The Masturbating Judge – Part 2
Zelma Hindman testified that she saw Thompson holding his penis during a murder trial in August, 2003. Hindman said that it happened when she walked in after returning early from running a personal errand for Thompson. Hindman said that upon walking through a side door into the courtroom that she saw Thompson’s penis and that he lurched forward when he saw her.
Hindman also testified that she had seen a penis pump below the bench six months earlier but didn’t know what it was until then-Court Clerk Pat Hobbs told her it was a “boy toy”.
Hindman stated that she wasn’t interested in being a part of the investigation into the judge’s conduct and only reluctantly talked to investigators. She explained her reluctance by saying “my tires might get slashed, and sugar might be put in my gas tank”.
Diana Horath testified that at first she couldn’t identify the noises emanating from the judge’s bench during a 2002 murder trial then she remembered what her husband had found while cleaning the courtroom two weeks earlier and realized that the penis pump her husband had told her about wasn’t evidence from a trial, as she had thought, but was Thompson’s personal toy. Horath stated that she heard the noises “pretty much daily” for the rest of the trial.
Horath also testified that she told Lisa Foster about what she was hearing and what her husband had found two weeks earlier and that Foster told her to keep quite about it. Horath tearfully stated in reference to Thompson, “I had always liked him. He has a very nice wife and son. We thought he was going to retire soon.”
Trial Day #6 – June 22:
Several interesting developments occurred, including Judge McCall issuing a gag order on the attorneys involved in the case. Several witnesses who served as jurors in trials in Thompson’s court testified about hearing sounds coming from Judge Thompson’s bench during those trials.
One prosecution witness, Helen Orcutt, caused a stir when during a break while the jury was out of the courtroom she appeared with a tape recording and a phone and revealed that the previous night that defense attorney Clark Brewster had called her and asked her to change her testimony. The tape recording was reportedly of her conversation with Brewster and the phone recorded the number of the calling party. Orcutt, Judge McCall and attorneys for both sides then left the courtroom for a hearing in the judge’s chambers and after 15 minutes returned to the courtroom without the recording and phone.
During direct examination before the jury Orcutt was questioned by Special Prosecutor Richard Smothermon about whether anyone connected to the trial had called her to try to get her to alter or change her testimony. Orcutt stated that defense attorney Brewster had done so the previous night. This brought a reaction from some jurors with a couple of them emitting sounds of surprise.
Orcutt testified that when she was a juror in an August 2003 murder trial being heard by Thompson, she heard “swishing” noises coming from his bench and that the judge’s robe was “bouncing” in time with the noises. She described the sounds as akin to the noise of a bicycle pump and said she heard them throughout the trial. Smothermon held up a penis pump seized from Thompson’s office and operated it producing sounds which Orcutt identified as the sounds she heard during the trial.
Witness Daniel Greenwood, another juror at the same murder trial in 2003, also identified the noises of the device as the same as he heard coming from Thompson’s bench and revealed that he had also heard the same sounds in two movies, an “Austin Powers” film and “Dead Man on Campus.” Greenwood also testified that during the August, 2003 murder trial that Thompson at one point removed his shoes and socks and began trimming his toenails in court.
Rhonda Blancett, a juror in a May 2003 trial heard by Thompson, also testified that she heard noises coming from his bench and stated that she could see Thompson’s robe-covered arm moving as if in a “jerking movement,” and she noted that the noises were consistent with the movement of his arm. Blancett also testified that at one point in the trial she questioned Judge Thompson about the noises. She said the judge told her he wasn’t aware of them but would “keep an ear out for them.”
Sharaan Ronish, another juror at that same trial, testified that she also saw the judge’s arm moving consistently with the noises she heard throughout the trial.
Additional former jurors at trials in Thompson’s courtroom also testified to hearing the sounds from the area of his bench. Some of them revealed that jurors speculated among themselves as to the cause of the sounds with some opining that the sounds were of an inflatable hemorrhoid cushion, a video game or the hydraulic adjustment on his chair. A couple of the former jurors claimed they thought the judge was masturbating.
None of the witnesses heard during the day stated they saw Thompson expose himself in court.
Trial Day #7 – June 23:
Practically all the court action centered on medical and scientific testimony. Prosecution witness Samuel Dakil, a Norman, OK urologist, explained to jurors 18 years of Thompson’s medical records from the Springer Clinic which revealed Thompson suffering from a variety of ailments, most sexual in nature and which indicated Thompson had tried a wide variety of treatments for erection difficulties.
Dakil indicated that those treatments included a variety of drugs, penis suppositories and injections, and Viagra. The witness testified that according to the medical records that, in 1995, Thompson’s doctor gave him a video to watch at home concerning penis injections and the use of a penis pump.
With special prosecutor Richard Smothermon holding up a penis pump seized from Thompson’s chambers, Dakil described to jurors how the device works. Dakil said a penis subjected to a pump would be engorged and purple in color and also testified that Thompson’s medical records indicate that the judge was diagnosed with a calcification of his penis which would produce a bent erection, possibly even a right angle.
