Attorney Says Dna Will Clear Sheppard

Three decades after Dr. Sam Sheppard’s death, DNA evidence will help clear his name once and for all in the 1954 slaying of his wife, a lawyer told a jury Monday as the case that inspired TV’s “The Fugitive” began unfolding in court all over again.

Prosecutors countered that Sheppard probably beat his wife to death because he was an unfaithful husband enraged at being trapped in his marriage.

“We don’t know what lit the match, but something caused the powder keg of marital conflict to blow early on the morning of July 4,” prosecutor William Mason said in his opening statement in the lawsuit brought by Sheppard’s son.

Sam Reese Sheppard is suing the state, claiming his father was wrongfully imprisoned for killing his mother at the family home on Lake Erie.

In a case that inspired the movie and TV series “The Fugitive,” the doctor initially was convicted of murder and spent a decade in prison. But the U.S. Supreme Court overturned the verdict because of the effects of pretrial publicity on jurors and witnesses. Sheppard was acquitted at a retrial in 1966 and died four years later.

The doctor insisted all along that a bushy-haired intruder killed his wife.

For the younger Sheppard to win the case, six members of the eightmember jury must decide that the majority of evidence indicates the doctor was innocent. The younger Sheppard then could claim damages in a separate court action.