472
Scalia, J., dissenting
tried and convicted for killing Beanie. See State v. Burnes, 533 So. 2d 1029 (La. App. 1988).6
Petitioner did not claim that the ammunition had been planted. The police found a .22-caliber rifle under petitioner's mattress and two boxes of ammunition, one containing .22, .32, and .38-caliber rounds, another containing only .32-caliber rounds of the same brand as those found loaded in the murder weapon. Petitioner's story was that Beanie gave him the rifle and the .32-caliber shells as security for a loan, but that he had taken the .22-caliber shells out of the box. Tr. 353, 355 (Dec. 7, 1984). Put aside that the latter detail was contradicted by the facts; but consider the inherent implausibility of Beanie's giving petitioner collateral in the form of a box containing only .32 shells, if it were true that petitioner did not own a .32-caliber gun. As the Fifth Circuit wrote, "[t]he more likely inference, apparently chosen by the jury, is that [petitioner] possessed .32-caliber ammunition because he possessed a .32-caliber firearm." 5 F. 3d, at 817.
We come to the evidence of the pet food, so mundane and yet so very damning. Petitioner's confused and changing explanations for the presence of 15 cans of pet food in a Schwegmann's bag under the sink must have fatally undermined his credibility before the jury. See App. 36 (trial judge finds that petitioner's "obvious lie" concerning the pet food "may have been a crucial bit of evidence in the minds of the jurors which caused them to discount the entire de-6 The Court notes that "neither observation could possibly have affected the jury's appraisal of Burns's credibility at the time of Kyles's trials." Ante, at 450, n. 19. That is obviously true. But it is just as obviously true that because we have no findings about Burns's credibility from the jury and no direct method of asking what they thought, the only way that we can assess the jury's appraisal of Burns's credibility is by asking (1) whether the state trial judge, who saw Burns's testimony along with the jury, thought it was credible; and (2) whether Burns was in fact credible— a question on which his later behavior towards his "best friend" is highly probative.
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