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August 18, 2006
Penis-Pump Priming Judge Gets Four Years
A story that's been big here. They sentenced him.
Here come the judge. All rise.
A former judge convicted of exposing himself while presiding over jury trials by using a sexual device under his robe was sentenced Friday to four years in prison.
Donald Thompson had spent almost 23 years on the bench and had served as a state legislator before retiring from the court in 2004. He showed no reaction when he was sentenced.
At his trial this summer, his former court reporter, Lisa Foster, testified that she saw Thompson expose himself at least 15 times during trial between 2001 and 2003. Prosecutors said he also used a device known as a penis pump during at least four trials in the same period.
He entered a plea of "That's not my bag, baby."
His actual defense is, well, sort of limp:
Thompson, a married father of three grown children, testified that the penis pump was given to him as a joke by a longtime hunting and fishing buddy.
"It wasn't something I was hiding," he said.
He said he may have absentmindedly squeezed the pump's handle during court cases but never used it to masturbate.
Absentmindedly. He had this pump on his dorkbat, under his robes, during a trial, and he may have absentmindedly squeezed it a few times, like Humphrey Bogart absentmindedly working those ball bearings and then screaming in climax, "Oh God yes, Mess Boys! Take those strawberries! Take it! TAKE IT!!!"
Sad, he used to have the reputation of being a "hanging judge"... now, not so much.
It actually gets worse:
Foster told authorities that she saw Thompson use the device almost daily during the August 2003 murder trial of a man accused of shaking a toddler to death. A whooshing sound could be heard on Foster's audiotape of the trial. When jurors asked the judge about the sound, Thompson said he hadn't heard it but would listen for it.
...
Investigators later checked the carpet, Thompson's robes and the chair behind the bench and found semen, according to court records.
He absentmindedly busted a nut.
...
"Thompson's denial of the offense would likely present difficulty, if not inability for treatment providers to provide meaningful and beneficial sex-offender treatment," [a senior probations officer] said.
Well, they could at least share war stories.
Whatever way you slice it, it's a sad say for the Ace of Spades Lifestyle (TM).
Thanks to Del, who notes that while the SF Chron identifies him as a "former state legislator," there's a more proper way to refer to him. As a "former Democratic state legislator."
Not that there's anything wrong with that.
In related news, I'm writing a trilogy about this judge and his polymorphously perverse pansexual exploits, to be called, in order, Oral Arguments, Hung Jury, and Penal Colony.