Highlighted Crime
Story of the Week -
On July 4, 1954, Marilyn Sheppard was beaten to death
inside her suburban home in Cleveland, Ohio. Her husband, Dr. Sam Sheppard,
claimed to have fallen asleep in the family’s living room and awakened to find
a man with bushy hair fleeing the scene. The authorities, who uncovered the
fact that Dr. Sheppard had been having an affair, did not believe his story and
charged him with killing his pregnant wife.
Creating a national sensation, the media invaded the
courtroom and printed daily stories premised on Sheppard’s guilt. The jurors,
who were not sequestered, found Sheppard guilty. Arguing that the circumstances
of the trial had unfairly influenced the jury, Sheppard appealed to the Supreme
Court and got his conviction overturned in 1966. Yet, despite the fact that
Sheppard had no previous criminal record, many still believed that he was
responsible for his wife’s murder.
The Sheppard case brought to light the issue of bias
within the court system. Jurors are now carefully screened to ensure that they
have not already come to a predetermined conclusion about a case in which they
are about to hear. In especially high-profile cases, jurors can be sequestered
so that they are not exposed to outside media sources. However, most judges
simply order jurors not to watch news reports about the case, and rely on them
to honor the order.
Sheppard’s case provided the loose inspiration for the
hit television show The Fugitive, in
which the lead character, Richard Kimble, is falsely accused of killing his
wife, escapes from prison, and pursues the one-armed man he claimed to have
seen fleeing the murder scene.
In 1998, DNA tests on physical evidence found at
Sheppard’s house revealed that there had indeed been another man at the murder
scene. Sheppard’s son, who had pursued the case long after his father’s death
in order to vindicate his reputation, sued the state for wrongful imprisonment
in 2000, but lost.
Check back every
Monday for a new installment of “This Week in Crime History.”
Michael Thomas Barry is a columnist for www.crimemagazine.com and is the author
of six nonfiction books that includes the award winning Murder and Mayhem 52 Crimes that Shocked Early California, 1849-1949.
Visit Michael’s website www.michaelthomasbarry.com
for more information. His book can be purchased from Amazon through the
following link:
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