Free Republic

A former San Francisco attorney serving a life sentence in the dog-mauling death of a Saint Mary’s College lacrosse coach nearly two decades ago will remain in prison for at least another three years. . . . Her husband Robert Noel served four years for involuntary manslaughter. He was not home at the time of the attack. The Bay Area Reporter reported Noel died in June on his 77th birthday.

SAN FRANCISCO -- A judge denounced Marjorie Knoller today for indifference to the fate of a neighbor who was mauled to death by Knoller's dogs in a San Francisco apartment hallway and sentenced the former attorney to 15 years to life in prison for second-degree murder. Superior Court Judge Charlotte Woolard, who had reinstated a jury's murder verdict for the January 2001 attack at a hearing last month, rejected a defense lawyer's request for probation today and said the horrific circumstances of the crime far outweighed Knoller's previous crime-free record. Woolard said Knoller had not bothered to put a muzzle...

SAN FRANCISCO -- The woman convicted in the 2001 dog-mauling death of a neighbor in their San Francisco apartment building could once again face a murder sentence because of a state Supreme Court ruling today. In a unanimous decision, the court said a trial judge had used an overly lenient standard when he reduced a jury's second-degree murder conviction to involuntary manslaughter for Marjorie Knoller in the January 2001 death of Diane Whipple. But the justices also said an appellate court used criteria that were too harsh when it reinstated Knoller's murder conviction in 2005. The court ordered a new...

San Francisco -- The California Supreme Court agreed Wednesday to review the murder conviction of a San Francisco attorney whose dogs fatally mauled a neighbor in the hallway of an apartment building here. The six justices unanimously agreed to review a May appellate court ruling that reinstated Marjorie Knoller's second-degree murder conviction. Superior Court Judge James Warren had vacated the jury's murder verdict and reduced the conviction to manslaughter. The 1st District Court of Appeal, in reinstating the murder conviction, said Warren erroneously concluded that in order for Knoller to be convicted of murder, she had to know that one...