Case of Ohio neo-Nazi heard before US Supreme Court

Ohio’s attorney-general Richard Cordray is asking the US Supreme Court to reinstate the death penalty for a self-described neo-Nazi who killed three men at the Cleveland State University campus in 1982. The case involving 58-year-old Frank Spisak goes to the Supreme Court on Tuesday. Cordray will argue that Spisak got a fair trial and deserves to be executed. The death sentence was overturned by an appeals court.

Defense attorney Michael Benza says Spisak's trial lawyer did a bad job and that jurors weren't properly instructed on sentencing. Spisak's trial turned into a spectacle as he had a Hitler-style moustache at his trial, carried a copy of Hitler's book ‘Mein Kampf’, and told the courtroom that he was God's agent in a war against blacks and Jews. When he was sentenced to death, Spisak offered the Hitler salute.