DOGGED QUESTIONS IMPORTANT EVIDENCE IS PUT DOWN IN FATAL MAULING TRIAL.

Byline: Jim Colovin Local View

THE jury came back with its verdict Thursday, but questions remain in the fatal dog mauling case from San Francisco.

I have been an animal trainer for film and television for more than 25 years and an expert in the art of training animals in general and dogs in particular.

Why was evidence allowed to be destroyed in a court of law? It's my professional opinion that important evidence was destroyed when the dogs Bane and Hera were put to sleep.

Dr. Randall Lockwood, animal expert for the prosecution, said in his testimony, ``If a dog licks 10 children in the face and then bites a finger off the 11th, those 10 prior acts are irrelevant.''

This was a hypothetical example that Lockwood gave in his testimony suggesting that it didn't matter how many witnesses testified that the dogs were well-behaved in public places and interacted well.

I think Lockwood was very much mistaken in this particular case.

When an animal of the domestic kind acts normal 10 out of 11 times and then bites a finger off the 11th person, it is very relevant in this particular case.

Keep in mind that several people already testified that Bane and Hera were well-behaved dogs out in the public's eye. Bane's owner, Marjorie Knoller, testified that Bane stopped attacking when the victim, Diane Whipple, stopped moving.

Police dogs are trained to hold a suspect at bay by simply, initially, capitalizing on a dog's natural ability to stop when the suspect stops moving.

This suggests to me that not only was there more going on in that hallway than what reached the testimonial bench, but Bane's hesitation further suggests that he was more than likely not crazy.

The questions to the defendant here should have been: ``What did you do and what did the victim do when Bane stopped attacking when both Whipple and Knoller stopped moving?'' and ``When did you first realize that Bane was out of control?''

There are a couple of possibilities of why Bane might have attacked Whipple that day.

Have you ever smelled a flower that brought back a particular memory in your life? Dogs also have the ability to associate a particular smell or a particular movement/treatment by their owner/trainer with either a good or bad experience.

Maybe in this case, the victim was carrying a scent that Bane recognized and associated with a bad experience.

Had Bane and Hera not been destroyed, it may have been possible to redeem important information from them. This is not the first time that evidence/dogs as witnesses were destroyed purely on the emotional need to be politically correct.

If I were going to check Bane out to see what caused this attack, I would have probably first hired an excellent woman animal trainer to wear the victim's clothes to see if Bane showed any reaction. I would have tested other clothing from strangers and clothes purchased from a local store.

While this test wouldn't give me the whole picture, it would have helped to eliminate one possible motivation as to why Bane suddenly decided to run down the hallway toward Whipple.

This case has so many unanswered questions.

In my opinion, to produce such devastating results, it had to take at least two people with high emotions and/or abrupt anger, unless Bane was taught to attack, was crazy, or Knoller was using her dog's protective emotions with the intent of doing harm to Whipple.

Was there any evidence of intent to do harm to Diane Whipple? The question still remains.

Why did this happen on this particular afternoon? We will never know because the only evidence that could have possibly helped us get those answers through a process of elimination was Bane and Hera - but they were destroyed.

I believe in this particular case (not in all cases), these dogs could have been tested for learned and trained behaviors. By this I mean that an expert trainer could have eliminated another possibility of motivation by checking to see if Bane would respond to a trained attack or an encouraged attack if the motivation was strong enough.

Knoller said that she yelled at Bane to stop. What happens when you raise your voice to yell a command at your dog, you are actually encouraging your dog to fight whether you were aware of it or not. Animals are very sensitive to your emotional output - therefore, instead of listening to your command to stop, your emotions may be telling your dog to respond in your defense. It's a pack animal trait.

After the testimony of Knoller, it suggests to me that both arrogance and ignorance played a major role in this tragedy.

An already bad situation was turned into an unnecessary tragedy. But it will remain a mystery because the dogs that could have answered some of these questions have been destroyed.

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Photo:

Defendant Marjorie Knoller listens to closing arguments in the San Francisco dog mauling trial. She was found guilty Thursday on all counts.

Nick Ut/Associated Press