Sam Sheppard Seeks a New Trial

• Author: Allen Pusey
• Pages: 72-72

PHOTOGRAPHS BY AP PHOTO; WIKIMEDIA COMMONS

Sam Sheppard Seeks a New Trial

ABC aired the fi rst episode of The Fugitive in September 1963, dramatizing the saga of Dr. Richard

Kimble, a fi ctional physician who escaped custody while facing the death penalty for the brutal murder

of his wife. The hit show marked a shift in fortune for Dr. Sam Sheppard, the Ohio surgeon on whose

case the show was based.

On April 13, fi ve months before The Fugitive

debuted, Boston lawyer F. Lee Baile y fi led a

writ of habeas c orpus in federal court chal-

lenging the fairness of the ex traordinary 1954

trial in which Sheppard w as convicted. By any

measure, his tr ial for the bludgeoning death

of his pregnant wife , Marilyn, had been a

spectacula r media event. But Bailey argued

that prejudicial publicity in the c ase had

trampled the delicate boundar ies between a

right to public information and Sheppard’s

right to a fair tri al.

Before dawn on July 4, 1954, Sheppard ha d called a

friend—the mayor of Bay Village, the Clevela nd suburb

where the Sheppards lived, to repor t that an intruder

had murdered Marily n. The mayor arrived with the

police a few minutes later to fi nd the doctor injured

and disor iented.

Sheppard recounted a rambling st ory: He had fallen

asleep watching telev ision, was awakened by his wife’s

screams upstai rs and twice confronted a “bushy-hai red”

man who had beaten him—fi rst in their bedroom, then

outside the house after Sheppard took ch ase.

The doctor’s story sat poorly wit h police and the county

coroner. To them, the bludgeoning suggested an angry

confrontation and the cri me scene a robbery staged for

their benefi t. They qu ickly focused on a relentless e ort

to make Sheppard confess.

Media attention was equa lly relentless. Police seized

Sheppard’s home but allowed access to a stream of new s

crews and curious onlookers . Urged by local newspaper s

to do so, police interrogated Sheppa rd at his hospital

bedside without his law yer present. When a front-page

editorial demanded a n immediate inquest, coroner Sam

Gerber obliged, givi ng Sheppard and his lawyer one day’s

notice.

In a televised, th ree-day inquest before a packed school

gymna sium, Gerber interrogated Sheppard

about the intimacies of his m arriage. When

his lawyer Will iam Corrigan objected, Gerber

had him removed to the roar of a n approving

crowd. Just days later, a headline in the

Cleveland Press screamed: “Why Isn’t Sam

Sheppard in Jail?”

By that evening, he was.

With a change of venue denied, the car nival

continued at trial. In cour t, the press sat

inside the bar, able to hear and report the

whispering of jurors and law yers, and able to

scrutinize ev idence before it was presented. Names and

addresses of jurors a nd witnesses were published in the

newspapers; their familie s were interviewed. Sensational

articles promised “ bombshell testimony” that never

materialize d. By the time Sheppard was convicted, only

fi ve months af ter the murder, the presumption of his guilt

in Northern Ohio had long been regarde d as fact.

Three months after t he habeas was requested, a federal

judge released Sheppard pending a new tr ial. Though it

was reversed on appeal, Sheppa rd remained free to attend

Bailey’s U.S. Supreme Court oral a rguments in Sheppard

v. Maxwell. In June 1966, wr iting for an 8-1 majority,

Justice Tom Clark detailed the barrage of “ virulent and

incriminating ” media coverage of the Sheppard investiga-

tion and excoriated the fai lure of the trial court to control

media access to ju rors.

Time and television helped temper public ani mus in

his case. And by Aug ust 1967, when The Fugitive proved

Kimble’s innocence to a record T V audience, Sheppard

had been retried a nd found not guilty by a Cuyahoga

County jury.

After a litigat ion-plagued retur n to surgery, he had a

brief career as a profes sional wrestler. His ring moniker

was “the Kil ler.” Sheppard’s freedom was short-lived.

He died in 1970 due to complications of alcoholism.

72 || ABA JOURNAL APRIL 2018

Defense attorneys William Corrigan

and Arthur Peters ilge with Dr. Sam

Sheppard in cou rt in 1954.

Precedents || By Allen Pusey

April 13, 1963

Actor David Janss en plays

Dr. Richard Kimble i n The

Fugitive, wh ich was based on

Sheppard’s stor y.