4/25/2000:  NEWS FROM CUADP

CUADPUpdate is sent to more than 700 subscribers and donors,
as well as several e-mail lists concerned with death penalty
and related criminal justice matters.


4/25/2000

Greetings all,

I hope this finds you well.  Here's a bit
of news from CUADP.  Your comments and suggestions
are welcome and invited.  Yours in the struggle,

--abe


THE SHEPPARD CIVIL TRIAL

As you may be aware, CUADP coordinated logistics
and support to Sam Reese Sheppard and the Sheppard Team
during the course of the civil trial, which ended
tragically on April 12 with a jury deciding that we had
not met the burden of proving Dr. Sam Sheppard was innocent. 
It was an incredible experience, and it ain't over yet. 
I have included at the end of this message the best overview
and analysis we have seen so far: see below for Keith
McKnight's wrap-up in the Akron Beacon Journal. 

On behalf of the Sheppard Team, family and friends,
I want to thank everyone who has sent messages of support
to Sam <sam@samreesesheppard.org>, to all who helped us
with presence, meals, transportation, research, money, hugs,
housing, etc.  We could not have done it without the TONS of
support received from many individuals.  Special thanks goes
to Attorney Terry Gilbert and Attorney George Carr, the staff
and volunteers at Friedman & Gilbert, Attorney John Hargrove
and his staff, and Sam's classmates from Culver Military
Academy, a number of whom made significant contributions which
allowed the Sheppard Team to carry through.
 
I invite you to visit Sam's web page at
<http://www.samreesesheppard.org>, which is in the
process of being updated.  Check it out in another
day or two, and over the coming weeks as we get around
to posting our analysis of the wildly varying media
coverage, as well as our own take on what happened.

If you are one of the folks who has been clipping
and setting aside news articles on the case, now is
the time to send them in.  Please mail to:

CUADP
PMB 335
2603 Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Hwy
Tequesta, FL  33469

Finally, if you are interested in receiving regular
updates on the case as it continues, as well as information
about Sam Reese Sheppard's ongoing efforts to effect positive
change in our legal systems, I invite you to join "Sheppardlist"
by sending an e-mail to <sheppardlist-subscribe@egroups.com>. 
By signing up, you also gain access to the reports I posted to
that list throughout the course of the trial.   


SELF-PURIFICATION

After I dropped Sam at the airport last week, I
needed a break, and a little self-purification.  So, I
went to Tennessee and, with 17 others, got myself
arrested.  This was the very first prisoner killing in
Tennessee in almost 40 years.  From the student-driven
direct action to the absolutely incredible and
compassionate care offered to the family of Robert Glen
Coe by both activists and lawyers, I can tell you that
TCASK is a state coalition to watch and to emulate. 
CUADP was honored to be invited to lend a hand.  It was
a pleasure and a privilege to see the blossoming
leadership and energy within the Tennessee Coalition
to Abolish State Killing (TCASK).  (Thanks, BTW, to
those who chipped in to help cover plane fare.)  Read
about Tennessee at:
<http://www.tennessean.com/sii/00/04/19/coevigil19.shtml>.


WHAT'S NEXT

Aside from catching up on the huge backlog of
paperwork, etc., CUADP now returns its focus to developing
Floridians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty.  Our
next organizing meeting is this coming Saturday in Orlando.
Please e-mail <fadp@fadp.org> or call 800-973-6548 for
details.  Also, visit <http://www.fadp.org>.

Looking a little bit down the road is the 7th ANNUAL
FAST AND VIGIL TO ABOLISH THE DEATH PENALTY AT THE U.S.
SUPREME COURT, sponsored by the Abolitionist Action Committee
(AAC).  This event takes place every year from June 29 to
July 2nd.  Please visit <http://www.abolition.org> for
more information and details.  To register, volunteer, or to
make a contribution, please e-mail <aac@abolition.org> or
call 800-973-6548.

For more upcoming events, see the Calendar of Upcoming
Death Penalty Related Events at <http://www.cuadp.org>.
You can add YOUR events to this listing - see the calendar
for submission guidelines.


VOLUNTEERS NEEDED

There are many areas where CUADP and other anti-
death penalty movement entities need help.  Contact
CUADP at <infodesk@cuadp.org> for information on getting
active with a group in your area.

Unfortunately, the volunteer who was helping
CUADP with LIST MAINTENANCE recently became severely
injured when her surgery went awry.  Please include
"Sandy" in your prayers for a complete and speedy
recovery.  Meanwhile, we are desperately seeking a
dedicated, trustworthy person who knows Access and
Excell.  Please e-mail <abe@cuadp.org> if you can help.


FUNDS NEEDED

First, THANK YOU to everyone who has contributed
to CUADP's efforts over the past several months.  Your
personal "thank you" letter should be in the mail within
a week.  Now, because our efforts have been so focused,
and because of the current problem in accessing our database,
we are behind schedule on vital fundraising efforts.  As
you know, CUADP's efforts to build the visibility of the
issue, and the movement, as well as CUADP's work to enhance
the capacity of GRASSROOTS ACTIVISTS, is cutting edge. 

Like many non-profits, CUADP operates on a shoestring
budget.  Unlike most, we pay no salaries and offer no benefits.
All the money goes to activism.  We are all volunteers.  Also,
because we are not a 501c3, donors can't "write-off" contributions
to our efforts.  Therefore, your support is especially vital
if CUADP is to continue to help our movement grow and be
effective.  Please send a special gift at this time, and ask
people you know to support CUADP as well.  It can be as simple
as copying this message for a friend, clergy person or relative,
with a note saying, "I support CUADP.  Will you?"  Please give
it a try!

VISA    MASTERCARD   AMEX

Call 800-973-6548, fax 561-743-2500, or e-mail
<cuadp@cuadp.org> today with your Visa, MasterCard
or American Express card number and expiration date, or
snailmail cc#/expiration or a check to: 
CUADP
PMB 335
2603 Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Hwy
Tequesta, FL  33469

CUADP puts your money to work immediately in the struggle
to stop state killing by working to enhance strategic and tactical
grassroots efforts across the United States.  Donors receive
"CUADP Update," which highlights the successes that they have
made possible.  If you have questions, ideas, or if I can be
helpful to you in any way, please don't hesitate to contact my
office.  Thank you!

Yours in the Struggle,

--abe

Abraham J. Bonowitz
Director, CUADP

PS - We need your help now, but please also support your
local and state abolitionist organization(s) and the
National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty.


********************************************************
********************************************************
(more after this brief message from our sponsor)

BE SEEN & HEARD!! Displaying an anti-death penalty
message creates more visibility for the issue.
Citizens United for Alternatives to the Death
Penalty's AbolitionWear(tm) catalog features a
variety of T-shirts, buttons, bumper stickers and
other cool abolitionist stuff.  Wear the message
on a button or a t-shirt at least one day a week,
or as often as you can. Put a bumper sticker on
your car or in your office. *Educate yourself* so
that when someone asks you why you believe the
death penalty is a bad public policy, you can tell
them!  The catalog includes items in SPANISH and
ranging in adult sizes from small to 5XL!

Call CUADP at 800-973-6548 or e-mail
<abolitionwear@cuadp.org> for a copy of the latest
AbolitionWear(tm) catalog.

Citizens United for Alternatives to the Death Penalty
PMB 335
177 U.S. Hwy #1
Tequesta, FL  33469
800-973-6548
<cuadp@cuadp.org>
<http://www.cuadp.org>


*&^*&^*&^*&^*&^*&^*&^*&^*&^*&^*&^*&^*&^*&^*&^*&^*&^
*&^*&^*&^*&^*&^*&^*&^*&^*&^*&^*&^*&^*&^*&^*&^*&^*&^

YES!  HERE IT IS!

AKRON BEACON JOURNAL WRAP-UP ON THE SHEPPARD CASE


4/16/2000

Verdict shocks lawyer

10-year effort to prove Sheppard's innocence ends
with quick decision in Cuyahoga County's favor

BY KEITH MCKNIGHT
Beacon Journal staff writer

CLEVELAND: More than anything else that happened on
Wednesday, it was the expression on the face of Terry
Gilbert that captured the moment.

It was almost a mask of horror -- an expression that
seemed to frighten those who saw it, particularly his
wife, Robin. She thought he was having a heart attack.

But the jurors didn't notice -- their eyes were looking
elsewhere, looking down, looking away, looking anywhere
but there.

They were ready to go home.

The 10-year effort to prove Dr. Sam Sheppard didn't
kill his pregnant wife, Marilyn, in the pre-dawn darkness
of July 4, 1954, was over.

And in the end, the 10-week trial that produced a
parade of the nation's top forensic scientists -- who
explained in their own special kind of expertise why
the real killer had to be somebody else -- didn't make a
bit of difference.

At least not to this jury.

Sam Reese Sheppard, a veteran of hollow times, threw a
comforting arm around the shoulder of his grieving
attorney as the aftermath of the verdict for the state
droned on.

It's usually the other way around.

The lawyer usually comforts the client.

But Abe Bonowitz, one of a group of friends and relatives
who sat through most of the trial to do what they could to
help, found Sheppard's reaction easy to explain:

``He told us all to hope for the best and prepare for
the worst,''  Bonowitz said, ``but he's the only one who did.''

Gilbert was sure he had won.  Science was on his side.
That was clear from the outset.

Why else would he have tried to prove wrongful imprisonment
in a 45-year-old murder case when the burden of proof was
on his shoulders?

And why else would the state's most articulate defender in the
case -- Assistant County Prosecutor Steve Dever -- build his
argument from Day 1 by warning jurors to trust their common
sense and ignore all the scientific ``mumbo jumbo?''

In the end, after eight weeks of tedious testimony, Dever's
route provided a perfect out for the jury of four men and
four women confronted with a forbidding stack of evidence
piled in the jury room.

And they took it.

Scarcely six hours after they were given the case, told to
elect a foreperson, told to have lunch and come back to start
deliberations, they voted, notified the clerk, filed in to
hear their verdict read and were out the door.

Common Pleas Judge Ronald Suster struggled throughout the
trial to carefully distinguish the probative from the
prejudicial before the stack of evidence was finally delivered
to the jury that afternoon.

He had no way of knowing that it wouldn't matter.  Otherwise,
the trial might have been shorter.

``It was like a joke,'' Gilbert said. ``It was like
invalidating what so many people worked for and believed in.''

Cuyahoga County Prosecutor William Mason, though, was quick
to proclaim that the state, at long last, was finally rid of
the Sheppard case.

``There have been questions left out in the community for years,''
he said. ``I think that the evidence we put in that courtroom . . .
answered all those questions of the past. And I think we have
finally put this to rest, once and for all.''

Not so for Claudia Lenarz, though, who brought her knitting and
invested 2 1/2 months of her retirement attending virtually
every session of the trial.

The Strongsville woman and a friend from Rocky River said they
wanted to determine for themselves whether Sheppard was the
killer.

``I don't think either one of us thought we would be there for
the whole trial,'' she said. ``But it was compelling. It was
a compelling story.''

She had gone to her son's track meet, never dreaming the verdict
would be returned so soon.

``I'm just very upset,'' she said. ``How could these people
decide this? I mean, what didn't they believe?''

A need to win

Gilbert himself may have underestimated the strength of
feelings in the Sheppard case, and Cleveland's need to win it.

He said he ignored suggestions that trying the case outside
Cuyahoga County might be a better idea.

``Sam and I just decided that we were going to take a shot
here at Cleveland and not raise the question of venue. . . .
We thought if Dr. Sheppard is going to be vindicated, he
has to be vindicated by this community.''

But it didn't work.

Dr. Sheppard has been dead for 30 years, yet Gilbert would
discover that sentiment against him is still very much
alive.

Since the day of the murder nearly 46 years ago, the
slaying of Marilyn Sheppard has been handled like an
algebraic equation in which the known is the killer
(Sheppard) and the only unknown is how he did it.

No physical evidence was ever found to link him to the
crime.

But he was always the only suspect, essentially, because
he was there and couldn't convince authorities that he, too,
was a victim.

Sheppard always claimed that he was knocked out after
being aroused from a sound sleep by his wife's cries in the
middle of the night.

When he regained consciousness and pursued a bushy-haired
intruder, he said he again lost consciousness and wakened
in the waves of Lake Erie on the shore of their property.

Dr. John P. Wilson, head of Cleveland's Forensic Center
for Traumatic Stress, testified that Sheppard was
suffering not only from hypothermia, but from acute stress
trauma because of all he had been through in the ordeal.

Yet Sheppard's inability to recall details of that night
-- fed by what Wilson said was his own disbelief of what he
had been through -- was used to undermine his credibility.

Simple case

In its most fundamental form, Gilbert's case was a simple one:
DNA analysis of bloodstains taken from the murder scene shows
the presence of a third person.

That fact alone should have upset the state's claim that
Sheppard was the lone killer -- the only person who could
have done it.

The Bay Village osteopath had no open bleeding wounds
following the murder.

Furthermore, neither his DNA nor his wife's matched the DNA
that was found there, although it was in the bedroom, on Dr.
Sheppard's pants and elsewhere in the house.

On the other hand, the DNA of Richard Eberling -- the
Sheppards' handyman who later claimed to have bled in
the house due to an accident shortly before the murder --
could not be excluded.

Ironically, that determination was made by Dr. Mohammed
Tahir, one of the country's leading DNA experts who in the
process of the Sheppard investigation was persuaded to help
set up a DNA lab for the Cuyahoga County coroner.

Indeed it was Eberling's peculiar history, his connection
with the Sheppards and his conviction in the murder of a
wealthy Lakewood widow that prompted the reinvestigation of
the murder -- over the objections of Cuyahoga County.

In the process of it all, Sam Reese Sheppard became convinced
that Eberling not only was his mother's killer, but was
likely a serial killer who had slain other women.

Yet the introduction of that information was blocked at
virtually every turn by the state -- even though Gilbert had
expert witnesses prepared to back it up with testimony.

And so the involvement of Eberling -- at least for the
jurors -- was kept to a minimum while the character of Dr.
Sheppard was again fair game, much as it had been in 1954.

And DNA, at least in this trial, became suspect.

Dr. Ranajit Chakraborty, said to be the world's foremost
population geneticist, built on what Tahir had found.
He said that the most logical conclusion to draw from
Tahir's discoveries was that Eberling's blood was at the
murder scene.

And by the time it was the state's turn to challenge
Tahir's findings by calling its own DNA expert -- Dr.
Mitchell Holland, chief of DNA for the Armed Forces
Institute of Pathology in Rockville, Md. -- the state
had thought better of it.

Hence they had no DNA expert at all.

Instead, they called Toby Wolson, a Miami forensic
biology consultant, who testified that from what he
could see, Tahir's DNA results appeared to be so
contaminated that they were essentially worthless.

But what Wolson was allowed to see was limited by
what the prosecutor's office gave him.

On cross-examination, he said he asked for documentation
of Tahir's tests but never received it, and that is the
reason he concluded the results were unreliable.

Outside the hearing of the jury, Mason let it be known
that he had been ``stonewalled'' trying to get the test
results from Gilbert.

Gilbert responded by producing a letter and deposition
showing the documentation had been in Mason's camp for
months.

So, the prosecutor's office backtracked a little, blaming
the mishap on a communication problem, but by then the jury
had heard that the samples were contaminated.

And it became a little easier to sell the idea that science,
after all, is sometimes mumbo jumbo.

In the end, evidence that was allowed to point to Richard
Eberling as the man who might have been the real killer of
Marilyn Sheppard was thin, at best.

Unusual decision

Thinking it over, though, Gilbert said the cause was lost
last August when Suster yielded to the prosecutor's demand
to have the complicated, controversial case tried by a
Cuyahoga County panel of jurors.

By Gilbert's account, it was the first time in the 15-year
history of the state's wrongful imprisonment statute that
such a case was tried by a jury rather than a judge. ``If
this was some unknown guy in prison,'' Gilbert said, ``there
would never have been even a question of relying on a judge
to make a decision.''

Regardless of what Suster's decision might have been though,
nobody who watched him agonize over rulings in the course
of the 10 1/2-week trial would have expected his
deliberations to have been measured in anything less than
days.

It was, after all, a historic event.

The Sheppard team and their supporters and friends held a
get-together Friday night to cheer each other and say their
goodbyes.

Sam Reese Sheppard said he would head back to his place in
California.  Life for him is better there.  He will resume
work as a dental hygienist.  But first, he said, he will
inflate his bicycle tires and take a long ride.

Keith McKnight can be reached at 330-996-3734 or
kmcknight@thebeaconjournal.com

*********



"In recording for my boy what I have been subjected
to, it will be necessary to make known American injustice
perpetrated not by the laws of our land, but by those who
have sworn themselves to uphold those laws... A frightening
breach of American rights has taken place, and the important
point is that the breach has happened here in America, not
who it has happened to."

1955, Dr. Sam Sheppard
From his prison journal

Please visit http://www.samreesesheppard.org

Click Here to make a contribution to CUADP