Calif. Supreme Court to Review Dog Maul Conviction

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) -- The California Supreme Court agreed Wednesday to review the murder conviction of a San Francisco attorney whose dogs fatally mauled a neighbor in an apartment building hallway.

The court unanimously agreed to review an appeals court ruling that reinstated Marjorie Knoller's second-degree murder conviction. A Superior Court judge had tossed out the jury's murder verdict and reduced the conviction to manslaughter.

The appeals court, in reinstating the murder conviction, said Judge James Warren wrongly concluded that in order for Knoller to be convicted of murder, she had to have known that one of the two giant Presa Canario dogs would kill.

The appeals court sent the case sent back to Warren to review the decision under a different standard: that Knoller disregarded a known risk that the dogs presented, including the viciousness of Bane, the male dog mostly responsible for 33-year-old Diane Whipple's death in 2001.

Details here from the AP via the New York Times.