Driver Can Be Retried in 3 Deaths, Judge Rules : Courts: The Somis woman was convicted of two lesser offenses in her first trial after the jury split over second-degree murder charges.

A Ventura Superior Court judge ruled Friday that a Somis woman may be tried a second time on charges of murdering three youths she struck while driving drunk down the Conejo Grade last March.

Judge Lawrence Storch ruled that another trial for second-degree murder would not subject Diane Helen Mannes to illegal double jeopardy. No trial date was set, however, because lawyers for the 35-year-old defendant declared their intention to appeal.

Mannes’ first trial ended in November when a jury split 7 to 5 on the three murder counts. She was convicted of two lesser offenses and sentenced to four years in prison.

Prosecutors requested a new trial on the three murder counts. But trial Judge Richard J. Soares dismissed them instead. The issue Friday was whether Soares, in dismissing the charges, had intended to preclude a new trial.

Storch said Soares’ written statement at the time of dismissal showed that the trial judge considered a second trial “a waste of time and money.” But Soares “did not make a determination of insufficiency of evidence as a matter of law,” Storch said. Such a determination would have prohibited a second trial, he said.

Deputy Public Defender Robert Dahlstedt, Mannes’ attorney, said he was baffled by Storch’s decision.

Soares stated in his findings that there was insufficient evidence that Mannes had acted with malice or that she knew that driving while intoxicated carried a high probability of causing death.

He also found that “there is no likelihood that a retrial on these charges will result in a unanimous verdict of guilty of murder.”

Dahlstedt argued that once a judge uses the words “insufficient evidence” when dismissing charges, subsequent prosecution is illegal. “It’s a legal standard; it’s not a judge musing,” he argued.

But Storch said he was not convinced, since during Mannes’ trial Soares twice denied defense motions for acquittal.

Mannes, driving with a blood-alcohol content twice the legal limit, struck five youths who had left their disabled vehicle on the Ventura Freeway last March 31. Fatally injured were Joshua Oxenrider, 19, and Jacob Boyd, 14, both of Camarillo, and Scott Mullins, 20, of Mansfield, Ohio.

More than a dozen relatives of the youths were in the courtroom Friday. One young girl cried quietly. Linda Oxenrider said she is frustrated that a full year after her son’s death, Mannes’ trial may be months away.

“We get put through this agony again and again,” she said. “These silly motions, this long process does nothing but victimize the victims even more.”

Dahlstedt said Mannes “hates coming to court and seeing the families. She realizes the pain and suffering she’s put them through.”