Former Judge Sentenced to 4 Years in Prison for Using Penis Pump

Donald Thompson had spent almost 23 years on the bench in his Creek County courtroom and had served as a state legislator before retiring from the judiciary in 2004. Less than a year after he retired, prosecutors he had shared a courtroom with charged him with indecent exposure for using a device known as a "penis pump" while sitting on the bench overseeing trials.

Thompson, a married father of three grown children, testified in his trial this summer that the penis pump was given to him as a "gag gift" by a hunting and fishing buddy, saying that "it wasn’t something I was hiding." He said that although he may have squeezed the pump’s handle absentmindedly while listening to court cases, he never used it to masturbate.

The Creek County Court Reporter in Thompson’s courtroom, however, told a different story. Lisa Foster told authorities that she saw Thompson use the penis pump almost daily during a murder trial in August 2003, when a man was being tried for shaking a toddler to death. Foster said that not only had she seen Thompson attaching the device to his penis, she had heard whooshing sounds as he used it. She noted each occurrence on her stenograph machine tape. When jurors in the trial asked the judge about the sound, he replied that he hadn’t heard it but would listen for it.

When prosecutors learned about the penis pump, they began to build a case against the judge. During a lunch break, officers took photographs of the pump sitting beneath the desk. Investigators later took samples of the carpet beneath the bench, Thompson’s robe, and the chair he sat on, and found semen that matched Thompson’s DNA. In January 2005, Oklahoma prosecutors filed three charges of indecent exposure against Thompson, alleging that he had masturbated using the penis pump during two criminal trials and one civil trial in 2003. In November a team of special prosecutors added one more count of indecent exposure from a trial in 2002 and one count of misusing a state computer for explicit pictures that police allegedly found on a computer in Thompson's chambers.

Sapulpa Police Sergeant Michael Reed, testified in Thompson’s trial that while he was testifying in the 2003 murder trial, he saw a piece of plastic tubing running from the floor up under Thompson’s robe, saw the judge holding a white plastic device in his hand, and heard a whooshing sound every time Thompson’s hand moved. He said that he saw Thompson put his hand beneath his robe, and then he heard a zipping sound. In addition to Reed, the prosecution in Thompson’s trial produced a series of witnesses that included Foster, another court reporter, a janitor, and jurors who had witnessed Thompson’s actions during trials they were party to. The jurors stated that they heard whooshing noises that sounded like bicycle tire pump or a blood pressure cuff. Several jurors also said that Thompson spent a lot of time "looking down" during the trials, and they thought he might be playing a hand held video game, or tying fly fishing lures.

Last month Thompson was convicted on four felony counts of indecent exposure, and his sentencing hearing took place Friday, with the jury recommending a sentence of one year in prison plus a $10,000 fine on each count. The jury foreman told the court that the jury intended for Thompson to serve the full four-year sentence. Judge C. Allen McCall denied a defense motion asking for Thompson to be allowed to remain free while awaiting appeal of the sentence.