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Posted on 03/19/2002 1:31:05 PM PST by Howlin
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - After weeks of gruesome testimony that ended with a description of the victim's strangled cries, a jury began deliberations on Tuesday on whether a San Francisco couple should be held liable after their attack dogs savagely killed a young neighbor woman.
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The seven-man, five-woman panel was given the case against Marjorie Knoller and Robert Noel after prosecutor Jim Hammer recounted the last minutes of Diane Whipple, who was mauled to death in the hallway of her own apartment building last year by the couple's huge dogs.
"She called and she tried to push herself up and she called some more ... and no one was there. No one," Hammer said. "That's what these people's recklessness did. Caused that kind of death."
Knoller, 46, is charged with second-degree murder and manslaughter in the death of Whipple, a 33-year-old lacrosse coach, and faces 15 years to life in prison if found guilty. If that happens, she would become the first person convicted of murder in California based on her dog's actions.
Noel, 60, Knoller's husband and law partner, was indicted on manslaughter and could face four years in prison if convicted.
Noel was not at home at the time of the Jan. 26, 2001, attack in the upscale San Francisco apartment building, but prosecutors say he should have known that the 120-pound Presa Canario dogs, Bane and Hera, were dangerously aggressive.
Defense lawyers have argued the attack was a "tragic accident" that could not have been foreseen.
They have also said that Knoller and Noel are scapegoats in a political prosecution, charging they were put on trial to appease San Francisco's large gay community and that the victim's lesbian partner hoped to "frame" the defendants for the crime so that she could sue them.
The high profile case was moved from San Francisco to Los Angeles because of extensive local media coverage seen as prejudicing a fair trial.
Admittedly, I have not been paying close attention.......what???
[*Or in the alternative be coated in bacon drippings and do five minutes in a cell with a hungry pair of the tyrannosaurus rexes.]
San Jose Mercury News | 3-19-02 | Dan Reed
Posted on 3/19/02 10:34 AM Eastern by Red Face
Even the judge was shocked. But those who know Ruiz weren't surprised at the flair for the dramatic she brought to her opening statement in defense of Marjorie Knoller, the San Francisco lawyer on trial for second-degree murder after her dogs attacked a neighbor and left her mortally wounded.
Ruiz, a former mime, poet and actress, has drawn mixed reviews for her courtroom histrionics -- in this case and others.
Todd Rash, a former prosecutor, said he remembered her unusual tactics when he went up against her in a Riverside trial. ``She's just very loud, very demonstrative in her movements and very dramatic,'' he said. ``She's not your typical adversary.''
The first in her family to graduate from college, Ruiz is a study in passion -- and legal gambling. One law professor dubbed her tactics ``suicide lawyering,'' but acknowledged that they just might work.
On Monday afternoon, Ruiz presented her closing argument in the biggest case of her 26-year career. It is her first murder trial in which she is the lead attorney and a case that has drawn interest from around the world. This day, she stayed on two feet, but still boomed out her arguments with the occasional flailing arms and pained visage to underscore her points.
On trial are Knoller, 46, and her lawyer husband, Robert Noel, 60, owners of the two muscular presa canario dogs that attacked Diane Whipple, their neighbor, in the hallway of their Pacific Heights apartment in January 2001. Both are charged with involuntary manslaughter and violation of vicious-dog laws. Knoller is additionally charged with second-degree murder.
Ruiz, again on Monday, drew from her performing past to be the most demonstrative attorney in the courtroom.
Born Nov. 25, 1948, in Stockton, Ruiz was an only child, the daughter of a pair of ceramists who sharpened their skills in a hometown store until it closed when Ruiz was 10. They picked up and moved to the Bay Area, where her parents worked for the famed Edith Heath and her pottery workshop in Sausalito.
Her bent for the dramatic was given a stage in school plays; her sense of justice was fired by the burgeoning civil rights movement. She remembers as a girl in Stockton unintentionally making her uncle uncomfortable when she asked why blacks at a circus were seated in a separate section.
``I grew up during a period of time when young people changed that,'' she told the Mercury News in a recent interview. ``Then young people contested the wisdom of the Vietnam War. I saw law as a way to implement change in society.''
Despite her impassioned, earnest courtroom demeanor, Ruiz maintains a sense of humor about herself and her past. After earning a master's in creative writing at San Francisco State University, she spent a year studying acting at the American Conservatory Theater. She learned mime from Mamako, whose troupe performed for high schools and did a special for KQED-TV.
She also acted in various roles for ``little theaters'' around the area. ``You could get in if you gave us a cookie,'' she said, laughing.
Her ardor for social justice led to two arrests, one protesting U.S. arms shipments to El Salvador and another while monitoring police brutality in the largely Latino Mission district. She sued for wrongful arrest, and won a cash settlement from San Francisco.
Ruiz earned her law degree from Hastings College of the Law, and was admitted to the California bar in 1976. Her legal career was launched at the Mission Community Legal Defense. She met her husband, lawyer Laurence Lichter, in 1979. They now have three children, two daughters, 18 and 20, and a son, 22.
She found a career match when she joined the law firm of Tony Serra, the flamboyant criminal defense attorney who was the inspiration for the movie ``True Believer.'' Knoller first tried to hire Serra, but his schedule was full and he referred her to Ruiz.
She rarely did trial work -- only about 20 cases in her career -- partly because she focused on appellate briefs while raising her children. Among other legal crusades, she worked with Terence Hallinan, now the city's district attorney and her foe in this case, in an unsuccessful attempt to decriminalize prostitution.
In her opening statement, she got down on all fours, wept, screamed and kicked the jury box, re-enacting Knoller's attempt, she said, to climb on top of Whipple and protect her from the dogs. She also suggested that Whipple's lesbian partner might have prevented the attack if she'd complained about alleged run-ins with the dogs earlier.
Putting the onus on the bereaved prompted observer Laurie Levenson, a law professor at Loyola Marymount University, to describe the tactic as ``suicide lawyering.''
She basically admitted it. She refused to say she WASN'T having sex with the dogs, and she said it was nobody else's business.
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