There were numerous pieces of clear, physical evidence linking his housemate David
Leitch, a man with a history of violence towards women, to the murder and the
disposal of the body........Leitch had been living with Ginger before Thompson
moved into the apartment, but had thrown her out and threatened to kill
her..........The truth was not the concern of the prosecutor, Orange County Deputy
D.A.Mike Jacobs, who took this opportunity to score a double victory and add two
more convictions to his record instead of one. Jacobs convicted Thompson and
Leitch in two separate trials, each as the killer, based on two different and conflicting
scenarios that were presented to different juries.........The contradictory trials were so
blatantly unethical that seven highly respected former California prosecutos with
extensive death penalty experience- including the drafter of the California death
penalty statute- filed an unprecedented brief in the U.S. Supreme Court. In criticism
of the " egregious conduct" of Mike Jacobs, the group of top prosecutors pointed out
"how easy it is to manipulate facts when the prosecutor's goal is to win at all
costs."......Judge Stephen Reinhardt, an eighteen year circuit judge for the United
States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit....in a paper to be published in the New
York University Law Journal, says that Thompson is "the first person in the Nation
ever to be executed on the basis of a trial that an unrefuted decision of a United
States Court of Appeals had held to be unconstitutional"

Appellate attorney Rita Barker became very close to Tom during the last years of his
life......A week after witnessing Tom's death, a heartbroken Barker wrote a letter to
Judge Reinhardt, expressing her gratitude for his opinions on the case which she said
" shine as the voice of reason and moral truth."

Common Courage Press

For a copy of the book.....

With kind permission from the authors, Dennis
Bernstein and Leslie Kean, and the publisher,
Common Courage Press, the following is an
excerpt from "Henry Hyde's Moral Universe,
Where More than Time and Space are Warped"