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Page Number: 313

152 

SMITH  v.  SPISAK 

Opinion of the Court 

satisfaction  at  having  “eliminated  that  particular  threat . . .  
to  me  and  to  the  white  race.”  5  id.,  at  1511  (July  7,  1983). 
In  June  he  saw  a  stranger,  John  Hardaway,  on  a  train  plat­
form and shot him seven times because he had been looking 
for  a  black  person  to  kill  as  “blood  atonement”  for  a  recent 
crime  against  two  white  women.  4  id.,  at  1416  (July  5, 
1983).  He  added  that  he  felt  “good”  after  shooting  Harda­
way because he had “accomplished something,” but later felt 
“[k]ind  of  bad”  when  he  learned  that  Hardaway  had  sur­
vived.  Id.,  at  1424–1425.  In  August  1982,  Spisak  shot  at 
Coletta  Dartt  because,  he  said,  he  heard  her  “making  some 
derisive remarks about us,” meaning the Nazi Party.  Id., at 
1432–1435.  Later  that  August,  he  shot  and  killed  Timothy 
Sheehan  because  he  “thought  he  was  one  of  those  Jewish 
professors  .  .  .  that  liked  to  hang  around  in  the  men’s  room 
and  seduce  and  pervert  and  subvert  the  young  people  that 
go there.”  5 id., at 1465–1466 (July 7, 1983).  Spisak added 
that  he  was  “sorry  about  that”  murder  because  he  later 
learned  Sheehan  “wasn’t  Jewish  like  I  thought  he  was.” 
Ibid.  And three  days later, while  on a “search  and destroy 
mission,”  he  shot  and  killed  Brian  Warford,  a  young  black 
man who “looked like he was almost asleep” in a bus shelter, 
to fulﬁll his “duty” to “inﬂict the maximum amount of casual­
ties on the enemies.”  Id., at 1454–1455, 1478. 

Spisak also testiﬁed that he would continue to commit sim­
ilar  crimes  if  he  had  the  chance.  He  said  about  Warford’s 
murder that he “didn’t want to get caught that time because 
I  wanted  to  be  able  to  do  it  again  and  again  and  again  and 
again.”  Id., at 1699 (July 8, 1983).  In a letter written to a 
friend, he called the murders of Rickerson and Warford “the 
ﬁnest thing I ever did in my whole life” and expressed a wish 
that  he  “had  a  human  submachine  gun  right  now  so  I  could 
exterminate” black men “and watch them scream and twitch 
in  agony.”  Id.,  at  1724–1725.  And  he  testiﬁed  that,  if  he 
still  had  his  guns,  he  would  escape  from  jail,  “go  out  and 
continue the war I started,” and “continue to inﬂict the maxi­