Wilson Refuses to Grant Clemency as Inmate’s Execution Date Nears

SACRAMENTO — Gov. Pete Wilson denied clemency Thursday to a convicted killer who has rallied nationwide support behind his hope of avoiding an execution that is scheduled to be carried out Tuesday.

Wilson acknowledged in an interview that this was the most technically difficult capital punishment case he has reviewed as governor because Thomas M. Thompson is the only death row inmate whose appeal to Wilson was based on a claim of innocence.

Still, after spending much of the last two days reading the 3,000-page court file and then questioning the attorneys from both sides for more than two hours in his office, Wilson said Thursday that he is confident of Thompson’s guilt.

“This took time because of the contentions,” said Wilson, who has considered and denied four previous clemency petitions since he was elected in 1990. “But at the end of it all, I am absolutely confident that he raped and murdered Ginger Fleischli.”

Thompson’s attorneys are scheduled for a final appeal today in the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco. If his case is not overturned, he is scheduled to die by lethal injection at 12:01 a.m. Tuesday.

In a statement Thursday evening, Thompson’s attorneys said they are disappointed in the governor. They said he had failed to properly use the power of clemency to correct a failure of the judicial system.

“By placing on Mr. Thompson the burden of proving his innocence beyond all possible doubt . . . the governor has abdicated his responsibility to do justice and has created a standard for clemency that can never be met,” they said. “This decision makes it clear that clemency, which was adopted by the people to be their safeguard when the judicial system breaks down, is not obtainable in California.”

Thompson, 42, was convicted of raping and killing 20-year-old Ginger Fleischli in a Laguna Beach apartment in 1981. Thompson has said that he had consensual sex with the victim and then fell asleep after a night of heavy drinking and smoking hashish.

Wilson said he found that story unbelievable.

“They basically never offered any kind of proof at any stage in the proceedings to counteract the evidence against him and instead relied on this really incredible alibi that he had come back with the victim to the apartment and they had consensual sex and then he had fallen fast asleep and then slept through a struggle, a rape and a ghastly murder that included five stabs to the head,” Wilson said. “Then subsequently, he slept through [the] removal of the body by someone else while . . . this person who was the actual murderer came in and cleaned up the place.”

Wilson was conversant on many details of the 16-year-old case file, quoting from several court decisions and describing autopsy photos that he viewed of bruises on the victim’s wrists, elbows and knees.

Defense attorneys have focused their attention on the hope of raising doubts that Fleischli was raped prior to her killing. It is the rape charge that represents a special circumstance that made Thompson subject to the death penalty.

Prosecutors found evidence that the victim had sex shortly before her death. They also said her bra was cut and that her blouse was peeled back to her elbows. Wilson said the bruises were evidence that she had been bound, perhaps by handcuffs like the ones Thompson possessed when he was arrested in Mexico.

The defendant, however, has insisted that the sex was consensual. Since Thompson’s trial, a co-defendant has changed his statement to say that he entered the apartment the night of the killing and found Thompson having sex with the victim and no sign of a struggle.

That new evidence has been a significant part of the defense appeal and it will be raised again today when the case is heard in federal court. Wilson said, however, that it did not sway him.

“I don’t find that very probative of their claim that a rape did not occur,” he said. “What is far more persuasive to me that rape did occur was the forensic evidence that Thompson was found in Mexico with a pair of handcuffs on his person.

“Then there’s the other basic fact that [the co-defendant] . . . certainly didn’t say this at his own trial at a time when it would have been very damaging to him because it would have put him at the scene of the murder.”

Death penalty foes have recruited a number of high-profile supporters who say that the doubts about Thompson’s guilt make him the case for commuting the death sentence and, letting him serve life in prison.

Thompson also is a former firefighter with no criminal record or history of violence.

His backers have won the support of seven former prosecutors, including the author of California’s death penalty. The opposition also includes Hollywood celebrities, former New York Gov. Mario Cuomo and Cardinal Roger M. Mahony, archbishop of Los Angeles.

Times staff writer Stephanie Simon contributed to this story.