Court Rules Out 2nd Trial for Mannes : Constitution: Jurists say double jeopardy prohibits retrial in the drunk-driving deaths of three young men.

The U. S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled Monday that Diane Mannes, who killed three young men while driving drunk on the Conejo Grade in 1989, cannot be retried on murder charges.

In a unanimous 14-page opinion, the three-judge panel ruled that the double-jeopardy clause of the U. S. Constitution prohibits the Ventura County district attorney’s office from retrying Mannes for murder.

The appeal court said Mannes had, in effect, been acquitted of murder when Ventura County Superior Court Judge Robert J. Soares dismissed the case after the jury deadlocked in November, 1989.

“The trial judge’s ruling that the evidence presented at trial was insufficient to convict petitioner of murder was an acquittal for the purposes of the Double Jeopardy Clause,” said the opinion, which was written by Judge James R. Browning. The other judges on the panel were Stephen Reinhardt and Robert Boochever.

The ruling is the latest setback in Dist. Atty. Michael D. Bradbury’s three-year crusade to convict Mannes of second-degree murder in the deaths of Joshua Oxenreider, Jacob Boyd and Scott Mullins.

Although Bradbury has vowed to take the case to the U. S. Supreme Court, the 9th Circuit usually is the court of last resort for federal cases in the West. The Supreme Court typically agrees to hear fewer than 1% of the cases it is asked to review.

No one in Bradbury’s office could be reached for comment Monday night, but Linda Oxenreider, the mother of one of the victims, said Bradbury told her a few months ago that he would appeal to the high court if necessary.

“He told me he was prepared to take it all the way, and I told him I’d back him if that’s what he wanted to do,” Oxenreider said. “Nothing will bring my son back, so I’m going to do as much as I can to see that she’s punished as much as she can be.”

One of Mannes’ attorneys, Deputy Public Defender Robert Dahlstedt, said he hopes that prosecutors will accept the 9th Circuit’s ruling. “It’s time to put this case behind us,” Dahlstedt said. “It’s time to talk to the D. A. and figure out what this case is worth, and not put the victims’ families through this again.”

Dahlstedt said he was not sure, however, whether Mannes and her attorneys would renew her earlier offers to plead guilty to manslaughter.

Mannes, now 37, has admitted that she was drunk when she drove down the steep Conejo Grade on March 31, 1989, and lost control of her Ford Bronco. The vehicle plowed into five young men who were walking from their disabled car, killing three and injuring two others.

A Superior Court jury convicted Mannes of drunk driving and causing great bodily injury, and she was sentenced to four years in prison on those charges.

But the jury deadlocked on whether Mannes was guilty of second-degree murder. Rather than schedule a new trial on the murder charges, as requested by the prosecutors, Judge Soares dismissed the case. Soares has since retired from the bench.

Prosecutors refiled the charges, and their right to do so under California law was upheld by state courts at every level, including the state Supreme Court.

But in a judgment in February, 1991, U.S. Dist. Judge A. Wallace Tashima in Los Angeles agreed with Deputy Public Defender Neil B. Quinn, who had argued that retrial was barred by the Fifth Amendment. The amendment states that no person shall be “twice put in jeopardy of life or limb” for the same offense.

In appealing that ruling, Deputy Dist. Atty. Michael D. Schwartz argued first that the District Court should have abstained from getting involved in a pending state-court proceeding, and second that the District Court erred in ruling that the double-jeopardy clause prevented a retrial.

“The Fifth Amendment’s protection against double jeopardy . . . is not against being twice punished, but against being twice put in jeopardy . . . full vindication of the right necessarily requires intervention before trial.”

As for the second argument--that the double-jeopardy clause does not apply--the appeal court pointed to the ruling that Judge Soares issued when he dismissed the case. Among other things, Soares said there was insufficient evidence that Mannes acted with the malice required for a verdict of guilty of murder.

“The trial judge’s ruling that the evidence presented at trial was insufficient to convict petitioner of murder was an acquittal for the purposes of the Double Jeopardy Clause,” the 9th Circuit’s opinion said.

The appeal court agreed with the prosecution’s contention that if Soares thought that the evidence was insufficient, he should have dismissed the case before letting the jury consider it. But the appeal court said Soares was not barred from making his insufficient-evidence ruling after the jury deadlocked.

And with that ruling, the court said, the double-jeopardy clause prevents a new murder trial, even though Soares wrote that he believed prosecutors could refile.

Dahlstedt said he had not yet spoken with Mannes and she could not be reached for comment late Monday. She was paroled after serving a little more than two years on her convictions and is living with relatives in Camarillo.