On January 12, the U.S. Supreme Court reversed the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit in Smith v. Spisak. After Frank Spisak was sen­tenced to death in Ohio and his ini­tial appeals were denied, he filed a habeas cor­pus peti­tion claim­ing that: 1) the jury instruc­tions and ver­dict forms used at his tri­al uncon­sti­tu­tion­al­ly required the jury to be unan­i­mous in choos­ing any mit­i­gat­ing fac­tors; and 2) his attor­ney’s clos­ing argu­ment was so inad­e­quate as to deprive him of effec­tive assis­tance of coun­sel. The Sixth Circuit had grant­ed him relief. In revers­ing this deci­sion, the Supreme Court held that there was no ​“rea­son­able prob­a­bil­i­ty that, but for counsel’s unpro­fes­sion­al errors, the result of the pro­ceed­ing would have been dif­fer­ent.” Justice John Paul Stevens, who con­curred in the out­come of the case, nev­er­the­less wrote sep­a­rate­ly, crit­i­ciz­ing the ​“cat­a­stro­phe of [defense] coun­sel’s failed strat­e­gy.” He added, ​“Indeed, the argu­ment was so out­ra­geous that it would have right­ly sub­ject­ed a pros­e­cu­tor to charges of mis­con­duct.” Justice Stevens, how­ev­er, agreed that the defen­dant would prob­a­bly still have been sen­tenced to death.

(Smith v. Spisak, No. 08 – 724 (U.S. Jan. 12, 2010); R. Barnes, ​“Killer Frank Spisak, not his attor­ney, brought on death penal­ty, jus­tices rule,” Washington Post, Jan. 13, 2010). See also Representation or click here to read more U.S. Supreme Court decisions.

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