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Season Five Home for the Holidays 8
152 Plays13 days ago
In Today’s Episode, we put together our Home for the Holiday cases.
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Sources:
Various News Sources Mentioned by Name
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction and Theme
00:00:00
Speaker
The content you're about to hear may be graphic in nature. Listener discretion is advised.
00:00:22
Speaker
This is True Crime XS. Okay, so we're pretty deep into the Home for the Holidays episodes this year. And I picked this one because I always like question marks, but I don't like question marks when they sort of hinge on whether or not someone's life was taken with any kind of real purpose.
Evolving Views on Death Penalty
00:00:50
Speaker
Now you and I have talked about over the last
00:00:54
Speaker
I'd say a year or two how our perspective of the death penalty has started to change to some degree. And I know when I did this, i I've always come from a defense perspective when it comes to wrongful convictions and largely when it comes to trials that I get invested in.
00:01:14
Speaker
and different times of the year, you can totally find me figuring out how to like watch the recap of a trial or watching an entire trial at night because it was live streamed and maybe I was working or doing something during the day. If I'm watching it, it's usually because there is like a big question for me in how the defense or how the prosecution is behaving.
00:01:36
Speaker
and When I get into those particular trials based on like sort of modern criminal cases, I always think about cases where we have potentially executed an innocent person. And this this year, like we had this spate of like everybody was getting executed. I don't know if you remember that happening.
00:02:00
Speaker
Yes, I remember. It's a very strange situation.
Case of Robert Robertson and Others
00:02:03
Speaker
um You said that our perspective on the death penalty is evolving, and I think it's pretty safe to say that like nobody wants to see innocent people put to death, right? Oh, yeah. I mean, that's that's how ah mine is evolving, but I think I'm coming from the perspective of I knew there were a few innocent people we put to death, but now it's getting more difficult to discern who's actually innocent and who is kind of technically not guilty.
00:02:30
Speaker
Great. Where I fall is, I know people went kind of crazy on Missouri earlier this year, but I think people will notice that like I put Robert Robertson out there. That was the case where I looked at it and I felt like he was innocent. The cases that had happened in the weeks previous, there were three of them in a row. If you want to go back and look at them at some point, I'll mention them again in the home for the holidays.
00:02:52
Speaker
sir I did not feel like some of those people were factually innocent. I felt like the attorneys were signaling, in some cases, virtue signaling, but in a lot of cases, they were they were really process signaling. Like, we think this thing mattered, but it it didn't affect the factual innocence, but what if? And like there was a case where an ADA had handled the murder weapon,
00:03:21
Speaker
And if you look at the case very carefully, they're lying to the media. They're saying to the media, the DNA did not match our client, but what had happened was after everything had been handled in court, there were instances around that where the investigator and the district attorney who was prosecuting the case had not worn gloves when they were supposed to. But all the testing had been done prior to that, as far as like trying to conclude what had happened to that weapon When they came back around to it, the idea was that the convicted person had been wearing gloves. And so therefore, the in my mind, the defense attorney knew there's no way it's possibly his ah blood or DNA on this weapon. um But they framed it in terms of how they talked to the courts and the media as we have some unknown DNA here and it has to be tested.
00:04:16
Speaker
But when it came back and it like lined up with people who were involved in either the court case itself or the the the crime, like ah the people who are collecting evidence, which that could cause like some issues in terms of like factual innocence, but they didn't tell anybody when it came down to the fact that like the DNA was sort of a nonstarter for them. They just kept attacking other strange issues. And I think they finally had settled on whether or not one of the jurors who had been disqualified during Badera
00:04:49
Speaker
was there a good reason for that? Or was it like racial injustice? Right. And so that was a non-starting argument, in my opinion. You don't actually get to argue who wasn't on your jury, right? Correct. And at the end of the day, I didn't bring that person up on the podcast proper because I did not feel like some major mistake was being made. But I'll tell you what, man, social media ran with those cases.
00:05:16
Speaker
And i it takes a lot for me to like look at a bunch of court decisions in a row and go, they're all
Thomas Martin Thompson's Background
00:05:24
Speaker
wrong. But the case that I'm bringing up today out of California is a case that ends with a really big question mark. I guess I should ask you upfront, had you ever heard of this guy when I started poking around and talking about him? No, I hadn't. Today's case all takes place ah back in time.
00:05:43
Speaker
It is so completely wrapped up by July of 1998. I just want to warn people that like we're going to speculate some here. If you are really sensitive to the idea of an innocent person having been executed, this could be a case that like really bothers you. Today, we're talking about a man named Thomas Martin Thompson. so Thomas Thompson,
00:06:06
Speaker
was born March 20th of 1955 up in Chicago, Illinois. In 1960, his parents got a divorce and he moved with his mother and his sister to New York. A few years later, they moved from New York to Orange County, California. Thomas went to Villa Park High School, which is a public high school that you would go through from ninth grade to graduate.
00:06:31
Speaker
What was interesting about Villa Park High School when Thomas Thompson gets there is it's almost a brand new school. It was only built in 1964. It had only been open for a few years. It is part of the Orange Unified School District at the time.
00:06:46
Speaker
and It basically served Orange County, California as one of the the four high schools there. His senior year, Thomas doesn't graduate from Villa Park High School. He moves back to Chicago to live with his dad. At this point in time, Thomas joins the U.S. Army. He ends up receiving multiple letters of commendation and awards He is later on given an honorable discharge, but he doesn't go back to Illinois. He goes back to California and he uses his GI Bill to go to California State University and to go to Santa Ana College.
00:07:23
Speaker
When this gets to trial, is everybody points out that Thomas Thompson is a
Events Leading to Ginger Fleischle's Murder
00:07:30
Speaker
really good guy. He was kind. He had a litany of really good qualities. He has no criminal record, but he is accused of a particularly heinous crime. That crime is on September 11th of 1981, a guy named David Light, a person named Afshin Kishani, and then Thomas Thompson, and a woman named Ginger Fleischle. They all go to Laguna Beach, California to go bar hopping. They've smoked some weed. Now, Ginger, at some point in the evening,
00:08:03
Speaker
goes missing her body won't be found for three days she'll be found about ten miles from thomas's apartment buried in a field ginger had been wrapped in a rope and was covered with a sleeping bag and a blanket all of these items were found to have been taken from thomas thompson's apartment now she had been stabbed multiple times in the head and her body and the way she was clothed at the time her body was found showed signs of sexual assault. Ginger's blood was found on a carpet in Thomas Thompson's apartment, about six feet away from his bed. David and Thomas are both arrested several days after the murder. Ginger had been David's ex-girlfriend. According to Thompson's account,
00:08:49
Speaker
he did have sex that night with Ginger before he passed out from the effects of the marijuana and the alcohol that they'd all been drinking. Thomas says that he woke up in the morning and Ginger was gone, but he did see blood on the carpet near his bed. Now, both of these men, David Light and Thomas Thompson, They go on trial for her murder in two separate trials. The prosecution accuses Thomas Thompson of raping and killing Ginger. Evidence for this trial comes from two previously convicted jailhouse snitches.
00:09:24
Speaker
a man named John Delfret and a man named Edward Fink. They both claimed that Thomas Thompson admitted while he was in jail to raping and murdering Ginger. Now, David had threatened Ginger in the past.
00:09:39
Speaker
fibers and a shoe print linked David and his car to the place where her body was found and to the body itself. So David ends up being sentenced to 15 years to life in 1985 for his alleged role in this murder. His conviction is for second degree murder. The deputy district attorney at the time, they put forth the theory that David was the man who wanted Ginger killed.
00:10:07
Speaker
and that Thomas had killed her after David ordered him to do so. A few weeks before Ginger's murder, she had called the Laguna Beach police officer and she had told them that David had threatened to kill her. That's David's side of it. On November 4th of 1983, two years earlier, Thomas Thompson was convicted by an Orange County Superior Court jury of the forcible rape and first degree murder of Ginger. On April 28th of 1988, the California Supreme Court and all the automatic appeals unanimously affirmed Thomas Thompson's rape and murder convictions
00:10:48
Speaker
And they affirmed Thompson's death sentence.
Trials and Legal Battles
00:10:52
Speaker
So when this happens, opinions are written and you have a majority opinion and you can have a dissenting opinion. At the time in 1988, California Supreme Court had seven justices.
00:11:05
Speaker
The majority opinion was written by five justices, two of them dissented. Over the next several years, attorneys filed several habeas petitions with the California Supreme Court on Thomas Thompson's behalf. So Thomas gets granted habeas relief as to the rate conviction by the United States District Court or the federal court for the Central District of California. They invalidated his death sentence on the grounds of ineffective assistance of counsel.
00:11:35
Speaker
So on June 19th, 1996, the Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, so the United States District Court for the Central District of California heard the habeas and they granted relief to Thomas Thompson. Now it goes to the Federal Appeals Court for the Ninth Circuit. They reversed the Central District Court's ruling and they reinstated Thomas Thompson's death sentence. The Court of Appeals three-judge panel noted that given the strong evidence of rape that had been presented by the prosecution,
00:12:04
Speaker
Thomas Thompson could not demonstrate prejudice under the prevailing legal standard. Even if the court accepted Thompson's ineffective assistance of counsel argument, they then denied Thompson's petition for rehearing en banc. And I assume you know what en banc means.
00:12:21
Speaker
It means they all participated. Yeah, they all sit for it. So on June 11th, 1997, the Court of Appeals issued its mandate denying all habeas relief in Thompson's case. So all the subsequent habeas petitions that his lawyers had filed for Thomas Thompson, they failed until about two days before Thomas Thompson was supposed to be executed. The Court of Appeals had heard this. They have the whole panel sit. They recalled Sue Sponte or of their own accord out of order of their own accord or out of order, which Sousponte or Sumoto, it describes an act of authority that's taken without formal prompting from another party. Does that make sense?
00:13:02
Speaker
Right, because typically the parties have to motion the court to do something, but anytime they do something su sponte, it means it's, I always think of it as spontaneously. Right. It's something the court can take it upon themselves to do. This was relevant to the June 11th, 1997 mandate where the court of appeals had issued a mandate denying all habeas relief. So all of this occurs after the court's usual timeframe for reconsideration.
00:13:31
Speaker
So all that the lawyers involved here can do at this point in order to do something for thomas thompson is they can petition the supreme court of the united states for what's known as cetoria essentially they want to be heard.
00:13:49
Speaker
on this issue because they feel like this is an overarching issue that doesn't just affect Thomas Thompson's case, and they want to go before the Supreme Court. Execution cases, also beyond just like the overall you know constitutionality questions or whatever, they have a tendency to fall under the in the fast lane for the Sertorius. Right. If there's something to be heard, typically they're heard more often than they're not.
00:14:14
Speaker
Correct, because the final implications of them not hearing it is the person is put to death. Correct. While they're considering whether they're going to grant Thomas Thompson's petition for Satoria, the governor of California sets up a clemency review. So a clemency review is basically, am I going to convert this? Am I going to grant this? Anything from the perspective of the highest executive office in California.
00:14:39
Speaker
The supreme court of the united states denies thomas thompson's petition for satoria So i'm going to say a version of this and if I get part of it wrong, it's just because the sources for this have it written up in Half latin Um, but here's here's the gist of what happens next So while the governor is conducting a clemency review the supreme court of the united states. They deny thompson's petition for satoria now the state appeals this and they get it before the Supreme Court to grant Satoria primarily because of this Sussponte issue where the Court of Appeals has spontaneously ruled on a bunch of stuff related to Thompson's case that wasn't really before them. So the state calls the Court of Appeals actions a grave abuse of discretion and ultimately
00:15:38
Speaker
The United States Supreme Court reinstates Thompson's death sentence, even though they agree that there was an abuse of discretion here. Now, if you're sitting around over the holidays and you just wanna like read through all of this, the case that you're looking for from the federal perspective has everything related to what's known as Calderon versus Thompson.
00:16:05
Speaker
Now, this is, ah Justia has it, like if you go to supreme dot.justia dot.com and search for Calderon versus Thompson, it has multiple documents within there because when you take it, when you take a case to hire courts, you frequently have to bring ah each previous action is included in sort of the background of the case and the procedural history.
00:16:31
Speaker
All right, I'm bringing this part up because I wanted to address when they petition for Satoria to the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. Now, I know I kind of sprung some of this on you. and You may not have read the whole thing. I want to read some of this because It's one of the more interesting arguments overall. The syllabus for this, and this is 523 U.S. 538 in 1998, that's the number you're looking for, Calderon versus Thompson. And this is heard, um or this is this is brought from the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit in the October term in 1997. It ends up being argued December 9th, 1997, decided April 29th, 1998. It just says,
00:17:20
Speaker
In 1983, respondent Thompson, so Thomas Thompson, was convicted of rape and murder and sentenced to death in a California state court. The special circumstance of murder during the commission of rape made him eligible for the death penalty. In ruling on his first federal habeas petition in 1995, the district court, so the district court for the Central District of California,
00:17:45
Speaker
They granted relief on his rape conviction and the rape special circumstance, thus invalidating his death sentence. So in really short terms, they said there's some doubts about the rape. Like was it him? Was it the ex-boyfriend? We don't know.
00:18:02
Speaker
But the argument was that he had had consensual sex with her. Right. Okay. So my point is they had thrown out the rape part of it and that took away the eligibility for the death penalty. Because there has to be some sort of egregious factor to warrant the... Special circumstance, yeah. The special circumstance here specifically was rape. A Ninth Circuit panel in June of 1996, they reversed this grant of relief on the rape and thus the special circumstance. And then they denied Thompson's petition for rehearing and suggesting for a hearing in Bonk in March of 1997. So basically Thompson wanted everyone's opinion on this. His lawyers wanted to get everyone in on those because they were pretty sure
00:18:51
Speaker
that if there is no rape, he doesn't get the
Legal Challenges and Appeals
00:18:54
Speaker
death penalty. This had been denied in March of 1997. So in June, Thompson has a Satori petition up for the Supreme Court. It's denied. So at that point, the Ninth Circuit, which is the step between the California Central District for like the US courts and the Supreme Court, the Ninth Circuit They issue a mandate that denies all habeas for relief. The state sets a date of execution in August of that year. The state Supreme Court denied Thompson's fourth habeas petition at their level. And two days before the execution, we have this full Ninth Circuit sua sponte, where they recall their mandate
00:19:41
Speaker
And that's based on claims and evidence that had been presented in Thomas Thompson's first habeas petition. All right. Did that all make sense so far? I think it made as much sense as it's going to. Okay. So the court had delayed action in the interest of comedy. C-O-M-I-T-Y, not C-O-M-E-D-Y.
00:20:01
Speaker
And this was until the conclusion of the current or fourth state habeas proceeding that was going on. It asserted that it had recalled the mandate because procedural misunderstandings of the court prevented it from from calling for an en banc review before the mandate issued. And because the original panel's decision would lead to a miscarriage of justice.
00:20:24
Speaker
In granting habeas relief, the court found that Thompson was denied effective assistance of counsel at trial by his attorney's failure to contest the conclusions of the state's forensic expert and to impeach the credibility of two jailhouse informants. So this is largely part of, like I hate to separate it like this, but I kind of have to in order for people to understand. Think of it this way. There's a rape case here.
00:20:53
Speaker
And if the rape is true, the murder is death penalty eligible. If the rape case isn't true, then the murder has to be looked at in a different punitive light. And it might need to be looked at in a different light for motive. Does that make sense?
00:21:11
Speaker
Right. And the narrative would only be to the extent that, you know, they're trying to find ah the egregious circumstance that warrants death, right? Correct. They run through this and they're saying here's what we'll hold from this. So the first thing is the court of appeals inherent power to recall their mandates, subject to review for an abuse of discretion. They reference the Hawaii Housing Authority versus Midkiff ruling, which is a chambers ruling from early. They say this is a power of last resort to be held in reserve against grave, unforeseen circumstances. The Ninth Circuit's recall decision rests on the most doubtful of grounds. Even if its in-bunk process somehow malfunctioned, the court compounded the error by delaying further action for more than four months after the alleged misunderstandings occurred. The promptness with which a court acts to correct its mistakes is evidence of the adequacy of its grounds for reopening the case.
00:22:09
Speaker
And here, just two days before the scheduled execution, the court recalled a judgment on which the state, not to mention this court, had placed heavy reliance. It is no answer for the court to assert it delayed action in the interest of comedy when it considered only the state supreme court's interest in resolving Thompson's fourth habeas petition and not the more vital interest of California's executive branch. So that's the first thing that they put up as held here. It's pretty important with how the rest of this is going to shake out.
00:22:45
Speaker
The second thing they put up, the recall was consistent with the letter of the Anti-Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996, the AEDPA. This act sets limits on successive federal habeas applications. Since the court's specific recitation that lacked it on the exclusive basis of Thompson's first federal petition is not disproved by consideration of matters presented in a later filing,
00:23:12
Speaker
the court is deemed to have acted on the first rather than a successive application. Although the AEDPA's terms do not govern this case, a court of appeals must exercise its discretion in a manner consistent with the objects of that statute, and in a habeas case must be guided and by the general principles underlying this court's habeas jurisprudence. Okay, so no idea how we get here, but the idea is,
00:23:41
Speaker
Ruling on a later thing means you ruled on the first thing. Does that make sense to you, Meg? Yes. Okay. The secondary tier here, they pull from Smith v. Murray, which is another U.S. case.
00:23:52
Speaker
the profound societal costs that attend the exercise of habeas jurisdiction make it necessary to impose significant limits on the federal court's discretion to grant habeas relief. These limits reflect the court's enduring respect for the state's interest in the finality of convictions that have survived direct review, and they're referencing the state courts. Like, we want to deal with things that the state can't court can't resolve on its own and needs guidance on. That's what they're saying. It says that finality is essential to the criminal law's retributive and deterrent functions, and it enhances the quality of judging.
00:24:25
Speaker
It also serves to preserve the federal balance for a state's power to pass law means little if the state cannot enforce them. A state's finality interests are compelling when a federal court of appeals issues a mandate denying federal habeas relief.
00:24:39
Speaker
Only with an assurance of real finality can the state execute its moral judgment and can victims of crime move forward knowing the moral judgment will be carried out.
Justice Kennedy's Opinion and Legal Contentions
00:24:49
Speaker
Unsettling these expectations inflicts a profound injury to the powerful and legitimate interest in punishing the guilty. An interest shared by the state and crime victims alike in these instances, in these circumstances, the prisoner has already had extensive review of his claims in federal and state courts, and in the absence of a strong showing of actual innocence,
00:25:10
Speaker
The state's interest in actual finality outweigh the prisoner's interest in obtaining yet another opportunity for review. And then they have one last sub here, subheading here ah under B, and it says, unless it acts to avoid a miscarriage of justice as defined by this court's habeas jurisprudence, a federal court of appeals abuses its discretion when its sua sponte recalls its mandate to revisit the merits of an earlier decision denying habeas relief to a state prisoner.
00:25:40
Speaker
Okay. I'm ending it there. This opinion goes on. I just want to point out that this is the worst kind of passing the buck. And this is the worst kind of the state should have figured it out if this guy was innocent.
00:25:56
Speaker
I agree. It is. I would take that even a step further and say that like while they could have stated all that with regard to how they would like for it to be handled and make an example of the caves, nevertheless, they should have made the decision.
00:26:13
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. I'm going down a little further in all of this. There's a ruling based on this part that makes its way out of the Supreme Court. Now, we have Kennedy delivering the opinion of the court. Rehnquist, O'Connor, Scalia, and Thomas join Justice Kennedy. Souter files a dissenting opinion, and Stevens, Ginsburg,
00:26:34
Speaker
and Breyer, they dissent. They join in on this dissenting opinion. Now, that's those are all the names of the Supreme Court at that time, the justices that are involved here. So Justice Kennedy delivered the opinion of the court.
00:26:50
Speaker
And this is kind of how he he rolls this out. Thomas Thompson was convicted in California state court of the rape and murder of Ginger Fleisley. More than 15 years after the crime, 13 years after Thompson's conviction, and seven years after Thompson filed his first petition for federal habeas relief, the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit issues its mandate denying the writ of habeas corpus. Two days before Thompson's scheduled execution, however, the court of appeals sitting in bunk, they recalled the mandate and granted habeas relief to Thompson.
Night of the Murder and Investigation
00:27:23
Speaker
All right, the court of appeals, for whatever reason, has some kind of doubt. What this argument is before the Supreme Court is, are they allowed to act on that doubt? According to this reading here with Justice Kennedy, he says, the case presents two issues. First, whether the court of appeals order
00:27:41
Speaker
Recalling its mandate violates 28 U.S.C. 2244B. This would be by the amended version under the Anti-Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996. That's what we were just talking about where basically how long do you litigate a thing before You close it. That's tier one of this argument, whether the Court of Appeals recalling that mandate because they have a doubt does anything here. There's a note on here. and I want to point this out that there's briefs of M.I.C.C.I. Urging reversal filed for the state of Arizona, which has multiple attorneys, generals.
00:28:20
Speaker
including M. Jane Brady, Robert Butterworth, so that's going to be Delaware and Florida, Arizona. We've got Alan Lance of Idaho, Carol Stouffville of Kansas, ah Richard Lew of ah Louisiana, Jeremiah Nixon of Missouri, Joseph Missouri of Montana, Don Stenberg of Nebraska, Frankie Sudalpapa of Nevada, Dennis Vacco of New York, Mike Easley out of North Carolina, Betty Montgomery out of Ohio,
00:28:49
Speaker
Drew Edmondson out of Oklahoma, Michael Fisher from Pennsylvania, Charles Condon of South Carolina, ah Mark Burnett out of South Dakota, Jan Graham out of Utah, Christine Gregoire of Washington State, Richard Cullen out of Virginia, and the Criminal Justice Legal Foundation by Kent. Do you understand what all of that means, like what all these people are joining here? Yes. So they're filing a friend of the court ah briefing. It's done to bolster, right? Correct. ah To bolster the position, to assist the position. They're not really intervening. It's just to bring the appropriate attention. Correct. The first thing that we're but the Supreme Court is, quote, looking at here is whether or not the recall was allowed.
00:29:39
Speaker
So I just want to point out that in order for that to happen, the state has to basically turn this around back to the Supreme Court after the defense has it turned out, which in and of itself is a big deal. So the second thing is, you know, did so first, did they abuse their discretion? And second is, like, what would the appropriate ah path for this to go be?
00:30:05
Speaker
So the first issue that we were dealing with was whether the Court of Appeals order recalling its mandate violated the AEDPA, the amendment there. then And second, whether the order was an abuse of the court's discretion. They end up finding that the recall of this mandate was not controlled by the precise terms of the AEDPA, but in the second part of that, they do find that it was a grave abuse of discretion. In my opinion,
00:30:33
Speaker
This is a huge mistake. All right. Here's how Kennedy lays this out. He says that Thompson met his 20 year old victim, Ginger, in the summer of 1981. And Ginger shared a Laguna Beach studio apartment with David Lyke. She had had an intermittent sexual relationship with David Lyke. In August of that year, Ginger moved out and Thompson moved in with David Lyke. So Thomas Thompson moved in with David, became his roommate. Weirdly, Ginger leaves that apartment with David and moves in with Tracy, who is David's ex-wife.
00:31:10
Speaker
Tracy and Ginger run into David and Thomas at a pizza parlor. This is where they're gonna go drinking, kind of bar hopping and smoking weed. Ginger had told Tracy that she was afraid that Thompson might kill her if she were left alone with him. But that's not what she told the cops. This is just what it says in Kennedy's opinion.
00:31:32
Speaker
The group later goes to a bar together, David and Tracy leave. So they leave Thompson and Ginger, to Thomas Thompson and Ginger together. At 9.30 PM, Afton, who we briefly mentioned earlier, he joins Ginger and Thomas. They all go out and they now move to smoking Khashish. These three go to Thomas Thompson's apartment about one in the morning.
00:31:59
Speaker
Around two in the morning, Ginger had gone to a nearby liquor store and bought some soda. Thomas Thompson told Afshin he wanted to have sex with Ginger. He assured Afshin that he would leave Ginger for him afterwards. I don't know what that means, but whatever. So There was something going on with Thomas Thompson and David Light, where they had a plan to leave the US and go to Thailand. And from Thailand, they were going to smuggle in refugees into the United States, and they were going to use them as drug mules at the same time. That's referenced here in Kennedy's opinion, so I'm bringing it up. Before Ginger returns to the apartment, Afshin took off to walk to his truck.
00:32:55
Speaker
The belief there was that he had left his truck at a local bar. But on the way, he realized that he had forgotten his cigarettes. So he returned back up to the apartment and tom Thomas Thompson met him at the door. Thompson appeared nervous and he made Ashton wait outside while he retrieved the cigarettes.
00:33:13
Speaker
After returning to his truck, Afton said that he went by and looked for Ginger at a nearby liquor store, but didn't find her, so he went home. The morning of September the 12th, the next morning, Tracy, David's ex-wife, visits Thomas Thompson's apartment and asks for Ginger. Thomas Thompson lies to her.
00:33:33
Speaker
allegedly, and says that she had gone to the Sandpiper Inn with Aption the night before. At a party that night, Tracy again asked Thomas Thompson where Ginger is. In response, Thompson said he didn't know where Ginger was, he had quote, liked her in the past tense.
00:33:53
Speaker
The next day, Tracy goes and files a missing persons report about Ginger with the local police department. And on September 14, police found Ginger's body buried in a field 10 miles from the apartment shared by Thomas Thompson and David Light. The body was wrapped in rope, sleeping bag, and blanket taken from the apartment. Ginger's head was wrapped with duct tape.
00:34:13
Speaker
two towels, a sheet, and her jacket. She had been stabbed five times in the head near her right ear. Her body was bruised on the ankles, palms, and left wrist, and her right wrist was crushed. Ginger's shirt and bra had been cut down the middle and pulled to her elbows, restraining her arms and exposing her breasts. She had on unbuttoned jeans, but no underwear, no shoes, and no socks.
00:34:36
Speaker
A vaginal swab revealed semen consistent with Thomas Thompson's blood diet. Police found two footprints near the body. One was smooth and one with a wavy pattern, matching a shoe that had been worn by David Light. Fibers from the blanket around the body were identical to fibers that they found in the trunk of David Light's car. The rope around the body was smeared with paint from the car's trunk. Other fibers matched the carpet in the apartment, which was stained with Ginger's blood.
00:35:04
Speaker
On or around so September 14th, Thomas Thompson and David Light went to Mexico. Light returned to the United States, but Mexican authorities arrested Thomas Thompson on September 26th of 1981. He was placed in handcuffs, and when questioned by police after his return to the United States, he claimed that Ginger had left his apartment with Afshan the night of the murder.
00:35:29
Speaker
He also said that Ginger had been stabbed in the head, although this information had not yet been made public. He further claimed not to have had sex with Ginger, but later asserted that they had engaged in consensual sex. So then they go through the procedural history that I just described to everybody.
00:35:48
Speaker
It's this long back and forth through multiple courts. And again, this is Kennedy giving the opinion of the United States Supreme Court. So he has to go through this process to basically show we're making a decision and this is how we got here. At the very end, he says, the court presented two bases. Now the court here, they're referencing the court of appeals messing with this mandate that they recalled. The court presented two bases for recalling the earlier mandate. First, the court asserted that absent certain procedural misunderstandings within the court, it would have called for an en banc review of the underlying decision before issuing the mandate denying relief. Those procedural misunderstandings, including a mishandled law clerk transition in one judge's chambers and the failure of another judge to notice that the original panel had issued its opinion in the case. Second, the en banc court
00:36:46
Speaker
asserted the decision of the original panel would lead to a miscarriage of justice. Having recalled the mandate in Thomas Thompson's case, the end bank court went on to address the marriage of his first federal habeas petition. The court held that Thompson's trial counsel had provided ineffective assistance as to the rape charge and rape special circumstances to the defense's prejudice. A plurality of the court would have granted habeas relief on the additional ground of inconsistent theories by the prosecution at Thompson's trial and the later trial of David Leich. The majority made no effort to determine whether Thomas Thompson was actually innocent of the rape and murder of Ginger. The court nonetheless affirmed the district court's grant of the writ as to the rape conviction and rape special circumstances, vacating Thompson's death sentences, and further amended the question of the murder conviction for the district court's initial consideration
00:37:44
Speaker
in light of our vacatur of the rape conviction. So they're saying we're booting the rape conviction We want them to look at the murder conviction and the punishment based on us booting out the rape conviction. And the Supreme Court is reviewing the Court of Appeals having done that. For judges, they're dissented. Judge Hall argued the majority's decision allowed Thompson to evade AEDPA's restrictions on successive petitions. So somehow, the appeals court thinks that Thomas Thompson's lawyers were using this as an end run around to keep filing
00:38:20
Speaker
essentially federal habeas petitions. They walk through the end of this process and they say when within hours of the Court of Appeals order recalling the mandate, the state of California filed with this court a second petition for a writ of mandamus, which we construed as a petition for Satoria. I just want to point out It's really weird to talk about following proper procedures and who can do what when they misconstrued a writ of mandamus for a writ of satoria. Well, so their prerogative is the interest of justice, right? And so just because something has the wrong title, if it meets the appropriate criteria otherwise, right? Yes. I feel like all of this was procedural overkill.
00:39:08
Speaker
It really was. But here's my question. Okay. And I'm not going to keep dragging this out for people. Do we think they executed an innocent man? I don't know. If you followed the whole case, which obviously we didn't go through, we talked more about the procedural part that ended up with him being executed, right? are the I don't know if it was a failure necessarily. You know, if if we go all the way back to the beginning of the act of the crime and we've put aside all of this judicial procedural rhetoric or garbly gook,
00:39:42
Speaker
We're talking about a situation where we've got a guy who was out with friends. So Tommy is the defendant here, David, who's also charged, right right? And he was the victim's ex-boyfriend. The victim would happened to be living with David's wife, ex-wife. I don't know if they were divorced, okay?
00:40:09
Speaker
they they They articulated so many different ways in the paperwork, I couldn't tell you. But right there you've got a situation happening. Correct. Okay, and then you've got this witness who, I'm sorry, I can't recall his name. ah what's it out it's It's not Alfonso, is it? Ashkin. it's so It's a weird name, Ashkin.
00:40:29
Speaker
abkin So he's the friend who—so he's giving this information that—so the witness statements here are basically Tracy, who is the victim's roommate, and the other defendant's ex-wife or wife, and then the friend They're all giving these statements, right? They're the witnesses to what makes Thomas Thompson lend towards his... gu Now, I never heard anything except that he said that he had consensual a consensual sexual encounter with the victim. I don't know. I believe he testified. my My point is, what I'm sort of getting at here is that why would he have done this? What do you mean?
00:41:19
Speaker
Thomas Thompson is not the guy who is, I'm saying that David had a much clearer motive and his wife's statements with regard to kind of getting Thomas Thompson's involvement in check, right? Because she's saying like, she talked to him, she said, hey, you know, where's Ginger?
00:41:44
Speaker
And she's the one saying, oh, she left and went, you know, to the hotel with the other friend. Right. Right. All these statements and stuff. So like, why is all that happening? To me, this sounds like a complete and total setup. Right. Yeah. Essentially, like you've got a ah husband and wife situation, whether they're ex or not.
Inconsistencies and New Insights
00:42:05
Speaker
And then you've got them getting rid of the girlfriend and setting up the newcomer to the group, right? That's what it looks like to me. The fact of the matter like that you've got, anytime jailhouse snitches come in, right? Yeah. that makes me start wondering. It's obviously up to a jury to give the credibility that they see fit to the, you know, as far as the weight of the evidence that they give it. If I i have a feeling sitting on a jury that I would, it would be very light, the weight I would give Jill House-Snudges saying, this guy confessed to them. So,
00:42:44
Speaker
If Thomas Thompson was a jerk, now he he had never had a criminal conviction. And so for whatever reason, he had to just for, you know, again, whatever reason, decide that night he was going to murder this girl. He assaulted and murdered this girl out of nowhere. Well, your initial instincts I think are correct in this case. So,
00:43:11
Speaker
ah I'm not going to run this one super long. I could. My point in saying all that is just taking all of the judicial like, it's not, I mean, I want to say nonsense, but it's not really nonsense. But like, they went really off track here, right? As far as I'm concerned, when they're trying to decide whether they can recall the mandate or whatever. So initially, the case was bad. Right.
00:43:34
Speaker
it It makes way more sense that he invited Ginger back. They did their thing. And then David came back and he was pissed. Yeah. Okay. And then the wife covered. Now the other friend, it seems a little weird. Unless there's just a whole lot, I don't know. And they add stuff to this. Like they were going to go smuggle Lake. i There's so much in there. There is so much in there that comes out of the trial testimony, which you can find in the Calderon versus Thompson documents. You can also find it. there's The Anatomy of an Execution is a May 1999 long-form article written by Stephen Reinhardt, who comes in here in just a second. It's very important.
00:44:16
Speaker
It was a New York University Law Review article in Volume 74 in May of 99, number 2. But if you really want to dig deep into this case, people have done it for you. I want to read you something. I want to see what your response to it is. This is from June of 2015. Now, this is carried in the Los Angeles Times. It's carried in ah San Francisco Gate.
00:44:40
Speaker
But here's the summary from the Innocence Project. They have put this out June 2nd, 2015, and it references back to the New York Law Review and to the Michigan Law Review. It's real short and to the point. California man executed in 1998 likely was innocent, according to federal judge. Now, keep in mind, I'm reading this from the Innocence Project. You're talking about a judge at the time would have been, I think if I remember correctly about Reinhardt, he was correct. he was appointed by Carter in the seventies. So this is going to be somebody who got to the federal bench, probably a Democrat, probably anti-death penalty, but this is what he says and and he's passed away. I'm sure by now, I think he died and right before the pandemic, but he says the federal appeals court judge says a man executed in California in 1998 was likely innocent of the rape and murder for which he was sentenced to death. And an article in the law review, and it references multiple law reviews here,
00:45:36
Speaker
Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Steven Reinhardt said Thomas Thompson, one of 13 Californians executed since 1992 under the current death penalty law was put to death only because of a U.S. Supreme Court ruling that prevented a lower court from considering the merits of his case. Thompson was convicted of the 81 rape and murder of 20-year-old Ginger Fleischle. Thompson's roommate, David Leich, was convicted of secondary murder in connection to the crime. The prosecutor gave conflicting versions of events at each trial, saying during Thompson's trial that Thompson was alone with the victim, and at Leich's trial saying Leich was present and ordered Thompson to kill her.
00:46:16
Speaker
During Light's parole hearing in 1995, David Light testified to witnessing Thomas Hobson and Ginger Fleisley engaged in consensual sex the night of a murder. That testimony was kept from Thomas Hobson's jury.
00:46:35
Speaker
Now, why does it matter? Because that was the reason he was eligible for the death penalty. Again, it comes back to it's way more nuanced than the extraordinarily complicated situation they end up with. Yeah, it is. And so Reinhardt's point here, which is this comes out of the San Francisco Gate and the Minnesons Project repeated it.
00:46:56
Speaker
In light of that detail, that detail alone, the jury may have cleared Thompson since rape was alleged to be his motive for Ginger's murder. Thomas Thompson's jury was not aware that two witnesses that appeared before them were regular jailhouse informants with questionable records. Because of these two things, and because of the conflicting prosecutions and unreliable witnesses,
00:47:21
Speaker
The Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals overturned Thompson's death sentence in 1997. The Supreme Court overturned that ruling in April of 1998. Thompson got executed three months later.
00:47:33
Speaker
Now, orange according if you talk to Orange County, they say, oh, no, it was fine. He was properly tried in sentence. But Stephen Reinhardt is the only person who ever came out and pointed out the reason that the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals was so confused by this case, which he had been convicted for in 1983, and he was executed in 1998, was because they didn't believe him on his first habeas.
00:47:59
Speaker
when he said he was having consensual sex and the other people who came into the house saw him until he saw the question during the nineteen ninety five parole hearing for david where he testified in an unrelated matter.
00:48:16
Speaker
that he had seen Thompson and Ginger engaging in consensual sex. So why did David think he had killed her then? He didn't. David confessed to to killing her in a crime of passion. That's how he gets parole and gets out. He gets a second degree murder for killing her.
00:48:35
Speaker
And Thompson, who says, i yes, I had sex with her, but I didn't kill her, he gets sentenced to first degree murder because the prosecution same prosecutors same prosecutor's office swears it was rape. There's so many things about like the the narrative of what happened that like don't go along with that rape. For one thing, like it's very unlikely that you're going to have... yeah you have got Because this was a group of people that congregated, right? They were at least acquainted. They did things together, whatever, right? Right.
00:49:08
Speaker
you have to have more than just a a little bit of an, like it has to be like a love issue, right? Yeah. There's no money involved here. No, these people have anything. Yeah. Well, I mean, though, but it's also not going to be like, Oh, you, you know, didn't return the thing you borrowed from me. So I'm going to kill you. Like it's not, it's got to be, unless you're dealing with a situation with a psychopath, there's got to be serious circumstances leading up to this situation. which would be something like you know a relationship involving love. It's not going to be enough that like they they had sex or whatever. I don't know where that other guy came into the picture as far as like what he was talking about with the smuggling and all that. To me, all that stuff being added. Now, if they provided evidence, that's one thing. But to me, it just sounds like there was this very extensive cover-up. And part of them, you know when they say like he was the new guy in the group, yeah it was like he walked into that, right? yeah
00:50:04
Speaker
I could have even been the wife, but how we know David is involved. David is linked to the body dump
Public Response and Controversy
00:50:11
Speaker
site. His car, his shoe prints, his fingerprints, he's linked to her body being buried. So either everybody did this,
00:50:24
Speaker
And all four of these people are somehow either involved or oblivious or David did this. Well, right. And part of what sort of comes out of all the procedural judicial overkill is that there really is no reason that the Ninth Circuit should have been issuing a mandate based on the merits of the case.
00:50:48
Speaker
But what I'm saying is what I figured out happened, because I looked at this and like, honestly, if you look at it, nobody has figured out how to write it up. Not the San Francisco Gate, not the Los Angeles Times, not the Innocence Project, the Wikis are all screwed up on it. But I figured out why the judges at the Ninth Circuit reached back and wanted to mess with it is because somebody in there said, well, what happened to the other guy?
00:51:16
Speaker
And they went and they looked and they said, well, he got parole. Oh, really? Well, what how did he get paroled if this is a death penalty case? And they went and pulled the transcripts of the guy's parole hearing and they looked at it and they were like, oh, well, he he admits that it's a crime of passion where He saw this man who's before us in another case having sex with her, but that man is accused of raping her. We have to do something about this. And that's why they recall their mandate is because somebody went and pulled the parole hearing transcript. Now, they don't tell you that in any of these articles. And he doesn't want to say that because it's kind of out of line for a Ninth Circuit federal judge to do that. But he's basically investigating on behalf of this guy who's in front of him who could be executed.
00:52:07
Speaker
Now, is that the way that it went? I think that's the way he discovered this. Is that the way it actually happened the night of Ginger's murder? I couldn't tell you. But if David saw Ginger and Thomas having sex, Thomas was innocent, and he definitely shouldn't have been executed. It's obvious to me that even the setup that they did left hold. Yeah, it's so confusing that even Kennedy's opinion, which is coming from the Supreme Court,
00:52:37
Speaker
Like I read it three times and I was like, is Kennedy drunk writing this? Well, what they, I feel like what they should have done was they should have argued the actual innocence. Who? This didn't happen because of something his attorneys did. This was between the courts and the state that they discovered that, so here's my guess. The defense attorneys never pulled the transcript for the parole hearing in 1995. Three years ahead of the execution. Steven Reinhardt did.
00:53:07
Speaker
He is not an attorney for Thomas Thompson. He is a Ninth Circuit federal appeals court judge. He can't argue anything. That's how we end up with the busted mandate where he says, we're going to recall that mandate. The reason they recalled the mandate is because he read the parole hearing transcript and realized that what the prosecutor was saying was impossible.
00:53:28
Speaker
Well, right. But I'm saying like from where they ended up, which again, I think he was executed like three months later. I feel like they focus too much on the procedural part as opposed to like the parts of the case that needed to be. I hope, I hope somewhere in the six federal habeas petitions they filed that they argued actual innocence, but I think what it I don't think they did. well The first one seems to be the one because that's where they grant them ineffective assistance of counsel because his counsel did not attack the fact that his claim was in all the scenarios that he went home and had sex with ginger. He made arrangements to have sex with ginger. The prosecutor said that he raped her. So in the in one trial, the prosecutor walks in and says that man raped her and that man wanted her dead. So the man who raped her also killed her. The other trial,
00:54:28
Speaker
They get to a hearing where they're going to make a plea for second degree murder. And that guy says it was a crime of passion after I saw him have sex with her, I killed her. And he and and the evidence of the scene linked in there. No matter what, here's where I land. And this is my final thought on this. I think you're right, by the way. I think that they should have been arguing actual innocence and they should have been looking at the parole transcripts and they should have been tearing apart the stories from the perspective of, was it sex or was it rape? Because the two things aren't the same. And if it's sex, then he needs to go back and have a different murder trial where its they find them like either a motive or they walk back through a set of circumstances where the circumstances aren't quote, special and capital.
Reflection on Death Penalty and Justification
00:55:12
Speaker
Cause it's not a capital case if he had sex with her. Right. Except that I'm saying that like, if you look at the situation and you go, Oh, they just had sex. Like there is no murder charge. Right. And that's where I land with it is I think David's murder charge is enough.
00:55:31
Speaker
If Thomas Thompson was having consensual sex with her, he has no reason to cut off her clothing the way it she was found. And the reason I said that I felt i felt like Kennedy was drunk on writing this opinion, I'm kind of joking, but not really. He seems to attribute in that opinion that we were reading from, that you can go read, um the Supreme Court website has it. He seems to attribute some of David's behaviors to Thomas Thompson. The police report that was filed from Ginger was about David.
00:55:59
Speaker
Not Thomas. I mean, it could be both of these guys are just creepy dudes. And maybe they did it all together, like there was a whole thing going on. You're right, it is it does seem like there's some confusion happening and that would skew the overall, especially like, you know, two appeals courts in, right? Like they're looking, and if they think some of the stuff that her married boyfriend had done was attributable to the guy that's on trial here, the fact of the matter is their David got charged with second degree murder, right? Yeah. He he was probably solely responsible. Yeah, oh yeah.
00:56:37
Speaker
for everything that occurred and you know a lot of this could fall on him for not speaking up. Yeah, you know it's interesting because the inconsistency in how they prosecuted these guys and then all this legal moral that we just tried to get through in an hour when it like if you think about it in actuality this took from 1983 to 1998 and I still think they got it wrong. Well, he was put to death for, and I do, I don't know for certain he was innocent, but I guess to argue your point, the consensual sex part to me would negate even if he had killed her, except if he wouldn't have killed her. It's a disaster. It is. It's a disaster. And I guess, okay, so first of all, as we move that direction, nobody comes home home for the holidays that should in this case.
00:57:27
Speaker
I guess technically David is home for the holidays by 1995. Well, and this is where we have to start going. Wait a second. Would Thomas Thompson have, you know, would there have been evidence eventually for him to have an actual innocence claim because he was put to death? That's irrelevant. His entire life gone because, and so that's what, you know, we started this by saying that like, over time, we're kind of like, wait a second, the death penalty may not be being used for what in our, you know, whenever you think about it objectively, you think that it's like an eye for an eye type thing. Right. This is not the case here, right? Because I find so many different, this is like a kerfuffle, right? It is, it really is.
00:58:14
Speaker
And I do it. I do this too. Like I'll start my argument and my argument will go down a side road. And then I'm no longer arguing the point. And I think like they were so busy saying like, Oh, you can't do this. That they forgot that there was a guy that was going to be put to death at the end of it. Yeah. And ah you know, I Reinhardt eventually dies of a heart attack, I think.
00:58:36
Speaker
He's still on the bench when he died. I don't remember how old he was. He had some controversial rulings over the years, but he you know carried the bench well into his eighties. People did come out afterwards and talk about some of his not great behavior. I don't really know what else to say about this particular case. It's one of those that I wanted to point out from the perspective of. I think that at the very least, Thomas Thompson was miss punished.
00:59:07
Speaker
If he had consensual sex and for some reason got involved in a cover-up with David Ly, where Wouldn't he have just said that though? I think, i yeah, I think he would have admitted to it. I think him saying I didn't do it was because he didn't do it. I think that on the parallel, and he didn't even try to blame the guy, right? He said, I went to sleep, she was there, I woke up, she was gone, right? Right. And and that's probably what happened. And the parallel words that we take here, like there are certain things that we know just from like, unless it's just a,
00:59:41
Speaker
an anomaly, like, the two didn't work together to do it, right? Because guys don't do that with somebody that they know, you know, you've got people involved in the situation that seem to be sort of lending this sounds like it's credible, but like, Thomas Thompson's going, Well, wait a second, I never said that, right? Like, as far as her going to the hotel or whatever. Right.
01:00:04
Speaker
That's what leads you to be like, oh, he's being set up. And so there are certain things that are happening here that I do feel like when things are so off balance, like they are in this case, which is like, I firmly believe that they had their perpetrator, they had the motive, they he had the opportunity, they had everything lined up in the case against David.
01:00:27
Speaker
the fact that Thomas Thompson came in to play it all, it messes up the entire system doesn't know what to do with that, right? Because yeah it literally did nothing but create problems because his role in this never makes any sense. And David being convicted of second degree, it may have been second degree murder, because I imagine he was probably ticked off but because his girlfriend was having sex with his friend roommate, Right? Well, he had just gone and had sex with his ex-wife or current wife. there's not I can't tell you what these people were doing. No, I know that. But Thomas Thompson was not in a position where he was going to be like, oh yeah, I had sex with her. Now I'm going to kill her. He didn't have any sort. There was nothing there to make that happen. Guys also sort don't kill women because somebody orders them to. No, they do not.
01:01:20
Speaker
That was the most ridiculous part of what I had read because I was stupid, right? Yeah, they don't do that. In my opinion, though, I, you know, I'm watching ah sort of how it goes out. And I really think that it was so absurd at the investigative level, which I don't, you know, again, I don't know what the reasoning behind involving him, because to me,
01:01:43
Speaker
His story, while not convenient, is plausible, right? Yeah. OK. And they have to go really far out of plausibility to make it work. But when you have these like anomalies where they're you know they've got the guy, David probably got jealous and killed her, which is what he he ultimately said. But it was like 12 years later. And I think that that hiccup made all these problems because there was so much happening. and say This is a situation where Thomas Thompson should have never been in the system to begin with. And the fact that he was there in this like weird bubble and he ends up being executed ultimately for it was murder and the reason that execution was appropriate because he had raped her, it was because he he never should have been there to begin with.
Critique of Prosecutorial Conduct
01:02:35
Speaker
I can't ah imagine i don't know of any case where Moore has gone wrong.
01:02:40
Speaker
I've seen a couple not usually that end like this. This is the worst of the few capital punishment cases that I have felt like execution was unwarranted or flat out wrong.
01:02:55
Speaker
um this This case bothered me, and I think it bothered Reinhardt. He's one of those people in terms of like his judgeship. but You can go out and read like everything he ever did on the bench. This case is for the Ninth Circuit or there. He is controversial at times, but he was considered to be a pretty good jurist.
01:03:16
Speaker
and From what I can tell, this is the only capital case that I think kept the man up at night. like To the point that like he wrote multiple long-form articles about this that you can go out and read even now. It bothered me. It's kind of a downer, so I put it like right in the middle of all the holiday episodes. But this is part of like how my view of capital punishment has been evolving.
01:03:40
Speaker
and you know It's not so much that I don't think we should have the death penalty. It's that I don't feel like as a civilization, we're mature enough to use. Do you think that this case had um a direct impact on California's moratorium? ah Timing-wise, I think it would have. I would have to go look at like what the final um dates of that were. I'm betting it did. because All right, so he comes out pretty early on.
01:04:10
Speaker
2000, 2001, he starts talking about this case. And by 2015, he was just openly writing about it and giving interviews, which is unusual for a jurist. No matter what you think there, I think that this case affected capital punishment for the entire Ninth Circuit.
01:04:28
Speaker
My next question would be, once this had been messed up at the nuclear level, it seemed at the at the inception of it with him being charged and the system just not knowing what to do, was there any way out here? Was this a runaway train? Yeah, so I think, so actually, there's a multitude of errors here. um What I actually think should have happened, I think the Supreme Court should not have taken this tutorial from the state.
01:04:54
Speaker
And I think the Ninth Circuit's concerns should have been sent to the governor's clemency review that was happening at that time. that value wouldve thought that yeah If the Supreme Court had like denied Satoria and it didn't get this weird rid of mandamus, rid of satoria, shoved back through by the state of California. And instead, the ninth bank sent a letter and said, you really will need to listen to the 1995 parole hearings of the other person in this case as part of your clemency review of the Thomas Thompson case. I think that would have solved it. Because if that guy really is on the record having taken a plea for second degree murder out of like a crime of passion where he saw this dude banging his girlfriend,
01:05:40
Speaker
And then stating that he's like learned so much about himself in the last 10 years that he's been locked up, that he's eligible for parole because of XYZ, and he would never react that way to seeing a friend of his having sexual intimate relationships with his girlfriend, because that's essentially what happens. Then that transcript should be enough that they go, wait, hold on. ah We don't know what's going to happen here, but you need to give his attorneys time to argue for actual innocence because we believe he might be innocent. So can you convert this death penalty to life without parole for now while it goes back to the court? Why didn't the clemency committee hear that?
01:06:20
Speaker
Do we know? I don't know. I don't have, I don't have a place where all I have is a line that they den denied as clements. Okay. And that would be the fit. You know, we talked about in Robert Roberson, the fail safe that failed. Correct. Yeah. Yeah. And I mean, so now some of this falls on the defense attorneys, but I gotta be really honest with you. If you're a prosecutor this Christmas and you have argued a case and then twisted the case and argued the case to get a heavier penalty for someone you suspected of being an accomplice. Or you just can't decide which one was the murderer. Santa is going to fill your stocking with the worst coal imaginable because that is fucking wrong.
01:07:13
Speaker
you You can't do that as a prosecutor. If you're a prosecutor putting yourself in that position, you're doing it wrong. And if you're a prosecutor that's just a district attorney and say you're your deputy assistant district attorneys did this, well, that's just as bad because you were responsible for them. And ultimately, having two different trials like this two years apart and pretending like, well, just forget about what happened in 83, even though that guy got the death penalty, we'll just act like it's okay at 85, that's wrong.
01:07:46
Speaker
You're part of the problem. But those are the people that aren't mature enough to use the death penalty. That's kind of where I land. I agree.
Acknowledgments and Credits
01:07:58
Speaker
Special consideration was given to True Crime XS by LabratiCreations.com. If you have a moment in your favorite app, please go on and give us a review or a five-star rating. It helps us get noticed in the crowd. This is True Crime XS.
01:10:05
Speaker
One day it will be my baby and me
01:10:57
Speaker
The True Crime XS is brought to you by John and Meg. It's written, produced, edited and posted by John and Meg. You can always support True Crime Access through patreon.com or if you have a story you'd like them to cover, you can reach them at truecrimeaccess.com. Thank you for joining us.
01:11:18
Speaker
This is just a reminder that we are part of the Zincaster Creator Network. And I've put a link in the show notes if you guys want to check it out for your own podcasting needs. um I've always enjoyed using Zincaster. Their quality is great. And we we were able to join their Creator Network at kind of a key time in in their history. um I have enjoyed it. You know, I've considered a lot of other ah places to record and a lot of other ways to put together and host and distribute our podcasts. But I've stuck with Zincaster the longest. We've been with them for hundreds of episodes now. And I'm putting a link in the show notes where you can check out ah what they have to offer and see if it's something you would want to use.