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News Coverage of Smith v. Spisak Ruling

By Steve Hall

The Supreme Court ruling is here, in Adobe .pdf format.  The ScotusWiki file, with all briefing, is here.Today's New York Times carries the AP report, "Court Reinstates Death Sentence for Ohio neo-Nazi."The Supreme Court on Tuesday reinstated for a second time the death sentence of a neo-Nazi convicted of murdering three men in Ohio more than a quarter century ago.The justices ruled unanimously that a federal appeals court wrongly set aside the death sentence of Frank Spisak.The 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Cincinnati found Spisak's trial lawyer was ineffective and that his jury received faulty sentencing instructions.In an opinion by Justice Stephen Breyer, the high court said the 6th Circuit should have deferred to state court rulings that upheld Spisak's death sentence...continue to full post

Full post as published by StandDown Texas Project on January 13, 2010 (boomark / email).