Court reinstates death sentence for Ohio neo-Nazi (Jan. 12, 2010)

The Supreme Court held for the second time that a neo-Nazi convicted of murdering three men in Ohio could be sentenced to death.

A Cuyahoga County jury convicted self-described neo-Nazi Frank Spisak for the murder of three people at Cleveland State University in 1982. The Ohio Supreme Court affirmed the conviction and death sentence in 1988. Spisak filed a petition for writ of habeas corpus, but the U.S. district court denied relief on all of his thirty-three grounds, including his challenges to the sentencing-phase jury instructions and counsel’s performance during sentencing.

The 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals vacated the decision, finding both that the trial court gave improper instructions to the jury and that Spisak’s defense counsel made an inappropriate closing statement.

In October 2007, a divided U.S. Supreme Court reinstated the death sentence.

In a 6-3 ruling, the justices tossed out the 6th Circuit's decision and pointedly rebuffed federal appeals courts for second-guessing state trial judges in murder cases. Three months later, a three-judge panel of the court of appeals reached the same conclusion it did the first time and again threw out Spisak’s death sentence.

The state attorney general appealed. “We remain convinced that had Spisak’s counsel not demonized Spisak in his arguments to the jury, there is a reasonable probability that at least one juror would have had a different opinion of the proper outcome in this case,” the decision stated.

On Jan. 12, 2010, the Supreme Court reversed, holding that the 6th Circuit should have deferred to state court rulings that upheld Spisak's death sentence. Justice Stephen Breyer wrote the opinion for the court, while Justice John Paul Stevens filed an opinion concurring in part and concurring in the judgment.

Question presented: Did the Sixth Circuit contravene AEDPA by improperly extending Mills v. Maryland?