Los Angeles -- Dog-mauling victim Diane Whipple's domestic partner came under harsh questioning yesterday by a defense attorney who suggested that her failure to act on the couple's fear of their neighbors' pets was to blame for the tragedy.
"Do you consider that if you had made a complaint that Diane Whipple might be alive today?" defense attorney Nedra Ruiz asked Sharon Smith after she testified that Whipple had been terrified of the two dogs that eventually killed her.
The question brought gasps from the audience and an objection from prosecutor James Hammer, who accused Ruiz of "trying to blame Ms. Smith" for Whipple's death. Smith turned away without answering, and Judge James Warren ruled the question irrelevant.
Ruiz's strategy in defending 46-year-old Marjorie Knoller from charges of second-degree murder and involuntary manslaughter has been to portray her client as having valiantly tried to save Whipple and to deflect blame for the death to others. On Wednesday, she accused the first two police officers on the scene of doing nothing while the 33-year-old Whipple lay bleeding.
The tough cross-examination of Smith, however, was a surprise, coming after the 36-year-old Charles Schwab vice president had been moved to tears several times in describing a courageous "life partner" of seven years.
Objects of Fear
Smith spoke rapidly as she told of how she and Whipple had started seeing "those dogs" in their apartment building on Pacific Avenue in 2000 -- two Presa Canarios owned by Knoller and her husband, 60-year-old Robert Noel, who is accused of involuntary manslaughter.
The 120-pound dogs, Bane and Hera, were objects of fear from the start, Smith said.
Once, she said, she saw Bane in the lobby and put her hand out in trepidation, only to be told by Noel: "No, don't do that!"
Noel explained that Bane had just been in a fight with another dog and was "spooked."
The month before she died, Whipple called Smith at work to report that one of the dogs had bitten her. From then on, Smith said, Whipple was terrified of the animals.
"Every time we passed the dogs, she made sure I was with her, and she would do everything she could to be as far away as possible from the dogs," Smith said. "On occasion, she would even push me" in front of her, Smith said.
She acknowledged under cross-examination that neither she nor Whipple had complained about the dogs. "Of course, now, I wish I would have," she said. But at the time, Smith added, she and Whipple just wanted to avoid a confrontation with Knoller and Noel.
"We wanted nothing to do with them," she said.
Ruiz sought to discredit Smith not only for her failure to complain about the dogs but for the wrongful-death lawsuit she has filed against Knoller and Noel. She suggested that Smith had exaggerated the story about the earlier bite for personal gain.
Smith said "every penny" of any damage award from the civil suit would go to a foundation established in Whipple's name. Outside court, she said the foundation would help women's sports, child abuse victims and cancer survivors.
After Ruiz's cross-examination, Hammer asked Smith about her motivation in testifying. "Are you up here lying about anything?" he asked.
"Of course not," Smith replied.
"Why are you suing?" said Hammer.
"Because I believe they are guilty and responsible for taking Diane's life, and they have to be held accountable," she said tearfully. "And I want to make sure they are held accountable."
Hammer asked why the couple should be held accountable. "Because they killed Diane," she said. "It was their dogs, their careless disregard for Diane's life that caused her death."
Smith 'Shocked' By Questioning
The defense objected, but Warren allowed the responses to stand because Ruiz had brought up the civil suit in the first place.
Outside court, Smith said she was "shocked and, frankly, deeply offended" by Ruiz's questioning.
A lawyer representing Smith in her lawsuit also said he had been taken aback.
"The defense team blamed Diane for her own death, right at the beginning," said attorney Michael Cardoza. "They then turned to the San Francisco Police Department and said it was their fault for not attending to (Whipple).
"And now in court today was one of the most shocking questions I've ever heard," he said. "I think it shows exactly what the defense in this case is about -- don't take responsibility for yourself, blame everybody but yourself."
Before Smith testified, a police forensic dentist showed to the jury plaster casts of Bane's jaw that depicted the animal's inch-long fangs. Bane was destroyed just after Whipple's death, and prosecutors decided not to show his skull to jurors after Warren said it might be "unduly ghoulish."
Under questioning by prosecutor Kimberly Guilfoyle Newsom,
police Inspector Spencer Gregory reviewed for jurors the areas in the apartment
building hallway where Whipple's blood was found. He also identified the
defendants' doormat, inscribed with the words, "Ask not for whom the dog barks.
It barks for thee."
The most dramatic moment of yesterday's testimony came when Nedra Ruiz, the attorney for defendant Marjorie Knoller, asked Sharon Smith -- the partner of dog attack victim Diane Whipple -- why she hadn't made any complaints about any prior incidents.
-- Ruiz: "You did nothing to remedy the situation where your life partner lived in fear?"
Smith: "We took action," said Smith. "We stayed away from the dogs. I didn't make a complaint. Now, I wish I had."
Ruiz: "Do you consider that had you made a complaint, Diane Whipple might be alive today?"
-- Smith shook her head back and forth amid loud gasps in the courtroom, and the attorney continued questioning her on the issue.
Smith: "I never spoke to Mr. (Robert) Noel or Ms. Knoller before the bite or after the bite. I wanted nothing to do with them."
Source: Associated Press
E-mail Jaxon Van Derbeken at jvanderbeken@sfchronicle.com.
Close Window to Return to TBC Web Site