Ethics

The Supreme Court released its opinion in Smith v. Spisak today.  The Court unanimously reversed the Sixth Circuit's decision to grant death row inmate Spisak's federal habeas petition.  (As background, Spisak was convicted in 1983 of three murders and two attempted murders at Cleveland State University.) 

The lawyering issue in this case involved the defense attorney's closing argument.  The Sixth Circuit said the argument was so prejudicial against Spisak that it could have been delivered by the prosecutor (and likely would have been grounds for a successful prosecutorial misconduct claim).  Even so, the Supreme Court found that he was not prejudiced by the argument:

"We assume for present purposes that Spisak is correct that the closing argument was inadequate. We nevertheless find no reasonable probability that a better closing argument without these defects would have made a significant difference."