Death of Diane Whipple

On February 7, 2019, California commissioners denied Knoller's first application for parole. She will be eligible to apply for parole again in 2022.

Noel died of heart failure on June 22, 2018 in a La Jolla nursing home. It was his 77th birthday. Noel lived in relative obscurity following his release from prison, working for a time as a baker in Fairfield, California. By 2016, increasing health problems led to his living out of a van for some time before he relocated to the San Diego area.

In November 2015, Knoller petitioned the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit to overturn her second-degree murder conviction. In February 2016, the Ninth Circuit upheld Knoller's second degree murder conviction.

Just prior to the attack, Knoller was taking the dogs up to the roof; Bane – and possibly Hera – attacked Whipple in the hallway. (Hera's role in the mauling has never been firmly established.) Whipple suffered a total of 77 wounds to every part of her body except her scalp and bottoms of her feet. Another neighbor called 911 after hearing Whipple's screams. Whipple died hours later at San Francisco General Hospital from "loss of blood from multiple traumatic injuries (dog bite wounds)".

Knoller then appealed the trial court's actions. On August 23, 2010, the First District Court of Appeal unanimously upheld Knoller's conviction, finding that she acted with a conscious disregard for human life when her Presa Canario escaped and killed Whipple. The California Supreme Court declined to hear her appeal of that decision. Knoller is currently serving her sentence at Valley State Prison for Women in Chowchilla.

On June 1, 2007, the California Supreme Court rejected the Court of Appeal's decision and ruled that implied malice murder required proof that a defendant acted with "conscious disregard" of the danger to human life. The Supreme Court held that the trial court's standard for implied malice murder (which required a high probability of death) was too strict and the appellate court's standard (which required only serious bodily injury rather than a danger to human life) was too broad. The Supreme Court remanded the case to the trial court to reconsider whether to allow the second-degree murder conviction to stand in light of this new reasoning. The San Francisco Superior Court reinstated the conviction for second-degree murder, and on September 22, 2008, the court sentenced Knoller to 15 years to life.

In May 2005, the state appellate court reversed the judge's grant of new second-degree murder trial for Knoller. The appellate court ruled that implied malice murder did not require knowledge of a high probability of death but rather just a conscious disregard of serious bodily injury. The appellate court returned the case to the lower court to reconsider Knoller's motion for a new trial using the serious bodily injury standard for implied malice murder.

By 2004, both Knoller and Noel had served their terms for the manslaughter convictions, and Knoller was out on bail while her second-degree murder conviction was under appeal.

After Knoller's and Noel's convictions in 2002, the State Bar of California suspended their law licenses. Knoller resigned from the bar in January 2007; Noel was disbarred in February. On September 14, 2003, Noel was released from prison.

Bane was euthanized immediately after the attack; Hera was seized and later euthanized in January 2002.

The trial by jury, which began in January 2002, "was moved to Los Angeles because of extensive publicity in the Bay Area."

Although the jury found Knoller guilty of second degree murder, trial judge James Warren granted Knoller a new trial on the second-degree murder conviction; the judge believed the appropriate standard for implied malice murder required that Knoller knew taking the dog into the hall involved a high probability of death. Although the judge granted a new trial for the second degree murder charge, he sentenced Knoller to four years in prison for the lesser-included involuntary manslaughter on July 15, 2002. Manslaughter and murder are mutually exclusive: one cannot be convicted of both manslaughter and murder for killing the same person. The state appealed the judge's action and sought to reinstate the second degree murder conviction.

On January 26, 2001, while returning home with bags of groceries, Whipple was attacked by the two dogs in the hallway of her apartment building. Knoller was taking the dogs out of their apartment at the same time Whipple returned. The dogs escaped her control and attacked Whipple.

Whipple's memorial service at St. Mary's College, held on Thursday, February 1, 2001, was attended by more than 400 people.

In March 2001, a grand jury indicted Knoller and Noel. Knoller was indicted for second-degree murder and involuntary manslaughter, Noel was indicted for involuntary manslaughter, and "both also face[d] felony charges of keeping a mischievous dog".

Whipple's partner, Sharon Smith, also succeeded in suing Knoller and Noel for $1,500,000 in civil damages. The civil case was notable in that the San Francisco Superior Court ruled in July 2001 that Smith was entitled to bring suit as Whipple's domestic partner under the Equal Protection Clause, against the defence's argument that a same-sex unmarried partner did not have standing. She donated some of the money to Saint Mary's College of California to fund the women's lacrosse team.

In 2000, Knoller and Noel "obtained their two Presa Canarios, named Bane and Hera, through their relationship with a pair of Pelican Bay State Prison inmates, Paul 'Cornfed' Schneider (whom they had legally adopted as their son), and Dale Bretches, members of the Aryan Brotherhood prison gang." Knoller and Noel had first met Schneider at a trial. Bane was male and Hera female; by January 2001, "Bane weighed 140 pounds and Hera close to 100 pounds."

Whipple later moved to San Francisco, and came within seconds of qualifying for the U.S. 1996 Olympics team in track and field, for the 800 meters. However, she did not compete at the 1996 Olympic Team Trials. Instead, she became the lacrosse coach at Saint Mary's College of California in Moraga, California.

The two married in 1989. Starting in the mid-1990s, Noel and Knoller ran "their law office... out of a converted closet in their Pacific Heights apartment" in San Francisco.

Diane Alexis Whipple (January 21, 1968 – January 26, 2001) was an American lacrosse player and college coach. She was killed in a dog attack in San Francisco on January 26, 2001. The dogs involved were two Presa Canarios: a male named Bane and a female named Hera. Paul Schneider, the dogs' owner, is a high-ranking member of the Aryan Brotherhood and is serving three life sentence terms in state prison. The dogs were cared for by Schneider's attorneys, Robert Noel and Marjorie Knoller, who are husband-and-wife, who lived in the same apartment building as Diane Whipple. After the fatal attack, the state brought criminal charges against the attorneys. Robert Noel, who was not present during the attack, was convicted of manslaughter. Marjorie Knoller, who was present, was charged with implied-malice second-degree murder and convicted by the jury. Knoller's murder conviction, an unusual result for an unintended dog attack, was rejected by the trial judge but ultimately upheld. The case clarified the meaning of implied malice murder.

After attending Brooklyn College, Knoller received her J.D. degree from McGeorge School of Law in Sacramento, California. Noel graduated from the University of Baltimore Law School in 1967.

Marjorie Fran Knoller (born June 20, 1955) and Robert Edward Noel (June 22, 1941 – June 22, 2018) were attorneys married to each other. They were caregivers to the dogs that killed Whipple in San Francisco on January 26, 2001. After a trial that attracted international attention, they were sent to prison for involuntary manslaughter. However, on August 22, 2008, San Francisco Judge Charlotte Woolard reinstated Knoller's second degree murder conviction.