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By BARBARA HOBEROCK AND P. J. LASSEK World Staff Writers
7/9/2004
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Explicit images were found on the embattled jurist's state computer.
At least nine sexually explicit pictures and a suggestive e-mail were found on the state computer of a Creek County judge who faces removal for alleged improper sexual conduct during court proceedings.
Howard Conyers, the administrative director of the courts, confirmed Thursday that the pictures and e-mail were found on a computer issued to District Judge Donald D. Thompson.
The pictures, shown to reporters, include a man holding his penis and what appears to be a woman performing oral sex on a man. None of the people was identified.
The computer's directory indicates that the pictures were placed on the computer Feb. 9, 2002, and modified March 12, 2002.
The Administrative Office of the Courts examined Thompson's computer at the request of The Associated Press, and a review is continuing.
Oklahoma
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Creek County District Court Clerk Pat Creason said Thursday that Thompson came back to work Tuesday following a two-week, scheduled vacation.
Thompson, through his Tulsa attorney, Clark Brewster, has said the allegations are false. A Sept. 13 trial has been set before the Court on the Judiciary.
The computer pictures are not part of the allegations involved in the ouster attempt.
Brewster said Thursday that he had not seen the pictures but was assured by the judge that the computer contained nothing inappropriate.
"I know for a fact a terminated employee's computer was copied and transferred to the judge's computer so he would have certain forms," Brewster said. "This occurred just before his computer was examined."
In addition, judges deal with many issues in the courtroom, some of which might involve unsavory subjects including lurid topics, Brewster said.
"It may well have been something captured on his computer by virtue of research or a court exhibit," he said.
Conyers recalled one instance in which a person had a valid reason for having pornographic pictures on a computer -- case research.
Information recovered from the computer also included a May 2003 e-mail in which Thompson appears to be conducting personal business involving rental property on the state computer in violation of state policy.
The e-mail also discusses oral sex.
Thompson's former secretary-bailiff, Zelma Hindman, 57, alleged during a June 24 interview with the Tulsa World that the judge had pornogra phy on his state computer.
At that time, however, no state agency had confiscated the computer or viewed its contents.
Hindman, who was hired to work for Thompson in 1999, mentioned an incident before 2003 when the computer system was having problems.
"Some techs came from Oklahoma City to work on them and discovered that (the judge) had been looking at porn on it," she said.
Hindman said one day she also accidentally bumped Thompson's computer, causing its desktop to appear, and "he had an icon on it that was a naked woman."
Hindman and another woman who worked for Thompson have reported seeing him use a penis pump.
Thompson fired Hindman and his court reporter, Lisa Foster, the day after Foster testified to the Council on Judicial Complaints.
Foster said she saw the judge use the penis pump during court sessions in the fall of 2000 after she heard air-pumping noises.
For the next two years, Foster said, she saw the device and the judge's penis on numerous occasions, according to the attorney general's petition for Thompson's removal.
Another court clerk's employee, Dianna Horath Strickland, had herself transferred out of Thompson's court in 2002 after deciding that the working relationship had become too uncomfortable because he had allegedly made a vulgar sexual proposition to her.
She told the Tulsa World on June 24 that during a break in the court docket, the judge asked her into his office, where he inquired about her dating status and made a sexual comment that was like the one in the recovered e-mail.
The three women are represented by attorneys Renee Williams and Stephen Andrew.
Andrew said Thursday that what their "clients are saying is coming full circle. They are telling the truth and have no reason to lie."
