O.C. Man’s Appeal of Death Sentence Rejected

An Orange County man has lost a federal appeal of his death sentence for a 1981 rape and murder, and he 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 U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals.

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

A federal judge overturned Thompson’s rape conviction, which was the basis for the capital murder charge, finding incompetent representation by his trial lawyer. But the conviction and death sentence were reinstated in 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. Another condemned prisoner, Charles E. McDowell Jr., convicted of murdering a Los Angeles woman in 1982, was turned down by a three-judge panel of the court last month.

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.

“We’re getting closer to justice in this case,” she said.