High Court Shuns Bid for Mannes Murder Trial : Legal affairs: Prosecutors had sought to retry the woman in a crash that killed three young men. They now plan to try her on gross vehicular manslaughter counts.

The U. S. Supreme Court refused Monday to consider allowing Diane Mannes to be retried for murder in the drunk-driving deaths of three young men on the Conejo Grade almost four years ago.

Without comment, the high court declined to hear an appeal by the Ventura County district attorney’s office, which had sought to overturn a federal judge’s ruling that banned a retrial. The Supreme Court was the last hope of prosecutors seeking another chance to try Mannes on murder charges after a Ventura County jury deadlocked in November, 1989.

“We’re accepting this as final,” Deputy Dist. Atty. Donald C. Glynn said. “We don’t have much choice.”

Mannes already served two years in prison for drunk driving and causing great bodily injury in connection with the case. But prosecutors have been pushing for additional punishment for the last three years.

Although they can no longer seek a murder prosecution, they plan to try her on charges of gross vehicular manslaughter while intoxicated, Glynn said. That charge carries a maximum term of 10 years in prison; a second-degree murder conviction could have resulted in a sentence of 15 years to life.

Mannes’ attorneys said Monday that they will try to prevent the 38-year-old bookkeeper from being retried on any charges. Deputy Public Defender Neil B. Quinn, who has handled the case in appeal courts, said that the speedy-trial deadline has passed and that there are other legal grounds for opposing a new trial.

According to testimony at the 1989 trial, Mannes had a blood alcohol level of 0.20%--twice the legal limit at the time--when she veered off the northbound Ventura Freeway on March 31, 1989, and plowed into five young men as they walked from their disabled car.

Only 43 hours before the fatal crash, Mannes had been arrested in Tarzana on suspicion of drunk driving with a blood alcohol level of 0.26%, investigators said.

At her trial, Glynn argued that Mannes was well aware of the dangers of drunk driving and did so anyway--conduct that he said showed the malice needed to sustain murder charges. Deputy Public Defender Robert Dahlstedt countered that Mannes’ behavior did not come close to satisfying the law’s definition of murder.

The jury split, 7 to 5, on the murder charges, with the majority favoring conviction. The panel voted unanimously to convict Mannes of drunk driving and of injuring the two youths who survived. She served about half of a four-year sentence before being paroled.

Superior Court Judge Robert J. Soares--now retired--declared a mistrial on the murder charges. But rather than schedule a new trial, as is typically done after a jury deadlocks, Soares dismissed the murder charges. In a written ruling, he said there was insufficient evidence to uphold the charges.

Soares said later in his ruling that he believed that prosecutors had the right to refile the murder charges and retry Mannes. But defense attorneys argued that when the judge ruled that there was insufficient evidence of murder, he had in effect acquitted Mannes.

The public defenders lost at every level in the state courts, but they prevailed at the U. S. District Court in Los Angeles and in the U. S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals. Both ruled that the Constitution’s double-jeopardy clause--which forbids trying a person twice for the same crime--applied to the Mannes case. On Monday, the Supreme Court refused to examine those rulings.

Quinn said he was not surprised by the Supreme Court’s decision, in part because the court typically agrees to hear a tiny percentage of the cases appealed from lower courts.

“It is amazing to think there actually is some finality,” Quinn said. “Things have been up in the air so long. To have that aspect of the case over is a relief.”

But Quinn and prosecutor Glynn agreed that it may be a long time before the case is finally resolved.

Defense attorneys have already filed a request with the state 2nd District Court of Appeal, seeking to have the case dismissed on speedy-trial grounds. If that fails, Quinn said, there are at least two other avenues of appeal. A hearing is scheduled Wednesday before Superior Court Judge James M. McNally.

Mannes is “relieved that the murder charge has been ruled out,” defense attorney Dahlstedt said Monday. “She’s anxious to get on with it and get this over with.”

Linda Oxenreider of Camarillo, whose son Joshua, 19, was among the three youths killed in the crash, said she was disappointed by the Supreme Court’s decision but is hopeful that Mannes will be convicted of manslaughter.

“At least that’s something,” said Oxenreider, who is president of the Ventura County chapter of Mothers Against Drunk Driving. Also killed in the crash were Jacob Boyd, 14, of Camarillo and Scott Mullins, 20, of Mansfield, Ohio.

“I would like to see her finally punished for killing my son and the two other boys,” Oxenreider said. “I would like to see that done so we could put it to rest.”