LOS ANGELES -- The jury in the San Francisco dog mauling trial reached verdicts Wednesday on four of five counts facing a couple accused in the death of a neighbor, then adjourned until Thursday to consider the last charge.

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Final Arguments Offered Plenty Of Drama

Superior Court Judge James L. Warren told the jury foreman to seal the completed verdicts in an envelope, which was to be kept under lock overnight.

There was no indication which of the five counts remained undecided.

"When the jury comes back with all the verdicts we will read all the verdicts," the judge said.

The jury earlier requested a rereading of testimony from witness Robert Noel, the husband of Marjorie Knoller, who is accused of second-degree murder and other charges. Noel faces involuntary manslaughter charges. He wasn't present during the attack.

Lacrosse coach Diane Whipple was attacked 14 months ago in a hallway outside her apartment.

The lawyers in the case have been clashing in and outside court.

Defense lawyer Nedra Ruiz accused prosecutor Jim Hammer of pandering to the gay community by filing charges in the case. The victim was gay.

Hammer said Ruiz is "desperate," and should have been cited for contempt of court.

The jury began deliberating Tuesday whether they should have known their huge dogs were potentially lethal before they attacked Whipple.

In his closing argument Monday, Assistant District Attorney James Hammer told the jury that Knoller and Noel knew that their Presa Canarios, Bane and Hera, were aggressive -- and that they had lunged at some people and nipped at others before the attack that took the life of Whipple on Jan. 26, 2001.

But lawyers for the couple countered that the two had no way of knowing the dogs -- part of a fighting breed -- would attack and kill their neighbor.

"It is a case full of passion and prejudice. You saw a lot of passion here this morning (from the prosecutor), and the reason you saw a lot of passion is because that's all there is to this criminal case," Noel's lawyer, Bruce Hotchkiss, told the seven men and five women of the jury.

Knoller, 46 (pictured, right), was at the scene of the attack in her apartment building in Pacific Heights.

If convicted, Knoller faces a sentence of 15 years to life in state prison. Noel could get four years.

The case was moved from San Francisco to Los Angeles because of pretrial publicity.

Hammer called the dogs "time bombs," and said Knoller and Noel should have noticed the earlier "explosions.'

"This time, it killed a woman," he said, occasionally holding up a plaster cast of one of the dog's jaws and teeth.

Knoller's lawyer, Nedra Ruiz, said Sharon Smith lied when she testified that her domestic partner had told her about being bitten by one of the dogs about six weeks before she was killed.

"Sharon Smith has every right to sue for the wrongful death of her girlfriend, but she has no right to come here with false testimony and attempt to frame Marjorie Knoller for murder...," Ruiz argued.

She suggested that her client is being tried for reasons of political expediency, saying that Hammer may be seeking "to curry favor with the homosexual and gay folks who are picketing (at the apartment complex) and demanding justice for Diane Whipple (pictured, left)."

Both dogs -- one weighing 123 pounds, the other 112 -- have since been euthanized.