Murder Conviction in Dog Mauling

[Michael Wechsler]

A Los Angeles jury convicted attorneys and attack dog owners, Marjorie Knoller of second degree murder and her husband, Robert Noel, of involuntary manslaughter, in the brutal mauling murder of Diane Whipple in San Francisco. (See information about this case and law as reported here at http://www.thelaw.com/forums/t199.html . The Prosecution contended that Knoller and Noel, both criminal defense lawyers, owned and raised the dogs for their clients, members of the Aryan Brotherhood prison gang, who planned to sell killer guard dogs. The charges were brought after Ms. Knoller lost control of the dog in the stairwell of her apartment resulting in the mauling death of Ms. Whipple. Evidence revealed that the couple was aware of the vicious propensity of the dogs.

 

[marla]

purely subjective for myself

i don't know much about the law(other than reading your link) to have an objective opinion;however, i subjectively feel the jury made a good decision.
i had read about the whipple story several months ago in a detailed magazine article. the crime scene was horrific, and some professionals called to the scene needed grief counseling to deal w/ what they saw. neighbors and witnesses to the crime put all the blame on the dog owners, and it was chilling to read the accounts.
allegedly, ms. knoller did nothing to prevent the attack. i don't know if this was her intent(god, i'd hope not), or if she simply had no control over a frenzied animal, but i believe an individual must be accountable for whatever they own/do which comes into contact w/ other peoples' lives and rights. perhaps it's a horrible analogy, but it's the same as a drunken drive in your car which "innocently" kills another. it's not premeditated, of course, and you'll feel horrible for the aftermath, but you inadvertently were irresponsible and allowed the outcome. well, actually, i'm not entirely correct because something as spontaneously unforeseen as that is different from someone foreseeing problems and choosing to ignore them as ms. knoller did.
tragically, when the "problems" once again arose, ms. knoller clearly valued the life of her dogs over the life of a human.

 

[marla]

PS

i tried to find the above-mentioned detailed article in archives, but the magazine didn't have it;however, here is a good link for the current case:

http://www.dogbitelaw.com/PAGES/Whipple.html

 

[jon_]

Great link. I read the details about the accounts of the case and it was pretty shocking. It appears that the dog owners had plenty of prior warning, especially since the dog was an attack dog. While I can't say she did it on purpose, I do think that she knew that her dogs could kill someone. I don't know if that would qualify as some type of "reckless disregard" rather than murder and I'd really like to see if you guys could get some more information on the details of the case and why the jury felt that the murder charge for her was justified. Altogether so incredibly sad and with stuff like this it makes you so angry how some people could be so insensitive and careless.