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By Karen Breslau
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The defendant sobbed; her attorney crawled on the courtroom floor. The prosecutor displayed a plaster cast of dog teeth. Even the judge couldn't resist the occasional canine quip to ease the tension. But after four weeks of riveting--and often gruesome--testimony, the jury delivered the most dramatic punch of all, convicting a controversial San Francisco couple on murder and manslaughter charges after their two enormous dogs mauled a neighbor to death in the hallway of their apartment building last year. After the guilty verdicts were read, Marjorie Knoller, convicted of second-degree murder, turned to her elderly parents and tearfully mouthed, "Help me." They were the same words witnesses heard moments before the dogs' victim, Diane Whipple, was found bleeding to death and suffocating, unable to breathe through her crushed larynx. Knoller's husband, Robert Noel, who wasn't home when the dogs killed Whipple, was convicted on a lesser charge of involuntary manslaughter. Knoller could receive 15 years to life; Noel faces a maximum of four years. Both have signaled plans to appeal.
The case marked the first time in California that a pet owner has been convicted for murder over an animal's actions. While no one claimed that Noel and Knoller intended for their dogs to kill Whipple, prosecutors convinced the jury that the pair should be held criminally liable because they knew the dogs were dangerous. They presented more than 30 witnesses who testified that they or their pets had been chased, bitten or lunged at by Noel and Knoller's dogs before they attacked Whipple. The case could also send a signal to prosecutors and juries in other states; some 20 people, most of them children, are killed by dogs each year in the United States. In Wisconsin last week, authorities brought homicide charges against a couple who weren't even home when their six Rottweilers killed an 11-year-old girl visiting their daughter. "The message is, you can't blame your dog," says Laurie Levenson, a professor at Loyola School of Law. "It's the same as a loaded gun. The person responsible is the person who could have prevented the accident."
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The case has also put landlords on notice. Whipple's domestic partner, Sharon Smith, has filed a wrongful-death suit against the owners of the building where both couples lived. Lawyers for the owners deny any wrongdoing. (Knoller and Noel, both lawyers themselves, are also named in the suit.) It was Knoller and Noel's refusal to accept responsibility--or display public remorse--for Whipple's death that helped turn the case into a national sensation in the first place. After the trial (moved to Los Angeles because of publicity), jurors said that they had been appalled by an interview the couple gave on ABC's "Good Morning America," in which Knoller said, "Miss Whipple could have just slammed the door shut. I would have." She also quibbled with her interviewer's choice of words: "I wouldn't say it was an 'attack'."
But on the stand, Knoller sobbed uncontrollably, apologized to Whipple's family and nearly collapsed as she said that she couldn't understand what had transformed her "docile, friendly" pet into a "wild, crazed animal." Knoller's flamboyant defense attorney, Nedra Ruiz, told jurors that Knoller had tried valiantly to save Whipple from the dogs, only to be overpowered.
Prosecutors built their case against Noel partly from letters the 60-year-old attorney wrote to a convicted murderer and white supremacist, who had once been the couple's client and who, days after Whipple's death, became their legally adopted son. In many of the letters Noel regales inmate Paul Schneider (who also asked for nude pictures of his "mother" Marjorie) with tales of the dogs' frightening encounters with neighbors and passersby. Interviewed by NEWSWEEK last year before his arrest, Noel briefly became tearful when he talked about Whipple's death. Moments later, he suggested Whipple "may have been having her period," perhaps provoking the dogs' deadly attention. "If people say that's blaming the victim, they can take a flying f--k." The jury, it seemed, felt the same way about him and his wife.
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