Wrongly Convicted Man Opposes Execution

If Thomas M. Thompson really is innocent, few people know better how he feels than Kevin Lee Green.

And if California carries out its promise to kill Thompson at 12:01 a.m. Tuesday, the execution will show that little was learned from recent history, Green says.

At one time, Green and Thompson were two of Orange County’s most notorious criminals, with much in common besides their murder convictions. Each steadfastly maintained his innocence. Each spent about 16 years in prison. Each was labeled a “manipulator” by those in the justice system who opposed clemency or parole.

But last year, Green won his freedom when new DNA tests proved he didn’t assault his wife and cause the death of their full-term fetus. Thompson, however, hasn’t been able to convince a higher court that he didn’t rape and fatally stab 20-year-old Ginger Fleischli. Though seven former prosecutors express deep misgivings about his sentence--among them the author of California’s death penalty law--Thompson is set to receive a lethal injection Tuesday.

“It doesn’t make sense to me,” says Green, 39, taking a break at the bingo parlor where he now works as a number-caller, earning $6.50 an hour. “There’s too much doubt.”

For many, doubt is all that’s needed to disqualify the death penalty. Even the remote chance that an innocent man could be executed is reason enough to abolish the ultimate punishment, its opponents say.

For Green, such an argument is more than hypothetical. Though he never sat on death row, he did face the death penalty when arrested and tried for first-degree murder. (A judge ultimately reduced the charge to second degree.)

Later, while at San Quentin State Prison, one of several facilities where he served time, Green routinely found himself walking beneath the tier of condemned men, shivering at their fate.

How many of those men are kindred spirits, he wondered, wrongly convicted of a crime they didn’t commit?

Whether they were guilty or not, he doesn’t see the social benefit in putting them to death. “I don’t think anybody needs to be killed in prison,” he says. “It serves no purpose.”

The same new evidence that exonerated Green pointed to alleged serial killer Gerald Parker, who now sits in prison awaiting his own trial. Nevertheless, if convicted one day of killing Green’s unborn daughter, Parker shouldn’t be executed, Green insists.

“I’d like to see him do 16 years, knowing he’s not going to get out,” he says. “I know how agonizing doing time is. Execution is a release from that.”

Asked how long he’s been free, Green doesn’t need to check a calendar or a clock. “One year, one month and 10 days,” he says instantly.

When an Orange County judge released him in June 1996--after apologizing profusely for the system’s egregious error--Green first went to Missouri and reunited with his parents. Then he moved here to this picturesque city, a place as far from prison’s unrelenting meanness as anywhere can be.

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The thrill of freedom never gets old, he says. Not long ago, he had his first swig of Jack Daniels in 17 years, and it went down smooth. Caffeine, nicotine and small-stakes gambling are other once-forbidden pleasures he can now indulge at will.

But the challenges of freedom are many. Establishing a line of credit, earning a living wage, finding his way in a wholly different world--nothing comes automatically for a man who spent nearly half his life in maximum security.

Even something as simple as choosing a long-distance phone carrier can throw him.

He lives in a small, cramped apartment with his wife, Darlene, whom he married while a prisoner. Together they manage the apartment complex, collecting rent and doing odd jobs. He supplements their income by holding down a part-time job at the Dinner and Bingo Club on the outskirts of town. Regulars at the club have been a valuable support network, many treating him as a surrogate son.

Disney recently optioned the rights to his life story, and director Jon Avnet has taken the first steps toward bringing it to the screen. Meanwhile, Green repeats the galling plot line for anyone willing to listen, hoping he can serve as a vivid reminder that freedom can be fleeting, especially if it’s taken for granted.

“Since I’ve been out,” he says, “God has tapped me on the shoulder to say, ‘Life goes on. Life happens. You have to cherish and honor it, even the bad.’ ”

He seems oddly calm about his ordeal. Everyone he meets remarks about the lack of bitterness in his voice, the lack of anger in his clear blue eyes.

“I’ve gotten letters from people saying it has been an inspiration in their life that I could come out without being bitter,” he says. “I was just so glad in my heart that I couldn’t be mad.”

Part of Green’s stolid poise derives from his training as a Marine. But part also comes from reaching the limit of his endurance, then returning to the center.

“The first four years I was in prison, I was angry,” he says. “God and I had a falling out.”

For three months he was confined to “the hole,” the name San Quentin’s inmates gave to solitary confinement.

“No personal property,” he says. “No one to talk to. Just me and the cockroaches. Every night when the tide came in, the sewer would back up into that [cell]. I never smelled breakfast for those three months.”

More than once he thought of suicide.

“I was done,” he says. “I was finished. I wanted to end the pain and suffering. I made up my mind I was going to see if I could fly. From the third tier.”

But as he walked along, getting ready to hurl himself over the rail, a prayer for strength was unexpectedly answered.

“I said, ‘God, I can’t take any more.’ And suddenly, I got calm. I realized then what faith was. I didn’t have to thump a Bible. I didn’t have to go to church. I didn’t have to do all the things I thought you have to do to communicate with God.”

From that day forward, Green was changed. When a cellmate slowly lost his mind, Green watched closely and understood the reason: The other man couldn’t stop dwelling on his own plight.

To keep from doing the same, Green turned his gaze outward. He became a sounding board for fellow prisoners. He helped men prepare their appeals. He joined an advisory council that served as liaison between the prison population and the administration. In time, he became so well adjusted to prison life that he almost misses it these days.

“I miss the power I had in there,” he says. “Sometimes I still wish I had that kind of influence.”

Green can still recall the night in 1992 when California’s death chamber resumed operation after a 25-year lull. Robert Alton Harris was the man executed then, and as he walked to his death, Green sat with a group of prisoners, debating the pros and cons of the issue.

Now, as an unusually well-credentialed expert on the subject of criminal justice, Green thinks Thompson deserves the benefit of the doubt.

“I have to believe they’re going to stop it,” he says, “and at least take a harder, closer look.”