Owner of Dogs Sentenced in Mauling Death

SAN FRANCISCO —  Refusing to apologize to the victim’s family and friends, a stern-faced Marjorie Knoller was sentenced Monday to four years in prison for her role in the gruesome dog mauling death of a neighbor that shocked this pet-friendly city.

The sentence issued by Superior Court Judge James Warren means the 47-year-old attorney will serve another 14 months behind bars, considering time she has already spent in custody awaiting trial and good behavior credits.

Knoller and her attorney husband, Robert Noel, 61, had been charged in the January 2001 death of Diane Whipple, a 33-year-old lacrosse coach mauled by the couple’s two Presa Canario dogs in the hall of a luxury Pacific Heights apartment building.

Noel, who was not present during the attack, was sentenced last month to four years.

At one point during Monday’s hearing, Warren waited several long moments for Knoller to respond to a prosecutor’s challenge that she apologize and provide the case a sense of closure.

“The only thing that would bring some peace, I think, to everyone who knew Diane is if this woman here, this lawyer, who lied at least 52 times, who mocked Diane Whipple and blamed her for her own death, would stand up as a human being and say, ‘I’m sorry. I wish I hadn’t done these things. I’m responsible and I’m ready to pay the price,’ ” Deputy Dist. Atty. James Hammer told the court.

Instead, Knoller kept her head down, scribbling in a note pad. Her attorney, Dennis Riordan, then rose to say that the hole left in the lives of Whipple’s friends and family would be just as great whether the result of negligent homicide or accident.

Knoller’s silence later brought an angry response outside court from Whipple’s partner, Sharon Smith.

“She has been an attorney from day one--she hasn’t acted as human,” said Smith, who has a wrongful-death civil suit pending against the couple.

“So we had an attorney to the end. She’s not going to say she’s sorry. She probably doesn’t even believe she’s responsible for this.”

The sentencing comes one month after Warren drew criticism by throwing out a second-degree murder conviction against Knoller handed down by a Los Angeles jury in March, a ruling that has been appealed by prosecutors.

Had the judge let the verdict stand, Knoller would have faced 15 years to life in prison.

On Monday, despite arguments by Knoller’s attorneys that Warren could not legally impose any sentence until the state’s appeal was decided, he ordered prison time for her on two lesser convictions.

He sentenced her to four years for involuntary manslaughter and issued a deferred three-year sentence for keeping a dangerous animal.

The latter sentence would be dropped if she did not break the law for five years after her prison release.

The judge said he gave the stiffest possible sentence allowed by law because he believed Knoller lied in court and to a grand jury about whether the two dogs, Bane and Hera, were vicious. Both animals have been destroyed.

He also denied Knoller probation, citing a lack of remorse and that she “knowingly inserted into society two massive, dangerous, unpredictable dogs with the knowledge that sometime, someplace, someone was going to get hurt.”

He ordered her, along with Noel, to pay Smith $6,800 in restitution. He allowed her 714 days of time served and good behavior credit and directed that she be transferred to the Valley State Prison for Women in Chowchilla.

As Warren read the sentences, San Francisco Dist. Atty. Terence Hallinan, who sat at the prosecutor’s table, turned to offer a playful punch in the arm to Hammer.

An emotional Hammer then turned to make eye-contact with Smith, who sat in the first row of spectators.

Moments later, Hallinan called the sentence “half a loaf,” saying that Knoller would at least spend time in prison until an appeals court decides whether Warren was justified in dismissing the murder conviction.

If the ruling is overturned, Hallinan explained, Knoller would be brought back to face the more severe sentence.

But if the appeals court decides Warren was right and that Knoller is entitled to another trial, he said, prosecutors would probably not pursue that avenue because it would constitute double jeopardy.

Hallinan also took a swipe at Knoller and Noel, who last year adopted as their son Paul “Cornfed” Schneider, a Pelican Bay prison inmate they helped by raising the dogs that killed Whipple.

“Meanwhile,” Hallinan said, “both she and Robert are in state prison along with their adopted son and are going to be there for a decent period of time.”

Hallinan said he also saw no point in charging Knoller with the perjury that prosecutors alleged, since she will already be heading to prison.

Knoller’s lawyers left court without commenting to reporters.

Whipple died Jan. 26, 2001, after being attacked by the two dogs--which each weighed about 100 pounds--as she struggled to get inside her upper-floor apartment.

At her trial, Knoller testified that she had tried to save Whipple by yanking at the leash of one dog, Bane, and by sprawling on top of Whipple.

But Warren on Monday repeated several statements Knoller made that he believed to be false.

Prosecutors also submitted briefs showing what they said were at least 52 times Knoller perjured herself.

Said Hammer: “We could have gone on. We stopped there.”

The case has provoked such vitriol that hundreds of residents had written Warren, some demanding the death penalty, others calling for total acquittal.

The judge began Monday’s hearing by responding to comments made last month by both Hammer and several of Whipple’s friends that by throwing out the second-degree murder conviction against Knoller he had destroyed “a sense of justice” held by many San Franciscans.

“I certainly hope so,” he said, clearly irritated. Repeating “a sense of justice,” he likened the idea to vigilante violence, the work of the Ku Klux Klan and to “the people who flew airplanes into buildings not so long ago.”

He said an emotion-fueled verdict was what he had tried to avoid.

Later, Smith said she disagreed.

“Part of what Judge Warren said was right, that justice has to come from within. But he did steal justice from me by taking away that murder conviction. Absolutely.”