Marilyn Sheppard is 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.
Ohio can never admit to a mistake. The legal authorities in Ohio care little about the rights of its citizens. They knew from the beginning, long before the DNA evidence found by Sheppard's son, that Dr. Sheppard was innocent. In fact, the primary prosecutor, FRank T. Cullitan, called Dr. Stephen Sheppard, Sam's brother, around midnight about a year after the trial and informed Sheppard that he and his associates knew Sam was innocent long before the trial and that the State had no case; yet they continued because of orders from higher-ups, probably the vicious coroner Gerber and his cronies. Callitan made the call to clear his conscience because he was dying. What he and his associates did to the Sheppards was a crime, resulting in the deaths of Sam's parents, and the destruction of many lives; yet the State of Ohio didn't care. They aren't even decent enough to apologize to the Sheppards.
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