Camarillo Woman Free 4 Years After Fatal Crash : Sentencing: Diane Mannes gets five years probation in addition to prison time served in the drunk driving case.

More than four years after killing three young men while driving drunk on the Conejo Grade, Diane Mannes walked out of a courtroom full of weeping relatives Friday, a free woman.

Then she met privately with the victims’ families to say she was sorry.

Mannes, who ended years of legal jousting last month by pleading guilty to three counts of vehicular manslaughter, received five years probation in addition to the two years in prison she has served in the case.

While family members crowded the courtroom clutching photographs of the boys who died, the 38-year-old Camarillo woman spoke only briefly, answering “yes” when asked if she would abide by terms of her probation, which included a prohibition on drinking.

But relatives of two of the young men killed in the 1989 crash took advantage of their right to speak at the hearing, describing to Mannes the deep pain they have endured since the deaths.

“He was a brother, a pain in the neck, our protector, and we miss him very much,” said Jolie Martinez, whose 19-year-old brother, Joshua Oxenreider, was killed when Mannes’ car swerved into a group of five young men walking along the Ventura Freeway.

Mannes already served about half of a four-year prison term for a felony drunk driving conviction she received for injuring two boys in the group. But a Ventura County Superior Court jury deadlocked on three counts of second-degree murder.

Prosecutors were then blocked from retrying the murder case by a federal court, which said a trial judge’s comment that there was insufficient evidence to support a verdict of murder constituted an acquittal.

After a federal appeals court upheld that decision and the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear the case, prosecutors sought to try Mannes on charges of gross vehicular manslaughter.

But Superior Court Judge James M. McNally ruled in February that Mannes could not be charged with manslaughter either, because of the Constitution’s protection against double jeopardy.

The district attorney’s office appealed that ruling and was awaiting a decision when Mannes agreed to plead guilty to manslaughter--on the condition she serve no more time in prison.

Mannes said last month that she agreed to the plea to bring the case to a close and to admit responsibility for what she had done. She left the courthouse without public comment Friday.

The sentence, which was part of her plea agreement, includes a suspended prison term of three years and eight months. Mannes could be sent to prison if she violates any terms of her probation, which includes a three-year suspension of her driver’s license and orders to attend Alcoholics Anonymous meetings three times a week.

Jeremy Boyd, a crash survivor whose 14-year-old brother, Jacob, was killed, made a tearful plea to Mannes to meet with him outside court to talk about the case.

“They say to err is human, but to forgive is divine,” he said during the sentencing. “I do forgive. I’m grateful that I don’t have to live with the memory of what happened that day.”

Mannes did meet privately after the sentencing with Boyd and Linda Oxenreider, who became president of the Ventura County chapter of Mothers Against Drunk Driving after her son’s death.

“She was crying and carrying on about how ruined her life was, that she’s getting a divorce,” Oxenreider said after the 15-minute meeting. “She said she wasn’t drinking.”

Oxenreider also said that Mannes apologized for the deaths but said the face-to-face talk did little to ease her anger.

“If she’d shown she was sorry four years ago, it would have meant something,” the MADD president said.

In a pre-sentence interview with a probation officer, Mannes said she would have liked to apologize to the families earlier but was advised by her attorney not to contact them while the case was pending.

Oxenreider graphically told the court about the trauma she has undergone since last seeing her son.

“We couldn’t so much as even touch his hands” at the hospital, she said. “The damage to his body was so bad they took him straight to the morgue. I would dream I was opening coffins to look inside and see indeed if that was my son.”

Oxenreider complained bitterly during her address to the court that Mannes had never apologized for her actions during the four years of courtroom battles.

“All I’ve ever, ever wanted to see from her was a little remorse,” Oxenreider said. “A small, ‘I’m sorry,’ a look, anything.”

Members of Mothers Against Drunk Driving had placed photographs of the three victims on a table directly in front of Mannes prior to the sentencing. The third victim was Darrin Scott Mullins, 20, of Ohio.

The defendant broke down in tears several times throughout the hourlong hearing, but avoided the glares of those whose relatives were killed.

Mannes, who worked as an office assistant for a Camarillo chiropractor whom she later married, had been arrested the night before the fatal crash on suspicion of drunk driving. She told investigators she had been experiencing personal problems that led her to use drugs and to drink excessively.