+1

The unusual word order seems to mark some surprise on the part of the person speaking, likely with extra stress on either the first or the last word — perhaps (1) remarking that Tom — rather than, say, Paul Manafort — has been asked to testify in Donald Trump's upcoming corruption trial, or (2) remarking on the curious fact that Tom, who everybody thought was playing games in the video arcade had in fact seen the bank robbery across town. But there doesn't seem to be any way for Tatoeba to convey such semantic fine points to the language learner, since speech stress is not usually marked in written texts.

Does the French imply the exceptions you mention?

I'm by no means a French expert, but I think the normal, neutral French way to say this would be:

Est-ce-que Tom est témoin?

A native French speaker should check this, though.

With this word order, out of context, this doesn't really make a good sentence example for English learners, in my opinion.

I agree with CK.

Please change the sentence to the more natural word order:

Is Tom a witness?

X

Does the X mean you think this should be deleted?

No it means "fiXed" and "thX!"

Maybe I should use C for corrected instead.

Maybe it would be better to either write a complete word, or leave no comment at all.