Dr. Sam Sheppard Wrongful Imprisonment Trial
				Witness testimony Background Case document file Chronology Aug 2 '99 Update Nov 22 '99 Update Oct 7 Update Jan 31 Update Feb 1 Update Feb 2 Update Feb 7 Update Feb 14: Openings Feb 14: Bailey testifies Feb. 16 Update Feb. 17 Update Feb. 22 Update: Son testifies Feb. 28 Update March 2 Update Discuss the trial on message board

By Harriet Ryan
Court TV

Was Sam Sheppard, the Cleveland doctor who inspired the television series "The Fugitive," innocent of his wife's murder or merely not guilty?

That's the question an Ohio jury will take up Monday when heirs of Sheppard, who died in 1970, ask the court for a formal declaration of innocence. Sheppard spent a decade in jail for the beating death of his wife, Marilyn, before winning acquittal. Now, if his heirs can prove that he was innocent — a higher standard than not guilty — they could seek millions of dollars in damages from the state.

Getting that declaration of innocence will be more difficult than many people who know the case through "The Fugitive" may imagine. The series and the popular Harrison Ford movie of the same name portrayed the doctor as not only innocent of his wife's murder but also heroic in his fight against a police railroad.

Real life, of course, is more complicated. Despite public pressure and political turnover at city hall, Cleveland prosecutors have never backed off their conviction that Sheppard committed the grisly murder. The state plans to counter new evidence from Sheppard's heirs with some bombshells of their own, including a damning new report on the murder from former FBI star and nationally renowned crime profiler Gregg O. McCrary.

The state plans to counter new evidence from Sheppard's heirs with some bombshells of their own.

When Marilyn Sheppard drew her last breath, Eisenhower was in the White House, and Milton Berle on TV. It was 1954, and Sheppard, 31, was the wife of one of Cleveland's most prominent young doctors. The couple and their 7-year-old son Chip lived in a tasteful lake-side home and moved in the best social circles. But early one July morning, police arrived at the Sheppard's door and soon after their idyllic suburban facade crumbled.

Marilyn Sheppard was discovered dead that morning, bludgeoned to death with a with a weapon that the coroner described as a surgical instrument. The weapon was never found. Sam Sheppard told officers that the night before he had fallen asleep on a downstairs couch while watching television. He awoke to his wife screaming his name, he said. He described running up the stairs and bumping into a "bushy-haired" intruder who struck him, knocking him unconscious. He came to and pursued the man through his yard onto the beach, where he again was knocked out. According to Sheppard he regained consciousness some time later and then called his neighbor, the local mayor, who in turn summoned police.

At first, there was an outpouring of sympathy for the Sheppards with some people theorizing they had been targeted by drug fiends looking for the doctor's medical supply. But over the course of the next few days, investigators started to develop another theory. Something just didn't make sense about the doctor's story; police became suspicious. He couldn't account for the shirt he had been wearing that night, and the crime scene seemed staged. One room implicated drug fiends, another a rape, still another part of the house, a burglary.

Perhaps most damaging were the sordid rumors that began making their way into the police station. Dr. Sheppard denied and then admitted that he had two adulterous affairs. Marilyn was rumored to have her own lover, perhaps the next-door neighbor, the mayor. An autopsy revealed she was pregnant and questions were raised as to who the father was. Noting an irony, some people whispered that Sheppard had an abortion practice on the side, an illegal occupation in those days.

The slant of press coverage began to change. Local papers called for an inquest and pressured police to arrest the doctor. Sheppard was charged and convicted in 1954, but the U.S. Supreme Court later overturned the conviction citing press reports that were wildly prejudicial.

An autopsy revealed Marilyn Sheppard was pregnant and questions about paternity were raised.

For nearly 20 years, the case file remained closed. Then in 1995, Sam Reese "Chip" Sheppard, filed the wrongful imprisonment suit on behalf of his late father's estate.

The younger Sheppard maintains the suit, which he says has cost a local defense attorney $3 million to prepare, is not about money, nor, suprisingly enough, about clearing his father's name. Rather, he says, his purpose is to find his mother's murderer.

He may do just that. The trial opening this week is civil, not criminal, so no one can be sent to jail for Marilyn Sheppard's murder. The unusual nature of a wrongful imprisonment suit in Ohio, however, makes it likely that new evidence about the murder will emerge.

According to statute, before someone can sue for wrongful imprisonment, they must be declared "innocent" by a common pleas court. "Innocent" is a higher standard than a "not guilty" verdict.

Unlike a criminal case, which is decided on the standard of evidence of "reasonable doubt," a declaration of innocence is determined by the standard for civil cases: a simple "preponderance of the evidence."

For the state, the civil trial is another opportunity to convict Sam Sheppard if only in the public's opinion. The Cleveland prosecutors have the same crime scene photos and autopsy reports that they had in 1954 and 1966, but now their arsenal includes McCrary's expertise.

McCrary, who has also examined the JonBenet Ramsey case, concludes in a 15-page report that Sheppard killed his wife and staged the crime scene to divert police. Among other evidence, he cites the brutality of Sheppard's murder. This "overkill" points to a perpetrator who knew her and whose sole purpose was to harm her. No petty thief or rapist would have spent the time beating her, McCrary says. That type of criminal would have been eager to get on with the intended crime and leave the house, he writes.

The Sheppard family will give jurors an alterate theory of the crime. They believe, and say they have DNA and other evidence to back it up, that the Sheppard's window washer Richard Eberling killed Marilyn Sheppard. Eberling died in jail in 1998 where he was serving time for the 1984 murder of an elderly woman. Before he died, however, he made a number of cryptic statements about the Sheppard murder which some interpreted as a confession. A DNA expert will testify for the Sheppard family that blood found in the house could have been Eberling's.

It will take at least a month to lay all the evidence before the jury, and some of the testimony will be dry, including DNA evidence and rereading of testimony given in the previous two trials. But both sides say the case still has the inherent drama that brought it to Hollywood's attention so many years ago. In fact, neither attorney has ruled out invoking "The Fugitive" to drive home that drama for the jury.