What is the connection between a belt, a baseball bat, a broomstick, an extension cord, a soda bottle and a hairbrush?

All were objects described in the Aaron Thompson indictment as having been used by Thompson to discipline seven of the eight children in the blended family living with him and his then-girlfriend, Shely Lowe, in the Aurora home from which Aarone Thompson was reported to have "run away" in November 2005.

According to the grand jury testimony set forth in the indictment, the children were regularly and repeatedly given "whoopins" by Aaron Thompson and Lowe in the basement for a variety of misdeeds, from getting bad grades or misbehaving at school to losing a bag of fundraiser candy.

And according to several youthful grand jury witnesses, with corroboration by adults on the time frame, after being punished one night during the summer of 2003, Aarone Thompson was never seen or heard from again, with the remaining children being told that she had gone to Michigan to live with her mother.

These were but a few of the revelations that surfaced about the case Wednesday upon the court-ordered release of the factual allegations of the indictment, which had been sealed out of concern that release of the details would "shock the conscience" of anyone reading it, and would make seating an unbiased jury for Thompson's eventual trial difficult.

"Shocking" is, of course, an understatement, but as past experience has proved over and over again, many potential jurors simply do not read newspapers or watch newscasts.

A jury can and will be seated, and at trial, the evidence will not be one-sided, as was the case with a grand jury, where there was no pesky defense attorney asking witnesses difficult questions, and admitting evidence which might tend to exonerate Aaron Thompson, or shift most of the blame to the deceased Lowe.

On the face of it, the case against Aaron Thompson appears insurmountable, but at trial, because of the constitutional confrontation clause, prosecutors will probably not be able to use one type of evidence that the grand jurors relied on: the accounts of Aarone's death given by Lowe before her death, some tape-recorded.

Decisions by the United States Supreme Court make it highly likely that when Shely Lowe died, what she had said to others about the death and burial of Aarone Thompson died with her, given that her statements were never subjected to cross-examination.

As a consequence, contradictory statements attributed to Thompson, the testimony of impressionable children, and circumstantial evidence, albeit considerable, will form the bulk of the prosecution's case, still strong, but not an absolute slam-dunk conviction.

But if even half of what has been testified about Thompson's acts is true, it will suffice to subject him to a well-deserved legal "whoopin."

Scott Robinson is a Denver trial lawyer specializing in personal injury and criminal defense.