Condemned Man to Reject Option of Gas Chamber

Despite a court ruling that once again gives death row inmates the option of dying by cyanide gas, the lawyer for the first man scheduled to be executed under the new system says the inmate will choose lethal injection.

“The lethal injection is basically a painless approach, and the gas chamber is torture. [The choice] was essentially a nonissue,” said Jack Leavitt, attorney for Bill Bradford, who is scheduled to be executed Aug. 18 for two Southern California murders a decade ago.

In a ruling last week, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals rejected a 1994 decision that had banned the use of lethal gas as inhumane. The court upheld a state law reinstituting the use of poison gas in California for the first time since the execution of an Oakland killer nearly five years ago.

The law authorizes the continued use of lethal injections unless the condemned prisoner opts for lethal gas instead.

The court decision came too late to affect Tuesday morning’s execution of Orange County killer Thomas Thompson. Bradford will be the first inmate to get a choice, officials said.

But the ruling may have little practical impact on death row, Leavitt said.

“The sense on death row that I got from [Bradford] is that no one would do this. Nobody seemed to be saying that the gas chamber was the preferred method,” Leavitt said.

Bradford has asked to be executed. He persuaded a judge last month to sign his death warrant, saying he did not want to wait out years of legal wrangling and appeals.

Bradford, an amateur photographer from the Venice area, was convicted of the July 1984 strangulations of two young women, Venice bartender Shari Miller, 21, and Tracey Campbell, a 15-year-old neighbor.

Miller’s mutilated body was discovered in a parking lot in West Los Angeles. Campbell’s remains were found later, in a remote campsite in the high desert near Lancaster.

Meanwhile, Thompson’s family said Wednesday that Thompson’s ashes will be scattered in the harbor at Copenhagen, Denmark, near the statue of the “Little Mermaid” that greets returning sailors.

“Tom was dismayed by what our country was doing to him,” Lisa Nagelschmidt, his sister, said Wednesday. “He couldn’t wait to get out of the country. He didn’t want to be here.”

Thompson, who was executed Tuesday for a 17-year-old crime, often expressed anger to his family that the justice system was brushing aside his pleas of innocence. Thompson argued to the end that he did not rape or murder Ginger Fleischli, 20, in Laguna Beach.

With the final punishment now carried out, Thompson’s remains will be returned to his ancestral homeland sometime in the future. Thompson’s mother, Ingebort Lochrie, is a native of Denmark.