US: The owners of two vicious dogs who attacked and killed a San Francisco woman in the doorway of her own apartment last year were found guilty of murder and manslaughter yesterday, ending a grisly trial which transfixed and horrified the famously liberal city.
After two days of deliberations, a Los Angeles jury convicted Marjorie Knoller (46), of second degree murder and her husband Robert Noel (60), of manslaughter in the death of Diane Whipple, a 33-year-old lacrosse coach who was savaged and killed by the couple's two 56 kg Presa Canario dogs on January 26th, 2001.
Knoller - now the first person convicted of murder in California based upon the actions of her dog - gulped, gasped and fought back tears as she was found guilty of the murder charge.
Knoller, who was present at the time of the attack and said she tried to stop it, faces a sentence of 15 years to life on the murder conviction.
Noel, Knoller's 60-year-old husband and law partner who was not in the upmarket San Francisco apartment building when the dogs went wild, faces up to four years behind bars.
The case was moved to Los Angeles after extensive publicity in San Francisco raised fears they would not receive a fair trial.
The jury's decision comes after a trial that lasted more than a month and included graphic testimony about the attack on Whipple, a star athlete turned lacrosse coach who was arriving home with bags of groceries when the dogs tore after her, for reasons that have never been fully explained.
Whipple, who weighed less than either of the two massive dogs attacking her, died of blood loss after suffering 77 distinct bites and scratches that lacerated every surface of her body except for the soles of her feet and top of her head.
Prosecutors have called Noel and Knoller arrogant and cold, saying the couple took delight in owning two fighting dogs that frightened neighbours and should have foreseen an attack like the one on Whipple.
Defence lawyers, for their part, have described the attack as a "tragic accident" and said that Noel and Knoller had no reason to suspect that their two pets might go berserk and kill a neighbor in the hallway of their own apartment building.
- (Reuters)