Prosecutor Seeks Retrial of Driver After Jury Deadlocks in Deaths of 3 Youths

The Ventura County district attorney’s office Wednesday asked for a retrial in the case of a Somis woman whose first trial, for killing three youths as she was driving drunk on Highway 101 last March, ended with a hung jury.

Ventura Superior Court Judge Robert Soares is to decide Dec. 1 whether to retry Diane Helen Mannes, 35, on charges of second-degree murder. The jury at her first trial deadlocked last week, with seven jurors voting for conviction and five for acquittal.

Even if Soares denies the request for a new trial date, Dist. Atty. Michael Bradbury will continue efforts to bring Mannes to trial on second-degree murder charges, said prosecutor Donald Glynn. Prosecutors will refile the murder charges and attempt to press the case at a preliminary hearing, rather than offering Mannes the opportunity to plead guilty to the lesser charge of manslaughter, Glynn said.

“Bradbury believed the facts convicted her of second-degree murder, I believe it, and seven of the jurors believed it,” said Glynn. “So we want to take another shot at it.”

The family of Joshua Oxenrider, a 19-year-old Camarillo man who died in the accident, applauded the prosecution’s persistence.

“I’m hoping the judge will let the trial be reset,” said Joshua’s mother, Linda, who testified at the first trial and attended daily. “If not, we’ll just start all over again. I’d like to find a jury who will hold a drunk driver accountable for the crimes they have committed.”

Glynn acknowledged Wednesday that prosecutors would not do much differently a second time, except for hiring their own psychiatrist to evaluate Mannes, who contended in court that she was so drunk and depressed that she couldn’t have realized how dangerous her drunk driving would be. Such a realization is necessary to prove second-degree murder.

“It’s a big philosophical problem,” Glynn said. “You’re asking the jury to label a drunk driver as a murderer. And you have to have pretty outrageous facts to make it work.”

Mannes, who remains in jail on $250,000 bail, could be sentenced to 45 years to life in prison if convicted of second-degree murder.

The sentence would be fitting, say prosecutors, pointing to testimony that they say highlights the aggravating circumstances in the case.

On the night of March 31, Mannes had gone to Westlake Village to confront her father over a long-simmering money dispute. She stopped to buy a bottle of vodka and some orange juice, some of which she drank for courage in the parking lot before she got back in the car and headed to her father’s home, according to testimony.

When there was no answer at his door, she headed back toward Somis, down the steep, curvy Conejo Grade.

Meanwhile, six young men, on their way back to Camarillo from Thousand Oaks, had just left their car--disabled with a flat tire--on the freeway and began walking down the grade.

Mannes, with what was later measured as a blood-alcohol content of 0.20, rounded a curve in the slow lane and swerved to the right, grazing the boys’ car and plowing into them as they walked, witnesses said.

Scott Mullins, 20, of Mansfield, Ohio, died at the scene. Fourteen-year-old Jacob Eugene Boyd and Joshua Daniel Oxenrider, both of Camarillo, died soon after. Jacob’s older half-brother, Jeremy, 19 at the time, suffered a punctured lung, and Jeffrey Botens, then 16, also of Camarillo, suffered major injuries.

Only Anthony Dunn, 21, of Thousand Oaks, Jacob Boyd’s step-brother and Jeremy Boyd’s half-brother, escaped injury. He was on the other side of the guardrail and was the only one to see the accident.

He sees it still.

“He has these awful dreams full of blood and guts, and horrible headaches,” said Elaine Boyd of Thousand Oaks, mother of Anthony Dunn and Jeremy Boyd. “Anthony was always very outgoing. He had a lot of friends, and he was a good athlete. Now, he just pretty much goes to work and comes home.

“He keeps saying, ‘If only I had done this or if only I had done that.’ It’s difficult for him to sleep or keep his mind on work.”

Like Dunn and the other survivors, Jeremy Boyd is filled with anger, frustration, confusion.

“I’d like to talk to her and see how she feels,” he said. “I’d like to know what she’s thinking, if she’s feeling any remorse or thinking about our families going through hell.”

Jeremy and Jacob had shared a room in their father’s house in Camarillo. “It’s just not the same anymore. It’s quieter here,” he said.

Joshua Oxenrider had been Jeremy’s best friend since early boyhood, Elaine Boyd said. Joshua was one of two boys in a family of seven. The group hung around the Oxenrider house a lot, spending hours working on dirt bikes in the garage, said Joshua’s mother, Linda Oxenrider.

“You wouldn’t believe it could be quiet around here, but it is,” she said. “There’s nobody now to eat all the leftovers.”

The family also misses Scott Mullins, a friend of Joshua’s who stayed at the house. “Josh was always bringing kids home who needed a place to stay or a meal,” Linda Oxenrider said.

She attended every day of Mannes’ first trial, and she will be there for the second.

“I wanted her to see me there. She just committed the ultimate torture on a mother, to kill one of her children.” At the trial, the prosecutor asked the victims’ families not to display emotion, fearing that such displays would prejudice the jury. But each time Linda Oxenrider saw her son’s name or saw pictures of the accident scene, she could barely hold on, she said.

“It was like a new punch in the stomach each time,” she said. “But if the trial comes out right this time, I could stand it again.”

Joshua’s older sister, Joley, 21, attended the trial whenever she got time off from her job with a defense contracting firm. Her car carries a bumper sticker that reads: “A drunk driver killed my brother.” Jacob Boyd’s sister, Amy, has a similar sticker on her car.

Joley Oxenrider is angry at the justice system, and with Mannes.

“Sometimes I just wanted to stand up and say, ‘Just cut the crap and let us at her,’ ” she said. “I’d just rather let her be locked in a room with Mom and a baseball bat.”

The Oxenriders and Boyds said things might be a little less difficult to handle if they had seen some sign of remorse from Mannes.

“I looked at her and thought, ‘Show me that you care, lady,’ but I never saw a sign,” Joley said.

Defense attorney Robert Dahlstedt said Mannes is haunted by grief.

“She has a tremendous sense of remorse,” he said. “She keeps saying, ‘I killed three babies. They were just babies.’ ”

But relatives of the victims are skeptical. Joley Oxenrider pointed to the police report that contains a photocopy of a small plastic sign that, along with an open bottle of vodka, tumbled out of Mannes’ borrowed Ford Bronco when it skidded on its roof after the accident. The sign read: “I swerve and hit people at random.”

“It makes my blood chill,” Joley Oxenrider said.