Opinion ID: 782567
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: The Admission of the Kane Kutlery Knives

Text: 152 As mentioned above, police discovered a knife obscured by some vegetation and covered with debris and caked mud in the same general area as Samsoe's remains. The prosecutor theorized that Alcala used the knife as the murder weapon because of blood found on the knife, wipe marks on Samsoe's towel, and Crappa's testimony that the body was pretty cut up. 153 To support this hypothesis, the prosecutor admitted into evidence two complete, unused sets of kitchen knives that police seized from Alcala's home where he lived with his mother and stepfather. Kane Kutlery manufactured both these knives and the carving knife found in the ravine near Samsoe's remains. Alcala's mother testified that the knife sets were gifts from her husband's former employer. She also asserted that her husband's employer never gave her a separate knife like the carving knife found near Samsoe's body, that she was not missing any knives from her kitchen pantry, and that the alleged murder weapon found in the ravine differed from the knife sets she owned. 154 The trial court judge remarked on the many differences between the knife sets and the purported murder weapon. He noted the difference in the studs on the handles, the type of wood used for the handles, and the shape of the knives. He stated that [t]here's no way that this particular weapon could be tied in [ ] the remotest to any of these particular sets [seized from Alcala's home] — I mean, the whole knife set is not even close to the knife [found in the ravine]. To buttress its murder weapon theory, the prosecutor called Clella Schneider, a Kane Kutlery representative, as a witness. Schneider testified that although the two knife sets seized from Alcala's home and the alleged murder weapon both were distributed through Kane Kutlery to the same six western states and marketed around the same time, the knives differed in design. Schneider also testified that during a period of five years, Kane Kutlery sold about 15,000 of each of the two knife sets in six western states and about 4,000-5,000 of the individual carving knives in the same general geographic area. She further testified that the carving knife found in the ravine was sold separately from the seized knife sets and that all of the knives in question were sold at major supermarket chains and drug stores. 155 The trial court admitted the knives and Schneider's testimony over Alcala's objection that they were irrelevant and highly prejudicial. 156 A conclusion that the admission of the Kane Kutlery knife sets violated Alcala's right to a fundamentally fair trial requires that the knife sets and Schneider's testimony were irrelevant to the prosecution's case and that the erroneously admitted evidence was of such quality as necessarily prevents a fair trial. McKinney v. Rees, 993 F.2d 1378, 1384 (9th Cir. 1993) (internal quotation marks omitted). Evidence is considered irrelevant if it fails to make any fact of consequence more or less probable. Id. at 1380. Moreover, [o]nly if there are no permissible inferences the jury may draw from the evidence can its admission violate due process. Jammal v. Van de Kamp, 926 F.2d 918, 920 (9th Cir.1991). 157 The knife sets, and the accompanying testimony of Schneider, are irrelevant. The evidence showed that two unused sets of Kane Kutlery knives were found in Alcala's home. These knives belonged to Alcala's mother and stepfather and had been given to them by a former employer; they were not found in Alcala's direct possession, nor did he purchase them. Furthermore, even as the trial court admitted, the knife sets differed in many material respects from the knife found at the murder scene. 158 The jury could draw no permissible inference from this evidence. To infer that Alcala used the knife in the ravine to murder Samsoe, the jury would have had to speculate — and could have done no more than speculate — that because the purported murder weapon and the unused knife sets shared the same brand name, Alcala was connected to the murder weapon. That the same company manufactured both the purported murder weapon and the knife sets fails to make any fact of consequence to the prosecution's case more or less probable. 159 California argues that the knife sets were relevant to show that Alcala had access to or familiarity with Kane Kutlery. The fact that Alcala's home contained substantially different types of knives of the same brand as the purported murder weapon, however, does nothing to advance the argument that Alcala had special or increased access to Kane Kutlery knives. As Schneider testified, both the knife sets and the carving knife were readily available by the thousands in major supermarkets and drug stores in six western states. This evidence fails to show that Alcala had any more access to Kane Kutlery knives than any other person in the general public with access to stores that sold this brand of knife. Admittedly, the fact that Alcala's mother and stepfather had Kane Kutlery knives in their kitchen may show that Alcala was familiar with this particular brand. This purported familiarity, however, does not tend to make any fact of consequence to California's case more or less probable. Alcala's general access to or familiarity with Kane Kutlery has no relevance to connecting Alcala to the alleged murder weapon. 160 The admission of the knife sets amounts to constitutional error, and the prejudicial effect of this evidence likely influenced the jury. California's entire case rested on strange coincidences. That the alleged murder weapon and the knives seized from Alcala's home were both of the Kane Kutlery brand fits neatly into that strange coincidences theme, and the prosecutor spent a good deal of his closing argument — more than three pages of the court reporter's transcripts — framing the issue that way. 10 Thus, there is a reasonable likelihood that some jurors linked Alcala to the knife in the mountains based on brand commonality with the seized knives. Because this evidence caused some prejudice to Alcala, the district court properly included it in its cumulative error analysis.