State Appeals Judge’s Ruling in Dog Mauling

Prosecutors are appealing a Superior Court judge’s decision to throw out the murder conviction of a woman who was caring for two dogs when they mauled her neighbor to death.

The state attorney general’s office said the judge used the wrong legal test for murder when he overruled a jury’s verdict and sentenced Marjorie Knoller for involuntary manslaughter instead of second-degree murder.

Knoller and her husband, Robert Noel, were keeping the pair of Presa Canarios when the dogs attacked and killed neighbor Diane Whipple, 33, in the hallway of their Pacific Heights apartment building in 2001.

Superior Court Judge James Warren said he couldn’t uphold the jury’s murder verdict because he thought the evidence failed to show that Knoller had known the dogs were likely to kill someone.

Both received four-year prison sentences, the maximum for manslaughter.

Knoller, who had custody of the dogs when they attacked Whipple, faces a sentence of 15 years to life if her second-degree murder conviction is reinstated.