U.S. Supreme Court reinstates death penalty in Ohio case

The United States Supreme Court Tuesday reinstated the death penalty sentence for Frank Spisak's 1982 shooting spree at Cleveland State University, overturning a Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals ruling in October 2006. ( Decision )

"(The Sixth Circuit)," the Court said, "erred in holding that the instructions and forms contravened Mills v. Maryland, in which this Court held that the jury instructions and verdict forms at issue violated the Constitution because, read naturally, they told the jury that it could not find a particular circumstance to be mitigating unless all 12 jurors agreed that the mitigating circumstance had been proved to exist… (and) Even assuming that Mills sets forth the pertinent 'clearly established Federal law' for reviewing the state-court decision in this case, the instructions and forms used here differ significantly from those in Mills: They made clear that, to recommend a death sentence, the jury had to find unanimously that each of the aggravating factors outweighed any mitigating circumstances, but they did not say that the jury had to determine the existence of each individual mitigating factor unanimously. Nor did they say anything about how—or even whether—the jury should make individual determinations that each particular mitigating circumstance existed. They focused only on the overall question of balancing the aggravating and mitigating factors, and they repeatedly told the jury to consider all relevant evidence. Thus, the instructions and verdict forms did not clearly bring about, either through what they said or what they implied, the constitutional error in the Mills instructions."

Spisak had also raised an ineffective counsel claim, to which the Court yesterday held "the state-court decision rejecting Spisak’s ineffective-assistance-of-counsel claim was not 'contrary to, or . . . an unreasonable application' of the law 'clearly established' in Strickland v. Washington. To prevail on this claim, Spisak must show, inter alia, that there is a 'reasonable probability that, but for counsel's unprofessional errors, the result of the proceeding would have been different' … Even assuming that the closing argument was inadequate in the respects claimed by Spisak, this Court finds no 'reasonable probability' that a better closing argument without these defects would have made a significant difference. Any different, more adequate closing argument would have taken place in the following context: Spisak's defense at the trial's guilt phase consisted of an effort by counsel to show that Spisak was not guilty by reason of insanity…"

6th. Circuit Decision

Ohio's petition for certiorari
Brief in opposition