It didn’t cause a culture-quake on par with O. J.; it can’t compare in social significance to Andrea Yates; there was none of the what-have-we-become suburban soul-searching prompted by the “hockey dad” case. After all, how many Presa Canario owners with adoptive Aryan Brotherhood-inmate “sons” does the average person know? But a megatrial it was.
As the lawyers, jurors and assorted supporting actors make the rounds from Greta to Larry to Matt and Katie, and the cable TV roadies in the courthouse parking lot pack up for the next big show, there are plenty of questions to ponder.
What was this case all about? When Diane Whipple was mauled to death by Robert Noel and Marjorie Knoller’s dogs in the hallway outside of their San Francisco apartment building last year, police at the scene concluded Whipple’s death was “an accident.” It wasn’t until Noel and Knoller opened their mouths, at times appearing to blame Whipple for all but inserting herself into the dogs’ jaws, at other times taunting the district attorney, that the “accident” became a crime.
And it wasn’t even a murder case until a San Francisco grand jury heard Noel and Knoller testify. Jurors were so appalled by some of the couple’s statements–Knoller saying that the male dog went after Whipple “like a bitch in heat”; Noel acknowledging his amusement when the dogs frightened passers-by–that they asked prosecutors to charge Knoller, who was present for the attack, with second-degree murder in addition to manslaughter. The charge was such a stretch that throughout the five-week trial, prosecutors privately doubted that a jury would convict Knoller. Until Thursday, there were only two such convictions in the United States (one of them against a man who set his pit bulls on his unconscious wife.)
While the courtroom theatrics and bizarre cast of characters at times obscured the main legal issue, it’s now clear: dogs may now be considered the legal equivalent of a loaded gun and their owners can be held liable for the actions of their pets, whether or not they were intended. “No one can ever claim again they didn’t know what a dog could do,” says lead prosecutor Jim Hammer. “We raised the consciousness of the country.”
Second question: Did Marjorie Knoller get convicted because jurors couldn’t stand her lawyer? From the first day of the trial, when Nedra Ruiz fell to the courtroom floor and started crawling like a dog, to the last day, when the judge threatened to toss her in a holding cell if she didn’t shut up, Knoller’s defense attorney injected an unintentionally farcical element into an otherwise tragic story. Behind the scenes, Ruiz told a far more cogent story than jurors–or TV viewers–saw, and her intelligence was beyond question. But her trial skills were, at times, abysmal. Her courtroom tactics–crawling on all fours, weeping, yelling at the judge–were certainly unconventional, but not nearly as offensive to jurors as courtroom wags assumed. Speaking with reporters after trial, jurors said that Ruiz had at times been “counterproductive” and “disorganized,” but that they came away impressed with her passion and intelligence. Still, it’s a safe bet that “Ask Nedra” won’t be premiering on Court TV anytime soon.
Third question: How much of this did Noel and Knoller bring on themselves? Answer: just about all of it. “These are ace graduates of the Gary Condit school of public relations,” says California jury consultant Edward Bronson. Noel first came to national attention when he suggested that Whipple, a champion athlete, may have excited the dogs because “she used steroids or a pheromone-based perfume.” In an interview with NEWSWEEK last year, he suggested that Whipple may have provoked the deadly canine attention because she was “having her period.” (Not true, the coroner later said.) Perhaps the most damning evidence of all came in an interview the couple gave to “Good Morning America” shortly after the attack. “It’s not my fault,” Knoller told her flabbergasted interviewer. “I wouldn’t say I was unable to control them. I wouldn’t say it was an attack.”
That and other interviews might have been bad enough, but Noel and Knoller, both lawyers, made things worse for themselves by claiming that they were keeping the dogs for a notorious California prison inmate whom they had represented–and later adopted. The inmate, prison officials charged, was running an illegal killer-dog breeding operation from his cell and Noel and Knoller were part of the plot. Authorities turned up troves of incriminating letters and titillating (but legally inadmissible) photos, suggesting that Noel, Knoller, the inmate and the dogs were all more than just friends.
None of that had any legal bearing on the case–and prosecutors gave up trying to prove that the dogs who killed Diane Whipple were part of an illegal breeding ring–but it kept the publicity roaring. The longer the case was in the headlines, the more the couple’s San Francisco neighbors called the D.A. to report that they, too, had had scary encounters with Noel and Knoller’s dogs. With the “bad dog” witness list growing, prosecutors took their case to a grand jury. “There is little doubt that had the defendants credibly demonstrated public remorse, concern or some sense of responsibility, there would be no murder charges,” jury expert Bronson concluded in a venue-change study paid for by the defense, but which proved far more helpful to the prosecution.
By the time Marjorie Knoller did get around to apologizing, it was too little, too late. When she testified in her own defense during the fourth week of the trial, much of the lawyerly arrogance evident in her earlier media interviews was gone. After five months in jail, Knoller seemed broken, disoriented–and yes, contrite–as she sobbed for three consecutive days on the stand, that she couldn’t imagine how her “loving, docile, friendly” pet had been transformed “into a wild, crazed animal.” Not that it mattered. In the end, jurors said, they found her testimony “not credible.”
Has the case produced any lasting social change? In her closing argument, Ruiz told the jury that prosecutors had gone after Knoller and Noel in order to “curry favor with the homosexual and gay folks” in San Francisco. By that point in the trial, courtroom observers had run out of gasps, but the fact is, gay politics have been an important–but by no means defining–aspect of this case. Whipple was a lesbian. Lead prosecutor Jim Hammer is gay. Both he and Whipple’s partner, Sharon Smith, have become veritable rock stars in the gay community, especially Smith for her outspoken advocacy of the right of same-sex partners to sue for wrongful death.
Last year, the California Assembly passed a bill that would allow Smith to do just that. Noel and Knoller are reportedly now bankrupt, but the landlords of the building where both couples lived are also defendants in the pending wrongful-death suit, and are covered by a multimillion-dollar insurance policy. Smith has pledged that any proceeds from the civil suit, which will go to trial early next year, will go to a foundation established in Whipple’s name. “There was no real joy in the verdict,” a tearful and drained Smith said yesterday. “But some measure of justice for Diane was done today.” One of the many ironies, says Smith, is that Whipple loved dogs and had been lobbying her to adopt one when she was killed. “People shouldn’t think this was a case about dogs,” Smith told NEWSWEEK. “This was about human life.” Knoller now faces 15 years to life for second-degree murder; Noel could receive up to four years for involuntary manslaughter. They are due to be sentenced May 10.
