Filed under: News, Race and Civil Rights
Frank Spisak (pictured), a Nazi sympathizer who went out on "hunting parties" to target blacks, was put to death in Ohio this morning.
Spisak, 59, was convicted of murdering three people on the campus of Cleveland State University in 1982.
The victims, two of whom are black, were: Rev. Horace Rickerson, Timothy Sheehan and 17-year-old Brian Warford.
Spisak was executed by lethal injection and died at 10:34 a.m. this morning, making him the seventh person executed in the United States this year.
The Sheehan family issued a statement:
Today we chose to celebrate the life of husband and father, Timothy Sheehan, not the death of Frank Spisak," the statement read. "We are grateful that the justice system has worked, and appreciate those in the criminal justice system whose diligent efforts have helped bring this matter to a final resolution."
John Hardaway, who survived Spisak's attack, still has nightmares about that day:
"I can still see the night he was shooting me," Hardaway, 83, told Cleveland.com. "He was squatting down, pulling that trigger. That will never go away. It ain't as bad as it was, but it hits me hard sometimes. Why would he do a person like that?"
Spisak was in a world of his own.
He said he was out working for the survival of the "Aryan people." At his trial, he wore an Adolf Hitler-style mustache, carried copies of Hitler's autobiographical book ("Mein Kampf") and gave Nazi salutes to the jury.
His actions were disgraceful.
Of course, he pleaded guilty by reason of insanity, but Spisak was found to be competent at the time of the killing.
It's unclear if Spisak was mentally ill or not. He had a history of acting weird.
His actions, though, clearly show the corrosive nature of hate.
Spisak's actions, he said, were based on his hate of blacks, homosexuals, and Jews. He may have also had issues with his own sexuality, according to some reports.
Just like the 6-million Jews that were murdered and tortured to death during the Nazi reign of terror in Europe, Spisak felt that killing blacks would bring about some type of perfect Aryan world.
What a sick vision to not be able to see the beauty that diversity of culture brings to our world. And it's sad to think Spisak may have hated his own sexuality enough to try and kill people that were what he could not admit himself to be.
Spisak's death so long after the trial also raises questions about the effectiveness of the death penalty.
Besides the fact that the death penalty is unfairly over-utilized on blacks and the poor, who is being deterred by the death penalty if it takes almost 30 years to face execution?
Spisak's death is no cause for celebration.
Watch the original news coverage of the case here:
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