State v. Kunze, 22338-4-II.

• Decision Date: 10 November 1999
• Docket Number: No. 22338-4-II.,22338-4-II.
• Citation: 97 Wash.App. 832,988 P.2d 977
• Court: Washington Court of Appeals
• Parties: STATE of Washington, Respondent, v. David Wayne KUNZE, Appellant.

988 P.2d 977

97 Wash.App. 832

STATE of Washington, Respondent, v. David Wayne KUNZE, Appellant.

No. 22338-4-II.

Court of Appeals of Washington, Division 2.

November 10, 1999.

Reconsideration Denied December 22, 1999.

John Henry Browne, Browne & Ressler, Rita Joan Griffith, Griffith & Cole P, Seattle, for Appellant.

Dennis Hunter, Clark Co. Deputy Pros. Atty., LLC, Vancouver, for Respondent.

MORGAN, J.

David Wayne Kunze appeals his convictions for aggravated murder and other crimes. The principal issue is whether the State's witnesses could opine, based on the relationship among some of the anatomical features of the external ear, that Kunze was the probable and likely source of a latent earprint discovered at the scene. Other issues are whether two police officers could opine that the crime scene might have been staged to look like a burglary, and whether the trial court properly restricted the cross-examination of a jailhouse informant. We reverse and remand for new trial.

In the early morning hours of December 16, 1994, an intruder¹ entered the Clark County home of James McCann. McCann was asleep in the master bedroom. His son Tyler, age 13, was asleep in another bedroom. The intruder bludgeoned McCann in the head with a blunt object, causing his death. The intruder also bludgeoned Tyler in the head, causing a fractured skull. When the intruder left, Tyler crawled out to the front porch, where he was found after daylight by a passerby.

While awaiting surgery at the hospital, Tyler told the police that he had been afraid to look at his attacker closely. He thought, however, that the attacker was a darkly complected male, possibly Puerto Rican, about six feet tall with medium build, dark or black hair to mid-ear, 25 to 30 years of age, and a deep voice. Tyler later recalled that the attacker wore gloves but not glasses, and had a flashlight in his mouth. Kunze is in his mid-forties, wears glasses, and has reddish-blond hair.

Back at the house, the police observed that the intruder had opened drawers and cabinets without disturbing the contents. They also found that the intruder had taken a TV, a VCR, stereo speakers, a "boom box," McCann's wallet containing identification and credit cards, McCann's truck, and various other items.

George Millar, a fingerprint technician with the Washington State Crime Laboratory, processed the home for evidence. He discovered a partial latent earprint on the hallway-side surface of McCann's bedroom door. He "dusted" the print by applying black fingerprint powder with a fiberglass brush. He "lifted" the print by applying palm-print tape first to the door and then to a palm-print card. The resulting print showed the antitragus and portions of the tragus, helix, helix rim, and antihelix. The external features of a complete ear are shown in the following diagram.²

The police were immediately interested in Kunze, notwithstanding Tyler's description of the intruder. Kunze had been married to Diana James from 1976 to April 1994. On December 12, 1994, four days before the intruder entered McCann's home, James told Kunze that she and McCann were planning to be married. Kunze was upset by the news, according to his own later statement.

The police interviewed Kunze several times. They also searched, with his consent, his truck, house, boat, storage locker, and safety deposit box. The searches did not disclose anything significant, with the possible exception of a receipt for a flashlight.

On or about March 28, 1995, Michael Grubb, a criminologist with the Washington State Crime Laboratory, compared the latent print from McCann's bedroom door with photos of the left side of Kunze's face. He concluded that the latent print "could have been made by Dave Kunze."³ He also thought that "[i]t may be possible to obtain additional information by comparing the [latent print] to exemplar impressions."⁴

On September 21, 1995, Millar and Grubb met with Kunze to obtain earprint exemplars. Neither had taken an earprint exemplar before, although each had practiced on laboratory staff in preparation for meeting with Kunze. For each of the seven exemplars they took,⁵ they had Kunze put hand lotion on his ear⁶ and press the ear against a glass surface with a different degree of pressure ("light," "medium," or "hard"). They then dusted the glass with fingerprint powder and used palm-print tape to transfer the resulting impression onto a transparent plastic overlay.

The reason Millar and Grubb took multiple exemplars is that they were consciously trying to produce one that would match (i.e., "duplicate"⁷) the latent print from McCann's door. They knew that earprints of the same ear vary according to the angle and rotation of the head, and also according to the degree of pressure with which the head is pressed against the receiving surface. They did not know the angle and rotation of the head that made the latent print, or the degree of pressure with which that head had been pressed against McCann's door. Hoping to compensate for these difficulties, they told Kunze to use a different degree of pressure each time ("light," "medium" or "hard"), and they looked at the latent print as they worked.

After Millar and Grubb took the exemplars, they were asked to compare them to the latent print. Millar declined because his laboratory supervisor thought that earprint identification was "out of the expertise of the [crime lab's] latent unit."⁸ Grubb went ahead, concluding that "David Kunze is a likely source for the earprint and cheekprint which were lifted from the outside of the bedroom door at the homicide scene."⁹

In June 1996, the State charged Kunze with aggravated murder, assault, robbery, burglary, and kidnapping. In October 1996, Kunze moved for "a pre-trial order excluding any evidence of earprint identification."¹⁰ In December 1996, the trial court convened a Frye hearing at which Grubb and other witnesses were called. We must understand their testimony in detail in order to resolve the issues on appeal.

Grubb testified to extensive qualifications as a criminalist. He had been working as a criminalist for more than twenty years, and he was currently the manager of the state crime lab's Seattle office. Although he had never before dealt with earprints, he specialized in firearm and toolmark identification, and he had analyzed "impression evidence" of other kinds. He had not seen any data or studies on earprints, or on "how often an ear having the general shape of the questioned print in this case appears in the general human population;"¹¹ he thought, however, that a Dutch policeman named Cor Van der Lugt might have such information. He had used transparent overlays to compare the latent and the exemplars in this case, and such overlays are a generally accepted method of making comparisons.¹² When he compared the latent print with the exemplars taken from Kunze, he emphasized the exemplars taken with "a lighter amount of pressure," because those "more closely approximated... the impression from the crime scene."¹³ He claimed that latent earprint identification is generally accepted in the scientific community, reasoning that "the earprint is just another form of impression evidence," and that other "impression evidence is generally accepted in the scientific community."¹⁴ He concluded that "Mr. Kunze could be the source of [the latent] impression, and even further, I believe it's likely that the impression from [the] crime scene is Mr. Kunze's ear and cheek print."¹⁵

Cor Van der Lugt testified to extensive qualifications as a police evidence technician. He had been a Dutch police officer since 1971 and a crime scene officer since 1979. He had trained other crime scene officers for many years. Being interested in the reliability of earprints, he had written "a lot of letters all around the world to people who did something with earprints, but unfortunately ... didn't get too much of [a] response."¹⁶ He had adopted methods used by Professor Lunga of Germany, "who did [an] investigation as to what parts of the ear look alike between parents and their children;"¹⁷ methods used by Mr. Hirschi of Switzerland, who "did an investigation between the relation of the height of defining of an earprint and the body length of the offender;"¹⁸ and the methods used by several other people in the eastern part of Germany. He had received over 600 cases "for comparative analysis"¹⁹ and had made an identification to his own satisfaction in "somewhere between 200 and 250 cases."²⁰ On the basis of "somewhere between 100 and 200 prints,"²¹ he had concluded that pressure distortion is not a problem that prevents you from making an identification or a comparison between ears, even though you must "get the same pressure on the ear as the ear that was found on the scene of a crime;"²² the solution, he thought, was merely to take several exemplars under different degrees of pressure, then "pick the one that comes closest" to the latent print.²³ He had been to court in six earprint cases, all in Holland, and the judges in those cases had not been concerned about his methodology; indeed, they had "accepted that you can identify an individual by his earprint."²⁴ He did not present or refer to any published literature stating that earprint identification was generally accepted in the scientific community. He did, however, testify as follows:

Q: [D]o you have an opinion as to whether... the uniqueness of the human ear as a basis for personal identification is a notion that is generally accepted in the Netherlands and elsewhere amongst those engaged in forensic identification?

A: It is accepted, yes.[²⁵]

Alfred V. Iannarelli testified to extensive qualifications as a law enforcement officer. For 30 years, he had worked as a deputy sheriff in Alameda County, California, as the chief of campus police at California State University at Hayward, and in several other law enforcement positions. Thereafter, he had worked...