Infamous Bay Village Murder: The Sam Sheppard Case Collection

In 2012, William Mason, then Cuyahoga County Prosecutor, designated the Cleveland–Marshall College of Law Library at Cleveland State University as the repository for records and other materials relating to the Dr. Sam Sheppard cases. The materials in the Sam Sheppard Case Collection consist of over 60 boxes of photographs, recordings, and trial exhibits.

Since July 1, 2014, tens of thousands of items from this collection have been downloaded from all 50 states and over 100 countries. Kudos to C|M|Law Library’s Technical Services Department for their continuing hard work in making this collection accessible.

Background on the Sheppard cases:

Sam Sheppard, a well-known Cleveland doctor, was convicted in 1954 of the murder of his pregnant wife Marilyn Reese Sheppard at their Bay Village home. He spent almost a decade in prison before a retrial was ordered based on the controversial 1954 trial being dubbed a “media circus.” It drew widespread national attention from the media, creating what the U.S. Supreme Court later described as a “carnival atmosphere” that denied Sheppard his right to due process. As a result, he was acquitted in 1966 and maintained his innocence in the murder until his death in 1970.

In 2000, Sheppard’s son Sam Reese Sheppard, who was 7 years old at the time of his mother’s murder, sued the state of Ohio for his father’s alleged wrongful imprisonment. After a ten-week trial, a civil jury returned the unanimous verdict that Sam Reese Sheppard had failed to prove his father had been wrongfully imprisoned.

An article from Cleveland.com (2015) highlights the law library’s Sam Sheppard Case Collection. The law library’s Director Lauren Collins is quoted throughout the article.