[4] Thomas and his family moved to San Francisco, California when he was nine years old, but he frequently returned to Montana during the summers to work on his uncle's cattle ranch.
[1][6] He joined the State Bar of California in 1962, then worked in private practice and as a deputy county prosecutor until 1969 when he was promoted to assistant district attorney.
[citation needed] Thomas was questioning Ruchell Magee, another inmate at San Quentin whom McClain had arranged to be a witness, when Jonathan P. Jackson interrupted the court proceedings.
[2] A ballistics expert would later testify that Thomas's spine was severed from a bullet fired from a San Quentin guard's .30 caliber carbine.
[11] Another UPI report from the same day indicated that Thomas was wounded in the chest and spine and quoted him as telling District Attorney Bruce B. Bales that he grabbed a gun from the driver and shot three of the kidnappers.
"[13] Two days after the shootout, Thomas remained in critical condition at Marin General Hospital following surgery for bullet wounds in his back and was described as a "key witness in the question of who fired first in [the] gun battle".
[17] During the 1972 Angela Davis trial, Maria Elena Graham, one of the three women hostages, testified that Thomas told the gunmen "not to do anything foolish" but was forced to the floor with the others in the courtroom.
[citation needed] Thomas testified that he immediately turned to Haley, under whose chin Magee held a sawed-off shotgun, and described how the right side of the judge's face appeared to slowly pull away from his skull.
[citation needed] As Haley had also been hit by a .357 slug in the heart, Branton attempted to reconstruct the events within the van to show that Thomas accidentally shot the judge - and that his death throes caused the shotgun held by Magee to discharge.
[25] Joseph J. Murphy, a San Quentin Prison sergeant, would testify that he removed a carbine that was "sticking up" and blocking access to Thomas.
[27] On April 3, 1973, Superior Court Judge Morton R. Colvin declared a mistrial after the jury announced for the fifth time that it was deadlocked on reaching a verdict on charges of murder and kidnapping.
[30] The California Supreme Court later upheld the conviction of assault with a deadly weapon and ruled that a spring gun may not be used to defend a home against burglary.
Two years after the Marin County Civic Center shootout, California Governor Ronald Reagan appointed Thomas a municipal court judge.
[34] In 1973, Thomas ordered Glenn Yarbrough to pay $350 per month after the singer pleaded no contest to charges of failing to provide child support.
[35] Thomas received brief national publicity in 1975 for sentencing petty offenders to writing out thousands of times their promises not to violate various misdemeanor laws.
[34][36] He claimed that this type of punishment fit the crime and served as a good deterrent as the offenders would be jailed for hours at a time while completing their sentences.
[37] In 1982, Thomas accepted an innocent plea in municipal court from Phil Crane, a Republican member of the United States House of Representatives and a former U.S. presidential candidate, who had been charged with driving while intoxicated.
[33][6] As a Marin County Superior Court judge, Thomas presided over a 1987 jury trial in which Matthew Kelly, the founder of the rock band Kingfish, filed a $10 million lawsuit against Grateful Dead drummer Bill Kreutzmann.
[40] In 1994, famed forensic psychiatrist Martin Blinder was sued by a former lover for "professional negligence, assault and battery, sexual abuse, and inflicting emotional distress.
[43] In 2004, Armstrong would file a document in Marin County Superior Court asserting that Thomas conspired with the Church of Scientology against him to violate various Constitution Rights and that his orders were illegal.
[44] As of 1995, Thomas was one of three judges who had been appointed by the Marin County Superior Court to specialize in California Environmental Quality Act cases.