Supreme Court reinstates death penalty of Ohioan who killed, mutilated a man

COLUMBUS (AP) — The U.S. Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty Monday against an Ohio man who killed and mutilated a man he met in a gay bar in 1985, rejecting a claim that his lawyers erred during the sentencing phase of his trial.

Attorneys for Robert Van Hook had argued that the lawyers who previously represented him failed to adequately investigate his background for information that would have helped him avoid the death penalty.

In its unanimous ruling Monday, the high court reversed a ruling by the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Cincinnati, saying Van Hook’s trial attorneys “met the constitutional minimum of competence.”

The decision says the lower court was wrong when it said Van Hook’s lawyers did not spend enough time researching his background and failed to uncover adequate information about his traumatic childhood.

Van Hook was convicted of killing David Self after luring him to Self’s apartment in Cincinnati with the intention of robbing him, the court found. Van Hook strangled Self unconscious then stabbed him to death and mutilated his body with a kitchen knife, hiding the murder weapon in the corpse and smearing his bloody fingerprints before fleeing. He was arrested in Florida, where he confessed.

Van Hook’s lawyer, Keith Yeazel, said he expects his client will be sent back to death row in Youngstown from the Cincinnati jail in which he has been held since after the 6th Circuit ruling.

In its ruling, the Supreme Court finds that Van Hook had previously lured gay men to secluded areas to rob them, including when he was a teen and in the weeks after Self’s death and before his arrest.