Ohio death row inmate gets new hearing

A federal appeals court on Friday ordered a new sentencing hearing for a death row inmate convicted of killing three men 26 years ago.

The decision by the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals came three months after the U.S. Supreme Court reinstated the death sentence for Frank Spisak, a self-described neo-Nazi who was convicted in the shooting deaths of the three men at the Cleveland State University campus over a seven-month period in 1982.

The nation's high court, in upholding Spisak's death sentence, chastised federal appeals courts for second-guessing the decisions of trial judges in murder cases. It sent the case back to the 6th Circuit for reconsideration.

But a three-judge panel of the court ruled Friday — as it did in 2006 — that Spisak had received ineffective counsel during the sentencing phase of his trial, and that a judge's instructions to the jury were unconstitutional.

"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," decision said.

Spisak's trial in June 1983 turned into a racially and sexually charged public spectacle in which he grew an Adolf Hitler-style mustache and carried a copy of Hitler's book "Mein Kampf." He said he was an agent of God in a war against blacks and Jews.

After the trial judge sentenced him to death, Spisak responded with a two-minute tirade about white supremacy, ending it with a vigorous "Heil Hitler" salute.

(This version CORRECTS date of appeals court ruling to 2006.)