Petitioner, Samuel H. Sheppard, was in July, 1954, a resident of Bay Village, Ohio, a suburb on the west side of Cleveland. He was a doctor of osteopathic medicine, specializing in Surgery, and a member of the staff of the Bay View Hospital. He was thirty years of age and was married to Marilyn Reese Sheppard, also thirty. They had been married for nine years and had one son, aged seven. Petitioner and his family lived in a house on the shore of Lake Erie, which house was owned by Marilyn. Petitioner was associated in the practice of medicine with his father and two elder brothers, all doctors. He was in comfortable financial circumstances.

On the night of July 3, 1954, petitioner and his wife entertained friends, Don and Nancy Ahearn, in their home. The Ahearns left at approximately 12:30 a.m., July 4, 1954; Marilyn saw them to the door, for petitioner was or appeared to be asleep on a couch in the living room. The evening had been a congenial one, and the Ahearns observed no indications of hostility between petitioner and his wife (who was pregnant) at any time during the evening. In fact, there were overt manifestations of affection between them.

Shortly before 6:00 a.m., a telephone call was received from petitioner by J. Spencer Houk, mayor of Bay Village and a friend of petitioner. Houk lived two houses distant from the home of petitioner. Houk heard petitioner say: 'My God, Spence, get over here quick, I think they have killed Marilyn.' Houk dressed and with his wife, Esther, drove within a short time the few hundred feet to petitioner's home. Upon arrival the Houks found petitioner on the first floor of the house. His face showed some injury, and he complained of pain in his neck. Esther Houk went up to the bedroom, at the suggestion of petitioner, to check on the condition of Marilyn Sheppard. She found Marilyn lying in a pool of blood on the bed. She was dead. The room was covered with spattered blood. It was determined that she had suffered some thirty-five blows about the head by some blunt instrument causing death. There was some conflict as to how long she had been dead when discovered by the Houks. The story given by petitioner to police and at the trial, was substantially as follows: As he was sleeping on the couch, he was awakened by a noise coming from the second floor. He thought he heard his name called. He went up the stairs, which was dimly lit by a light in the hall. He recognized only a white 'form' standing next to the bed where his wife slept. He grappled with the form, and was struck on the back of the neck which rendered him unconscious. Before losing consciousness petitioner heard loud moans, as if from someone injured. When petitioner recovered consciousness, he examined his wife, found or thought that she was dead, determined that his son (in an adjacent room) had not been harmed, and then, hearing noise of some sort on the first floor, ran down. He saw a form running out the door of the house nearest to Lake Erie, and pursued it to the shore. There he struggled again, and again lost consciousness. When he came to, he went back to the house. re-examined his wife and called Mayor Houk. Petitioner was unable to establish (1) the number of people in the bedroom at the time of the first encounter or the time of said encounter; (2) the duration of his unconsciousness on either occasion, or (3) the sex or identity of any of the single or several assailants he encountered. He stated that his perceptions had been vague because he was asleep at the outset of the chain of events, and unconscious twice as it progressed.

In the course of interrogations by police and the County Coroner, petitioner was asked if he had had sexual relations with one Susan Hayes, an ex-employee of the hospital in March, 1954, in Los Angeles. Petitioner denied this, but later admitted it when confronted with her statement of the affair. The state contended that Miss Hayes was the motive for a premeditated murder, but the jury returned a verdict of murder in the second degree.

The murder of Marilyn Sheppard captivated the attention of news media in an unprecedented manner. Editorials on the first page of a leading Cleveland newspaper, and news media generally, set up a hue and cry for a solution to the crime. An inquest was demanded and held, and petitioner's arrest was suggested most strongly by at least one leading newspaper. On July 30, 1954, petitioner was arrested; he was admitted to bail, and indicted a few days later, on August 17, 1954. He has been in custody ever since.

The trial began on October 18, 1954, and on December 17 of the same year the cause was submitted to a jury in the Court of Common Pleas of Cuyahoga County. On December 21^st the verdict of guilty of murder in the second degree was returned, and the petitioner was sentenced to life imprisonment in the state penitentiary at Columbus, Ohio.

Petitioner, Samuel H. Sheppard, has at all times maintained that he was not guilty of the murder of his wife, and that he knew no more about said death than he told at the trial.

Any one of the above mentioned factors, i.e., the insidious, prejudicial newspaper reporting, the refusal of the trial judge to question jurors regarding, an alleged prejudicial radio broadcast and the carnival atmosphere which continued throughout the trial, would be sufficient to compel the conclusion that petitioner's constitutional rights were violated. But when they are cumulated, this Court cannot, unless it were to stretch its imagination to the point of fantasy, say the petitioner had a fair trial in view of the publicity during trial.

The Court ... has found five separate violations of petitioner's constitutional rights, i.e., failure to grant a change of venue or a continuance in view of the newspaper publicity before trial; inability of maintaining impartial jurors because of the publicity during trial; failure of the trial judge to disqualify himself although there was uncertainty as to his impartiality, improper introduction of lie detector test testimony and unauthorized communications to the jury during their deliberations. Each of the aforementioned errors is by itself sufficient to require a determination that petitioner was not accorded a fair trial as required by the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. And when these errors are cumulated, the trial can only be viewed as a mockery of justice.