O.C. Man Could Be Next to Be Executed in California

An Orange County man has lost a federal appeal of his death sentence for a 1981 rape-murder and could be the next person executed in California.

Thomas M. Thompson, 41, has only a U.S. Supreme Court appeal remaining after his second defeat last week in the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

He was convicted of raping and fatally stabbing 20-year-old Ginger Fleischli of Laguna Beach in September 1981. Her partly clad body was found in a grove of trees two days after she was last seen with Thompson.

A federal judge later overturned Thompson’s rape conviction, the basis for the capital murder charge, finding incompetent representation by his trial lawyer. But the conviction and death sentence were reinstated last June by the appeals court, which said the verdict could not have been affected by the lawyer’s alleged misdeeds because the evidence against Thompson was so strong.

The same three-judge panel denied reconsideration last week and announced that none of the full court’s 20 active judges had requested a vote on referring the case to an 11-judge panel for a new hearing.

Of the 470 death row inmates in the state, only Thompson has been denied final review by the federal appeals court.

If Thompson is denied a Supreme Court hearing, he could be executed in early 1998, Deputy Atty. Gen. Holly Wilkens, the state’s lawyer in the case, said Monday.

Defense lawyer Gregory A. Long said a Supreme Court appeal would be filed within 60 days.

Long said Thompson was a far less likely suspect than David Leitch, the victim’s former boyfriend.

Leitch, whose shoe prints were found near Fleischli’s body, was convicted of second-degree murder in a separate trial.

Thompson testified that he had consensual sex with Fleischli the night of her death, then passed out and slept until morning. But two jail inmates quoted him as saying he raped Fleischli, then killed her to keep her quiet.

The state Supreme Court upheld Thompson’s death sentence in a 5-2 ruling in 1988. But U.S. Dist. Judge Richard Gadbois later overturned the rape conviction.

Gadbois said the state’s rape case was weak, noting that a prosecution pathologist found no anatomical evidence of rape.

He said Thompson’s trial lawyer, Ronald Brower, failed to call an available expert witness who might have rebutted prosecution evidence of rape, and failed to bring out evidence that one of the jailhouse informants had received favors from prosecutors and had been branded a liar by law enforcement officials.