The full essay

This is exactly what I plan to turn in.  It is not quite two pages.  Just read the first two paragraphs and then the last one, or if you're in for all the lolz and the information (of which there is little) feel free to read the whole damn thing.  The last paragraph makes it look like I blatantly plagiarized buttttt I didn't.  I'm just a sarcastic asshole.  

Sheppard v. Maxwell

            Sam Sheppard was a fantastic high school student, competing for Cleveland Heights High School in Football, Basketball and Track as well as serving as the class president for three years.  He went on to attend Hanover College in Indiana to major in pre-med and finally became a doctor in 1942.  The 40’s being a great decade for Sheppard, he also married his wife Marilyn who bore his first child, also named Sam.

            Sheppard’s story is one of typical, you-never-thought-it-would-be-him caliber.  He was a class president and athlete to all who knew him as an adolescent, a doctor to those who knew him in his adulthood, and most importantly, a father to Sam and a husband to Marilyn. Despite his seemingly happy lifestyle, he went on to become one of the most famous murderers in the history of Ohio.  In the early morning of July 4^th, 1954, Sam Sheppard Sr. murdered pregnant Marilyn for what seems to be no good reason at all. 

            But the truly shocking aspect of the case was the trial, and more specifically, the way that print media affected the outcome of the trial.  Because no one likes to see a double-murder in the form of a murder of a pregnant woman, the press and the public assisted each other in going berserk.  They fed off of each other, demonizing Sheppard in every way, and condemning him to be found guilty.

            Sheppard made the claim that his civil right listed in the 5^th amendment granting him due process of law had been violated during his trial due to the widespread, prejudicial glare blinding him during his trial, and after he had already served 10 years of his sentence, the Supreme Court reviewed his case and on an 8 to 1 vote, agreed with him. The court concluded that the judge should have postponed proceedings or changed the venue, and ordered that Sheppard be released from prison or granted a retrial.

            It was decided that Sheppard’s 5^th and 6^th amendment rights were the specific ones which were lost in his trial; due process of law from the 5^th and that he was not granted an impartial jury from the 6^th.  His jury was decided to have been biased because of the layout of the courtroom, in which the prosecution and the press were juxtaposed in a way such that they could play off of each other, which made it appear to the jury that Sheppard could be nothing but guilty.  As an effect of this trial, juries on popular trials like this one are almost always sequestered, and media is no longer permitted to impede the result of a trial.

            Two wives and a liver failure later, Sheppard died in 1970.  His legacy lived on through his son, Sam Sheppard Jr., who, in 2000 sued Ohio for wrongful imprisonment of his father for 10 years.  Sam Jr. lost, which really does not made any sense at all considering that Sam Sr.’s trial was overturned by the supreme court and whatnot, but that is government for you.

            In order to prove that his father was wrongly imprisoned, Sam Jr. was forced to dig up his father’s body from the cemetery it was buried in in Columbus.  After the trial, Sam Sr.’s body was cremated with that of his first wife Marilyn, which is a real testament to true love.  True love always finds its way.