Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, April 4, 1990 TAG: 9004041442
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: B2 EDITION: EVENING
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: RICHMOND LENGTH: Medium
In a 5-5 ruling Tuesday, the court reinstated Karen Diehl's convictions of involuntary manslaughter, abduction, child neglect and assault and battery. She was sentenced to 31 years in prison after her trial in 1987.
A three-judge panel of the state appeals court on Sept. 12, 1989, had ruled that she was entitled to a new trial. However, the case later was reheard by the full court.
Robert G. Morecock of Virginia Beach, a lawyer for Diehl, had argued that parents cannot be charged with criminal abduction of their own children.
Morecock also contended on appeal that the Virginia Beach Circuit Court that convicted Diehl erred in jury selection, in admitting a photograph, in prohibiting medical and psychiatric evidence, in allowing cameras in the courtroom and in admitting a videotape of Diehl's interrogation.
Diehl and her husband, Michael Diehl, were convicted in the beating death of their adopted son, Dominick J. "Andrew" Diehl, 13. The Idaho couple were arrested in 1986 while living in a Virginia Beach campground in a converted school bus with their 17 children, 13 of them adopted.
The couple said they disciplined Andrew by beating his buttocks with a stick, shackling him naked to the floor of the bus and forcing him to consume his feces and urine. The youngster died of brain damage.
In a separate trial, Michael Diehl was convicted of first-degree murder, abduction, assault and battery and child neglect.
Neither Morecock nor Bert Rohrer, spokesman for the state attorney general's office, immediately returned phone calls today.
by CNB