How threads becomes zombie-processes

[Martin Egholm Nielsen]

Hi there,

Having incoorporated Jessie in my application, I've run into a problem: 
For each https-request received, three new threads are left behind as 
"zombie processes" (<defunct>).
Sooner or later, I reckon that the system process table is filled and 
the applications need being restarted. I would like to avoid this :-)

Hence my question: Is there a way a thread in gcj can become a zombie 
thread? E.g. by stop()'ing (deprecated), or similar?
If so I would know what to look after in Jessie...
I'm running GCJ 3.4.3...

BR,
  Martin Egholm