Opinion ID: 744576
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: The pretrial phase

Text: 44 At the preliminary hearing, when Thompson and Leitch were still joined as co-defendants, Deputy District Attorney Daniel Brice asserted that Leitch wanted Fleischli dead, and that he enlisted Thompson to join in the killing. In support of this theory, the prosecution presented the testimony of four jailhouse informants who claimed to have obtained confessions from Thompson: David Vogel, David Wright, Timothy Gravelle, and Robert Evans. Each informant told essentially the same story: Leitch wanted Fleischli dead for interfering with his attempts to reconcile his relationship with his ex-wife, Tracy Leitch, and, therefore, had recruited Thompson to help him kill her. According to Vogel's testimony, Thompson had told him that on the night of the murder, he engaged in consensual sex with Fleischli. 7 Then, when Leitch returned home, the two executed Leitch's plan, and killed Fleischli. The State charged both men with capital murder based on rape and murder of Fleischli. 45 At the close of the preliminary hearing, the magistrate found that there was insufficient evidence to hold Thompson and Leitch on the rape charge and the rape special circumstance allegation. Nonetheless, the State filed an information charging Thompson and Leitch, inter alia, with murder, rape, and rape as a special circumstance. 46 After the information was filed, Deputy District Attorney Michael Jacobs replaced Brice as lead counsel for the prosecution. Jacobs then reviewed all of the tapes, police reports, forensic reports, and court transcripts in the case. Those records, among other things, described Leitch's violent history, Leitch's past threats toward Fleischli, Leitch's desire to reconcile with his ex-wife 8 and his perception that Fleischli was an impediment to that goal, physical evidence that tied Leitch to the crime, and Leitch's inconsistent statements to police following the crime. 47 Upon reviewing the evidence, Jacobs concluded that he would continue to pursue murder-with-special-circumstance convictions against both defendants, on the theory that Leitch had the motive for killing Fleischli, and that both men were equally culpable for raping and murdering her. On his own admission, Jacobs never altered his view of the motive and the crime, either before or after he won Thompson's conviction. 48 Some months later, Thompson and Leitch moved under California Penal Code § 995 to set aside the rape charge and the rape special circumstance allegation as unsupported by probable cause. At the hearing, at which the record shows Jacobs to have been present, one of his assistants represented to the court that [Leitch] is the only person throughout the record who has a motive.... According to [Tracy Leitch,] David Leitch was negotiating a reconciliation with Tracy Leitch and Ginger Fleischli was not reacting very cooperatively to that circumstance, and there is the motive--she was in the way. The trial court denied the defendants' motion without comment. 49 Leitch then moved successfully to sever his trial from Thompson's. The prosecutor elected to try Thompson first. 9