring his post at DA after serving 20 years. Photo by Jon C. Lakey, Salisbury Post.

Rowan County District Attorney Bill Kenerly talks on the phone at the end of a long day of work in Rowan County Justice Center. Kenerly is retiring his post at DA after serving 20 years. Photo by Jon C. Lakey, Salisbury Post.

In his office at the Rowan County Justice Center, Rowan County District Attorney Bill Kenerly is retiring his post at DA after serving 20 years. Photo by Jon C. Lakey, Salisbury Post.

Rowan County District Attorney Bill Kenerly shares a laugh with his Administrative Assistant Joan Summers after a long days work in Rowan County Justice Center. Kenerly is retiring his post at DA after serving 20 years. Photo by Jon C. Lakey, Salisbury Post.

The owners manuel of a 1967 Ford Mustang still beared the name of the orginal owner, Bill Kenerly. Rowan County District Attorney Bill Kenerly is retiring his post at DA after serving 20 years. He purchased the Mustang new in 1967 and after 3 years sold it off as his family out grew it. Kenerly's named was still on the owners manuel that was in the car. The last owner made contact and soon the car came back home to the Kenerlys.

In his office at the Rowan County Justice Center, Rowan County District Attorney Bill Kenerly is retiring his post at DA after serving 20 years. Photo by Jon C. Lakey, Salisbury Post.

After a full days work, Rowan County District Attorney Bill Kenerly descends the steps from his office in Rowan County Justice Center. Kenerly is retiring his post at DA after serving 20 years. Photo by Jon C. Lakey, Salisbury Post.

By Mark Wineka

mwineka@salisburypost.com

The bookends to Bill Kenerly’s 20-year career as district attorney for Rowan County were similar in their difficulty.

In his first year as DA, Kenerly confronted a backlog of cases, organizational challenges, lukewarm relationships with law enforcement, the loss of key personnel and the longest criminal trial in Rowan history.

This year Kenerly served as the special prosecutor determining whether former Gov. Mike Easley committed any crimes stemming from incorrect campaign finance reports.

But Kenerly had other things on his plate.

He decided early in the year not to seek re-election to a sixth term.

He had four murder trials already scheduled. Kenerly personally tried two murder cases in 2010 and negotiated pleas in several others, always as the lead prosecutor.

In July, the state court system confirmed for Kenerly what he always suspected. His office was the most overloaded and understaffed DA’s office in North Carolina.

The backlog of cases he confronted in 1991 paled in comparison to what he saw in 2010.

Only the people closest to the 65-year-old Kenerly knew he also faced two serious health issues this year.

In August, his thyroid gland was removed after tests showed a malignant cancer. A scan also revealed a spot on his kidney, and that tumor was removed in September.

He missed only five days with the thyroid surgery and 10 days with the kidney operation. He has not required chemotherapy and has been given a clean bill of health for now.

Only recently, Kenerly endured a radioactive iodine treatment in relation to his thyroid — a procedure requiring him to be isolated from other people for five days.

“I’ve been exhausted, to tell you the truth,” Kenerly confides.

But he says neither exhaustion nor his pending retirement at the end of this month had any bearing on his decision Nov. 23 to give former Gov. Easley a plea deal.

Many North Carolinians cried foul — that Easley had gotten off too easy.

Kenerly anticipated the reaction, but he says, “I consider that to be clearly in the win column.”

The cost to Easley was considerable, though the $1,000 fine and plea he agreed to — failing to report properly a 2006 helicopter flight worth $1,600 — may sound minor on the surface.

Easley is the first governor to be a convicted felon, and it was for something he did while in office. A former N.C. attorney general, Easley also could lose his license to practice law.

As the weeks have passed since Easley’s plea deal in court, Kenerly carries an even stronger conviction that he made the correct legal decision.

• • •

The Salisbury Post’s Editorial Board has named Kenerly its 2010 Newsmaker of the Year.

It is as much a career recognition as it is a singular one.

Kenerly filled the top legal position in Rowan County for two decades, finding a way to keep politics out of his office, while building a reputation as a top trial attorney.

He earned praise from fellow prosecutors and defense attorneys alike. After defeating Bill Alexander in the November 1990 general election and replacing longtime District Attorney Bob Roberts, Kenerly was never opposed again in four succeeding elections.

Rowan District Court Judge Beth Dixon served as an assistant DA for Kenerly for about one-and-a-half years, before being elected to the bench in 2002.

To this day, it was her favorite job.

Kenerly’s charge to his staff, Dixon says, was to do the right thing. That was more important than a win.

“He’s my Atticus Finch,” she says.

• • •

When the state Board of Elections asked for an examination of Democrat Easley and his campaign dealings, the Wake County DA cited a friendship with Easley as his conflict and called in Kenerly, a conservative Republican, instead.

Throughout the year, Kenerly prepared himself mentally to follow the Easley case wherever it took him.

For months, he assumed he would be working the case past his retirement as Rowan DA, and he had been assured access to an office, computer and cell phone after he moved out of his local quarters.

The plea discussions started only about a week before Easley accepted his deal in court. Before that, Kenerly was in a trial mode. Beginning in July, the case was taking about two hours of his time each work day.

He was meeting periodically in Greensboro with a senior SBI agent assigned to the case, going through hundreds of pages of investigative reports and discussing issues with an elections finance officer in Raleigh.

Early on, Easley’s attorneys had asked Kenerly for a chance to speak with him before he made any final decision on how to proceed in the case.

Kenerly agreed to make himself available, mainly because he didn’t want to miss something that could be crucial.

“I didn’t want to make a Mike Nifong mistake,” Kenerly says, referring to the former Durham County DA’s handling of the Duke University lacrosse case.

• • •

In deciding to accept the plea arrangement, Kenerly weighed the possibility of a costly mistrial, a hung jury or that Easley might escape with only a misdemeanor decision against him.

When he compared his case to what federal prosecutors had against former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich, Kenerly knew he had far less. Yet of 24 counts against Blagojevich, all were dismissed except one — lying to federal agents.

Kenerly’s case against Easley also was hamstrung by a 37-year-old immunity statute. Easley had been subpoenaed and testified before the state Board of Elections in 2009.

The statute says a witness can be compelled by subpoena to testify by the board, but any “individual so compelled to testify with respect to any acts of his own shall be immune from prosecution on account thereof.”

Kenerly says the General Assembly needs to fix that law, though he’ll never be sure how Easley’s attorneys may have used the statute. He’s confident it could have delayed litigation of any case for a couple of years.

Kenerly sought what he considered the best possible outcome for the state based on the facts before him and the law, and he says the ramifications for Easley are nothing to take lightly.

• • •

A Salisbury native and former U.S. Marine wounded in Vietnam, Kenerly has been described as a worrier, focused, tough, stubborn, fair and low-key.

Even before law school at the University of North Carolina, the Duke University undergrad dreamed of being a district attorney some day.

Joan Summers, Kenerly’s chief administrative assistant for all the years he has been DA, also is retiring with Kenerly at the end of this month. “I’m going out with the best,” she says. “I think the world of him, as a boss and as a friend.”

Summers says if Kenerly lost his temper over the years, whatever was taking place deserved that reaction.

“It takes a lot to get him riled,” she says.

Anna Mills Wagoner, former U.S. District Attorney for the Middle District in North Carolina and a newly elected Superior Court judge, have been friends for decades. She jokes that her nickname for him is “The Prince of Darkness” because he worries so much and she thinks of him as a glass-half-empty kind of guy. “He worries because he cares so much,” Wagoner says.

• • •

Tom King has been an assistant DA for Kenerly for more than 10 years. In private practice before that, King tried six capital cases against Kenerly. He says Kenerly proved to be professional, while also serving the state as a zealous prosecutor.

“He was just an ethical prosecutor, working with him, or against him,” King says. “Bill Kenerly told us as long as you did the right thing for the right reason, I’ll support you on it.”

Kenerly’s low-key demeanor hid from many people his competitive fire and passion for justice, King says. A Superior Court judge told King once that Kenerly was the best trial lawyer he had ever seen.

“The people of this community — they’re losing a very valuable resource,” King says. “He is the real deal.”

Kenerly’s insistence on trying murder jury trials himself was not resented by his fellow prosecutors, but admired.

“He’s not just a bureaucrat, he’s leading from the front,” King says. “A lot of DAs don’t do that. He could have easily delegated those cases, so you have to respect him for that.”

Karen Biernacki, Kenerly’s chief assistant DA, says Kenerly thought if he was going to make the call about life or death and be the conscience of the community, he needed to take the responsibility for trying that case.

King says Kenerly usually found a small detail or insight into a murder case that became his centerpiece for the whole trial.

Colleagues also marveled at his preparation: “I’ve never seen him use a note,” Biernacki says.

• • •

Assistant Rowan County DA Michelle Walker, 32, considers her boss a mentor.

She was born in 1978 when Kenerly tried his first murder case.

“He respects you and lets you make your own decisions,” Walker says. “He’s almost like a father figure to those of us who are younger in the office.”

Walker says Kenerly connected with juries by being respectful, polite, fair, calm and well versed in the law. He built a sense of trust with families of crime victims, juries, his staff and even defense attorneys, Walker says.

“If he tells you something, you can take it to the bank,” she adds.

• • •

Over the years, Kenerly has received criticism for clogging the courts — and jails — by being too hard-line with defense attorneys. Interestingly, he also has heard complaints about accepting too many plea arrangements.

This year, Kenerly took some heat for not seeking the death penalty and accepting pleas in two murder cases in which the convicted killers received life sentences.

Kenerly says the evidence in both cases against the defendants was overwhelming and he only accepted seeking the life sentences with the OK of victims’ families.

“They said, ‘Let’s do it,’ ” Kenerly says. “This was not one last ‘arm twister.’ ”

Kenerly gives his office an “A” grade for the way it disposed of many felony cases, the jury trials it won and the plea bargains that were worked out. In turn, he gives the office a “C-minus” on case backlog.

Kenerly says he personally could have sped many capital cases along if he was willing to reduce charges to manslaughter — something he would not do.

As for his own trial methods, Kenerly says he has always tried to figure out what the jury is interested in, not what lawyers are. When he found that point of connection, he built his case around it.

Over 20 years, Kenerly tried three murder cases in which the jury found the defendant not guilty, including one this year, though Ray Ross was still sentenced to many years in prison on other crimes.

Of those three “losses,” Kenerly says he can understand the jury’s decision in two, but one not-guilty decision still eats at him to this day.

“I remain stunned,” he says, without naming the case.

In all, Kenerly tried 38 murder cases as DA and negotiated murder pleas in 123 other cases.

Kenerly resists saying he enjoyed the job as DA, seeing it as an affront to the countless people affected by crime.

“You’d have to be sick to enjoy something ... that has so much misery in it,” he says.

But he did find the job “engaging,” he adds.

• • •

In the same light, Kenerly says he will never consider his special prosecution of the Easley case as the most important of his career.

That would be an insult, he says, to all the families hurt by crimes in which his office sought to find justice.

As he moves into retirement, Kenerly and his wife, Toni, look forward to spending more time with their five grandchildren. Kenerly hopes he also has more time for driving their 1967 Mustang (see the accompanying story) and fishing.

He and four friends own a cabin in Graham County that’s on a trout stream.

Kenerly says he has a few regrets, including a couple plea agreements from years ago that he would have handled differently, given that the men convicted could soon be released and he believes shouldn’t be.

But his biggest regret?

He wishes he would have run for DA sooner.

The Bill Kenerly file

Born: Oct. 29, 1945, in Salisbury

Education: Boyden High (1963); Duke University (1967); University of North Carolina Law School (1973).

Military: U.S. Marine Corps (1967-70). Purple Heart recipient. Wounded in Vietnam in 1968 while leading a 42-man rifle platoon. Bullet went through left arm into his chest. Finished his stint with Marines as an infantry training officer at Camp Lejeune.

Law Career: Clerked for N.C. Supreme Court Justice Susie Sharpe (1973-74); private practice (1974-75 and 1978-1990); assistant district attorney (1975-78); district attorney (1991-2010).

Community: Eight years on the Salisbury Board of Education (before merger); former youth basketball coach and Sunday School teacher for senior high youth; past head of N.C. District Attorneys Association; named N.C. Bar Association’s 2010 Prosecutor of the Year.

Family: Wife, Toni; sons, Bill Jr., Jay and Scott; five grandchildren.

Contact Mark Wineka at 704-797-4263.