Defense, Prosecution Make Closing Arguments in Dog Mauling Case

Prosecutors urged jurors Monday to convict two San Francisco lawyers in the fatal dog mauling of Diane Whipple, arguing that their massive Presa Canario dogs were more dangerous than loaded guns and that it was only a matter of time until they killed.

“By Jan. 26, [2001], it was not whether somebody was going to be mauled or killed by one of these dogs,” Assistant Dist. Atty. James Hammer said during closing arguments. “The only question Jan. 26 was when and who and where.”

Defense attorneys countered by arguing that Whipple’s death was a tragic accident, and that the defendants could not have known their well-behaved family pets could kill. “The absolutely unthinkable happened,” said defense attorney Bruce Hotchkiss.

Whipple died after being attacked last year by the dogs--Bane and Hera--in the hallway outside her San Francisco apartment. She had returned from buying groceries at the same time Marjorie Knoller returned from taking one of the dogs for a walk on the roof. Bane ripped out Whipple’s throat and Hera tore at her clothes. The dogs have since been destroyed.

The dogs’ owners, Knoller and Robert Noel, are on trial on charges of involuntary manslaughter and keeping a mischievous dog in connection with Whipple’s death. Knoller, who was in the hallway during the attack, also faces a second-degree murder charge. If convicted, Knoller, 46, faces a sentence of 15 years to life in state prison. Noel, 60, faces four years.

The closing arguments came after more than a month of testimony in the case, which was moved to Los Angeles County Superior Court because of publicity in the Bay Area. Prosecutors will give a rebuttal argument this morning and jurors will begin deliberating the case today.

As he addressed the jurors, Hammer held up a cast of Bane’s teeth and called the dogs “time bombs.” He said the defendants liked intimidating people with their dogs and didn’t worry about the safety of their neighbors.

“They could have been warned 100 times,” he said. Hammer said Knoller and Noel deliberately ignored more than 30 incidents--which he called premonitions of the fatal attack--including times when the dogs lunged at a pregnant woman, bit a neighbor and charged a postal worker.

They chose not to put muzzles or choke collars on the dogs that January afternoon--which would have saved Whipple’s life--even though the defendants knew “with their own eyes” the danger the animals posed, Hammer said.

Hammer said the defendants, who adopted a Pelican Bay State Prison inmate as their son, were associates of the Aryan Brotherhood prison gang and helped inmates run an attack dog breeding ring.

He also discounted Knoller’s defense that she tried to shield Whipple from the dogs. Knoller could not have been in the middle of the attack, he said, because she walked away with a few cuts on her hand.

“My mother gets worse wounds gardening,” he said. “Compare those to what happened to Diane Whipple.”

Hammer ended his argument by imploring the jury to find Knoller and Noel guilty. “Do not let them get away with their lies. Don’t let Marjorie Knoller get away with murder.”

Defense attorneys said their clients were not warned about the dangers of the dogs because nobody complained to police or animal control officers. The previous encounters that neighbors and dog-walkers said they had with the dogs were normal interactions between people and dogs and didn’t instill fear in anyone, they said.

“They haven’t been confronted by dogs of death,” said Knoller’s attorney, Nedra Ruiz. “Nothing out of the ordinary was happening and they knew it.”

In her closing argument, Ruiz said her client tried to protect Whipple by throwing her body on top of her. Showing jurors Knoller’s ripped clothes and photos of her injuries, Ruiz said her client was also bitten, bruised and bloodied during the attack. Her client did not call 911 because she didn’t want to leave Whipple alone in the hallway.

Ruiz accused Whipple’s partner, Sharon Smith, of lying when she testified that Whipple was bitten by one of the dogs about a month before the fatal attack. It is incredible to believe, Ruiz argued, that Smith would have allowed the love of her life to live in fear. Smith has “no right to come here with false testimony and attempt to frame Marjorie Knoller for murder by alleging this bite,” Ruiz said.

Ruiz also accused Hammer of hiding evidence from jurors and prosecuting the case to cater to the gay and lesbian community in San Francisco.

The dogs were docile and obedient and never showed any signs of being vicious, Ruiz said.

“We’ll never know what made Bane go berserk ... but what we do know is that Marjorie--when she took the dog up to the sixth-floor roof--never, ever had noticed that this dog was liable to kill,” Ruiz said.

Hotchkiss argued that Noel and Knoller were conscientious dog owners who took their normally friendly and well-behaved dogs all around the Bay Area. He added that the dogs were never out of control, and were never trained to be aggressive.

“From [Noel’s] point of view, he didn’t see anything wrong with his dogs,” Hotchkiss said.

Hotchkiss told jurors that the witnesses who testified about their encounters with the dogs were not lying, but remembered their encounters “through the filter of Jan. 26 and through the subsequent bad things that have been said about Robert Noel.”

Hotchkiss accused prosecutors of cobbling together a case against Noel because he had a relationship with a prison inmate and wrote letters that offended many people.

The evidence about the Aryan Brotherhood and Pelican Bay State Prison are not relevant to the mauling, he said.

Noel, who arrived home after the attack, could not have anticipated the chain of events that led to Whipple’s death that afternoon, Hotchkiss said.