Thomas Martin Thompson

Thomas Martin Thompson (Tommy Thompson, 1955-1998) was convicted in California in 1983 of the rape and murder of Ginger Fleischli, and executed in 1998. He is widely believed to have been innocent. In 1981 Thompson and Fleischli spent an evening in Laguna Beach, California visiting bars and smoking marijuana before ending up in bed, where according to Thompson's account they had consensual sex before he passed out. He said he woke up in the morning and Fleschli was gone, but her blood was on the carpet near his bed. The police found Fleischi's body 10 miles from the apartment. The prosecution accused Thompson of raping and killing Fleischli. Their crucial evidence was from two previously convicted fellow inmates, John Del Frate and Edward Fink, who claimed to have heard Thompson admit while in jail to the rape and murder. Seven former California prosecutors filed an amicus brief supporting Thompson and criticizing the way the case had been run. The Federal Appeals Court ruled that the prosecutor had manipulated evidence and witnesses in Thompson's trial, and had later discredited his own case against Thompson. The court found Thompson's death sentence erroneous and his trial unconstitutional. The case went to the Supreme Court but was rejected on a technicality (the Appeals Court had taken too long). The prosecution did not inform the judge or the defense that another person (David Leitch) was charged and later convicted of the murder. Donald Heller, who drew up California's 1978 Proposition 7 or the Briggs initiative–which greatly increased the possible reasons for the death sentence, after the execution of Thompson, became a vociferous opponent of the death penalty.