SAN FRANCISCO — Acting to prevent what it called "a manifest injustice," the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals reversed itself Sunday and halted the scheduled execution of Thomas M. Thompson for the 1981 rape and stabbing death of a young woman in Laguna Beach.
The 42-year-old former boat repairman had been scheduled to be put to death by lethal injection just after midnight tonight at San Quentin State Prison.
But in an unusual 65-page ruling that followed three days of deliberations, the appeals court said "a grave question exists whether he is innocent of the death-qualifying offense, the alleged rape."
The decision was appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court on Sunday evening, according to a spokesman for California Atty. Gen. Dan Lungren. In a statement, Lungren said he hopes the high court will act quickly so the execution can go forward as scheduled early Tuesday.
"The people of California--most importantly the victim's family--should not have to wait any longer for justice to be served," he said.
In its decision, the full 9th Circuit court called the circumstances surrounding Thompson's trial, conviction and heretofore unsuccessful appeals "extraordinary." It said its own three-judge panel should not have reinstated Thompson's death sentence in September.
In Sunday's 7-4 decision, the judges wrote: "The panel appears to have made fundamental errors of law that if not corrected would lead to a miscarriage of justice."
They also wrote that "the consequence of our failure to act would be the execution of a person as to whom a grave question exists" about guilt in the alleged rape--the conviction that made Thompson subject to the death penalty--"and whose conviction on the first-degree murder charge may be fundamentally flawed."
The flaw, the judges wrote, may be that Thompson's trial lawyer failed to challenge the veracity of a "notoriously unreliable" jailhouse informant. Two informants testified at Thompson's trial that he had confessed to them while he was in custody.
Ronald G. Brower, Thompson's lawyer at the time, could not be reached Sunday for comment.
The appellate judges Sunday also criticized the prosecution in the rape-murder, saying that "a serious question exists as to whether Thompson was deprived of due process . . . by the prosecutor's presentation of flagrantly inconsistent theories, facts and arguments to the two juries that separately heard Thompson's case, and that of his co-defendant, David Leitch."
