Bracing for an Ordeal : Families to Endure New Trial Ordered for Drunk Driver in 3 Deaths

A year ago today, Linda Oxenreider wept in a Ventura County courtroom as her son’s violent death in a traffic accident was recounted.

The family of Diane Mannes was there too, listening as witnesses described her as a murderer who drunkenly mowed down five young men, killing three of them.

On Wednesday, as Mannes was bound over for retrial on a new set of second-degree murder charges, both families were back in court, sharing the same front row, reliving the night of March 31, 1989.

“I’ll come every day,” said Linda Oxenreider, who attended every session of Mannes’ first trial last November.

Mannes’ father, her boyfriend and several other family members sat behind the defendant, who was dressed in blue jail clothes. They declined to comment.

Mannes was convicted of two felony drunk driving charges and was sentenced to four years in prison last year, but the jury deadlocked on the second-degree murder charges that the district attorney’s office had filed.

Rather than accept the initial verdict, the district attorney’s office decided to retry Mannes on second-degree murder charges, a decision supported by the victims’ families, Linda Oxenreider said.

“What she did to us is absolutely the worst thing you can do to another person--kill their child,” she said.

What Mannes did, according to witnesses at her preliminary hearing Wednesday and at the first trial, was drink a considerable amount of vodka before driving a 1984 Ford Bronco down the broad S-curves of the Conejo Grade on the northbound Ventura Freeway.

The Oxenreiders’ son Joshua, 19, and four of his friends were walking along the shoulder of the highway after having a flat tire. They were about 40 feet from their disabled car when Mannes sideswiped it and plowed into the group, fatally injuring Jacob Boyd, 14, of Camarillo; Scott Mullins, 20, of Mansfield, Ohio, and Joshua Oxenreider.

Jacob’s brother, Jeremy Boyd, 19 at the time, and Jeffrey Botens, then 15, both of Camarillo, were seriously injured.

Pulling yellow tissues from her purse, Linda Oxenreider cried quietly as Municipal Judge John J. Hunter recited some of the facts agreed to by both sides in the case: that Mannes had killed the three men with her car; that her blood-alcohol level was 0.20%; that 43 hours before the accident, Mannes had been arrested in Tarzana on suspicion of drunk driving with a blood alcohol level of 0.26%; that in 1983 Mannes was convicted of driving under the influence in Los Angeles with a 0.34% blood-alcohol level.

“It fills me with a great deal of rage,” Linda Oxenreider said during a break. “All this because of the selfishness of one woman.”

Mannes’ boyfriend, David Pena, testified Wednesday that he had known her to drink only one other time in their five-year relationship. After her drunk driving arrest in the Valley the day before the accident, Mannes told him that she drank because she was upset about long-simmering family matters, Pena said.

Mannes’ lawyer, Deputy Public Defender Robert Dahlstedt, who unsuccessfully tried to block a second trial on grounds that it would constitute double jeopardy, said in an interview that Mannes suffers from depression and drank sometimes to obliterate her feelings.

The only other witness Wednesday was Tony Dunn, 22, of Simi Valley. Dunn was with the youths who were hit but escaped injury because he was on the other side of the guardrail.

Linda Oxenreider winced as Dunn told of hearing a “smash” of one car hitting another and of seeing the Bronco scraping along the pavement, upside down. Dunn climbed over the guardrail, he said, and found all of his friends lying on the ground.

To get a second-degree murder conviction, prosecutor Donald Glynn must prove not only that Mannes killed the youths, but that her drunken condition constituted malice.

Dahlstedt argued that the California Supreme Court has ruled that malice exists in such cases only if there is a high probability that the act will result in death. He noted that the Ventura court sees thousands of drunk drivers each year but only a few cases in which a death is involved.

Hunter, however, said the higher a driver’s blood alcohol level, the higher the probability that death will result. Citing Mannes’ prior cases of drunk driving and a program she attended, he said she was well aware of the dangers of drunk driving.

Hunter scheduled arraignment for June 21. Dahlstedt said the trial should start in July.

The defense attorney said a second trial could have been avoided. “We would plead guilty to vehicular manslaughter,” he said.

That charge would result in a maximum term of about 14 years, he said, including the prison time already ordered. He said the maximum sentence she could receive for three second-degree murder convictions would be 45 years to life.

Dahlstedt said Mannes “knows she has affected a lot of lives.”

“If it was left to her, she would probably say she should be punished as a murderer.”