RULING FREES MOTHER

Washington Post

Karen Diehl, her 1987 manslaughter and abduction convictions in Virginia Beach overturned by the Virginia Court of Appeals, has been ordered freed under $60,000 bond.

Diehl was convicted of abduction, manslaughter, assault and child neglect in the Oct. 29, 1986, death of her 13-year-old son, Dominick J. "Andrew" Diehl, who was found on the floor of a converted school bus the family lived in. He had been severely beaten.

Diehl's husband, Michael, is serving a 41-year sentence for murder, abduction and child neglect. He, too, has appealed his conviction.

Earlier this month, a three-judge panel of the state appeals court overturned her conviction on the grounds that Circuit Court Judge Alan E. Rosenblatt failed to remove a baised juror from the jury