Kunze V. Washington

State of Washington v. Kunze – November 10, 1999

No. 22338-4-II

On December 16, 1994, a gentleman by the name of David Wayne Kunze allegedly committed murder amongst many other crimes. Kunze entered the home of James McCann while asleep in the master bedroom and struck him in the head with a blunt object, ultimately causing his death. Kunze then went in to McCann’s son, Tyler’s room striking him in the head fracturing his skull. Soon after Kunze left the residence, Tyler crawled out to the front porch where he was later found by a passerby. Throughout the investigation, detectives learned McCann’s girlfriend had been previously married to Kunze for 18 years and she had just recently divorced him. This made the police very interested in David Kunze which led to his arrest. According to his own statement, Kunze was upset by the news of his ex-wife getting married to another man.

The Washington State Crime Lab sent a fingerprint technician, George Millar, to process the home for evidence. While dusting surfaces with black fingerprint powder, he discovered a partial latent earprint on the the victim’s bedroom door. Millar lifted the latent print using the standard tape and palm-print card. Michael Grubb, another forensic scientist compared the latent earprint from McCann’s bedroom door to the left side of Kunze’s face and concluded that the print “could have been made by David Kunze.” A few months later, Grubb and Millar met with Kunze and took exemplars of his ear by applying hand lotion to it and pressing it against a glass surface varying amounts of pressure. This glass was then dusted with fingerprint powder and transferred onto a transparent plastic overlay. After these exemplars were taken, they (Millar and Grubb) were asked to compare them to the latent print from the crime scene. Millar declined because his lab supervisor stated that earprint identification was “out of the expertise of the crime lab’s latent unit.” However, Grubb concluded that “David...