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Ohio completes long-awaited execution (and the seventh in six different states in 2011)

By Douglas A. Berman

As detailed in this local article, Ohio got its machinery of death up and running earlier today.  Here is the backstory of a particularly notable execution: When Frank Spisak was going on "hunting parties" targeting blacks in Cleveland, Ronald Reagan was president, a stamp cost 20 cents and the Cincinnati Bengals played in the Super Bowl XVI. More than 10,000 days later, Spisak, 59, a triple murderer, was executed today at the Southern Ohio Correctional Facility near Lucasville.  The time of death was 10:34 a.m. The 27 years between the murders on the Cleveland State University campus in 1982 and Spisak's final punishment was the longest gap in Ohio's 42 executions since 1999.... Spisak, who blamed mental illness for his hatred of gays, blacks and Jews, was the last person in Ohio to be lethally injected with sodium thiopental...continue to full post

Full post as published by Sentencing Law and Policy on February 17, 2011 (boomark / email).