ABSTRACT
On July 3, 1954, pregnant housewife Marilyn Sheppard was brutally beaten to death in a suburb of Cleveland, Ohio. The police focused on her husband Sam as the main suspect, ignoring Sam's insistence that a "bushy-haired intruder" had broken into their home and knocked him unconscious before attacking his wife. The case pointed to the way in which untrammeled press coverage of criminal trials could undermine the rights of criminal defendants. On December 21, 1954, Sheppard was convicted. Within a month of the verdict, both of his parents were dead; his mother committed suicide, and his father died of a stress-induced hemorrhaging ulcer. It took over a decade for redemption to arrive, but in Sheppard v. Maxwell, 384 US 333, the US Supreme Court threw out his conviction. The Sheppard case retains a prominent place in American culture. It served as the inspiration for the 1960s television show The Fugitive.
