which blocked the State from executing Spisak. The State of Ohio appealed to the Supreme Court. In Hudson v. Spisak (552 U.S. 945, 2007) the Court remanded the case back to the Sixth Circuit and ordered the appeals court to reconsider in light of two recent cases, Schriro v. Landrigan (2007) and Carey v. Musladin (2006). The Sixth Court of Appeals again reinstated its earlier opinion. Again the State appealed and the Supreme Court granted review. Decision of the Court The unanimous decision was handed down by Justice Breyer. The court asked two questions; Did the Sixth Circuit disobey the directives of the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act (AEDPA) and Did the Sixth Circuit exceed its authority when it presumed that Mr. Spisak suffered harm by deficient counsel? It answered yes to both. First Question In Mills v. Maryland (1988), the Supreme Court ruled that when imposing the death penalty the jury must be allowed to consider any mitigating circumstances that included any part of the defendant's record. In addition the jury must be allowed to consider "any relevant mitigating evidence." Under the AEDPA a federal court is allowed to override a state court if the state court decision was directly contrary to established Federal Law. The Court ruled that the State of Ohio had not violated the rights of the defendant by requiring the jury to only consider unanimous mitigating factors. In addition the Court overruled the Appeals Court determination that the instructions were unconstitutional on the basis that the jury was precluded from considering other sentencing options until it had rejected the death penalty. The Court criticized the Appeals Court saying "we have not previously held jury instructions unconstitutional for this reason, Mills says nothing about this matter." Second Question In Strickland v. Washington (1984), the court ruled that in order for an individual to claim relief for deficient counsel the petitioner must demonstrate that the "counsel's representation fell below an objective standard of reasonableness." In addition there must be evidence that because of this deficient counsel the result would have been different. The Court found that the counsel had done an adequate job. The court went further and stated that even if counsel had not sufficiently defended Spisak there was no reasonable probability that the outcome would have been different. Describing in detail the closing arguments of the trial Justice Stevens went as far to say