As entertaining as the Gavin years have been, SFist always kind of wished they were around for the Dog Mauling case, you know the one where a couple of Presa Canario dogs killed Diane Whipple in the hallway of the apartment complex they all lived in. Now that was a trial-- there was the creepy couple who owned the dogs (Marjorie Knoller and her husband Robert Noel), their prison pen pal and Nazi skinhead Paul "Cornfed" Schneider who they also adopted, the lawyer who got on all fours and pretended she was a dog, and rumors of all sorts of nasty pornographic pictures involving Knoller and the dogs. Oh, and how could we forget the fact that one of the lawyers on the case was a then unknown Kimberly Guilfoyle. Now that, my friends, was good times.

The reason for the return of the case is that prosecutors went in front of the California Supreme Court to see if they could get a second-degree murder charge reinstated for Marjorie Knoller. Both Knoller and Noel were convicted of second degree murder for Whipple's death but the judge later overturned Knoller's conviction because he believed defense's claims that she didn't think the dogs and her care of the dogs would lead to anybody's death. As if letting an inmate in San Quentin raise the dogs be the perfectly normal thing to do. An appeals court later reinstated Knoller's conviction and the hearing in the California Supreme Court is to decide which verdict is the correct verdict. The Supreme Court could either make a decision, find some sort of compromise, or throw it back to the previous courts.

Both Knoller and Noel are free right now after serving four year sentences but if the Supreme Court, or any of the other courts that the Supreme Court could throw the case to, rules that Knoller is guilty of second degree murder, she could face upwards of fifteen years in prison. Knoller wasn't at the trial as apparently, nobody knows where she is right now